Twin Threat Christmas

by Rachelle Mccalla

  * * *

  Sammy was asleep when Vanessa placed his car seat in the concrete manger of the life-size nativity scene in front of her sister’s house. She felt a pang of doubt. Was she right to leave the baby with her sister? It was going to be difficult enough to run with the girls. Sammy needed frequent feedings and diaper changes. The girls, at least, could stay quiet when they needed to.

  He’d be safer with Alyssa. Wouldn’t he? Vanessa looked at the concrete sculptures of Mary and Joseph, poised protectively over the manger. Mary’s expression of love and concern seemed to say she’d look over the child.

  Vanessa knew she didn’t dare linger, no matter how much she wished she could see her sister. If Alyssa saw her, she’d have to take the time to explain, and that would endanger them all. Virgil’s men might catch up to her at any time, and Sammy would only be safe if the men who were after her didn’t know where she’d left him.

  Swallowing back the emotion that tightened her throat and blurred her vision, she ran to the Sequoia, parked almost out of sight down the street. She’d spotted Alyssa going into the house as she pulled up, and suspected, based on the open door to the workshop, her sister would be coming out again soon.

  Sure enough, once she was inside the vehicle, she and the girls watched through the windows as Alyssa stepped outside the front door, headed toward the baby.

  Sammy would be safe. Safer, at least, than he would be on the run with her, and that was all that mattered.

  Vanessa put the car in gear and drove off into the setting sun. It was dark, and the girls were asleep by the time she turned off the highway to the gravel road that led to the cabin.

  She hadn’t been there in over eight years, but she’d reviewed the route in her head a hundred thousand times, promising herself that if she ever got a chance to escape, she’d flee to the cabin, the one place she’d never told Jeff about.

  Forgotten landmarks leaped into sight like old friends eager to welcome her home as the headlights pierced the night in front of her.

  A lump welled up in her throat, but Vanessa swallowed it down. No, she couldn’t get emotional, not yet, no matter how many times she’d comforted herself with the hope she might someday see this place again. There was still far too much she had to do.

  The Sequoia rolled to a stop in the parking spot in front of the garage. The fishing cabin was just as she remembered it, if a little spooky in the darkness. It was her cabin, or would be someday if her grandfather was still alive. Grandpa had always promised he’d will it to her and her sister.

  With a backward glance to be certain the girls were still sleeping peacefully, Vanessa quietly opened the door and hurried to the rock border of the flower bed near the porch. Would the key still be there? Anything could have happened to it in the years since she’d last tucked it away in its hiding spot.

  The dim light from the key-chain flashlight barely illuminated the stones, so Vanessa dropped to her knees, feeling each rock in turn, counting them off until she found the correct one. It didn’t want to budge, the soil having settled thick around it over the years.

  Fighting back panic, Vanessa tugged hard on the rock with both hands, the flashlight beam playing crazily across the cabin until she had the stone rolled onto its side. She regained control of the keychain, aiming the meager light into the dirt.

  She saw only bare ground.

  “No. It has to be here.” She glanced back down the row of rocks, wondering if perhaps she’d chosen the wrong one, but this stone, with its knobby, handgrip-shaped protrusion, was the one. The only one.

  She swept her fingers across the dirt, digging lightly, gently.

  Something scraped her hand and she stopped, running her index finger along the stiff, buried something, flicking it upward with her fingernail.

  The key!

  She wiped it clean on her jeans as she rose and bounded up the shallow porch steps to the door. Thankfully, the knob looked familiar, not some new, shiny thing to replace the one that matched the key in her hand. Shaking slightly, it took her a moment to align it with the lock, to slide it inside, wrestle with the knob, hear the click and, finally, with a practiced shove of her hip, pop the door open wide.

  Vanessa swiped her hand along the inside of the door frame, found the light switch and flipped it on. Even before her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, she saw the man standing across the room at the base of the stairs, facing her from behind the barrel of a gun.

  TWO

  Eric blinked at the sudden light and tried to get a decent look at the intruder. He wasn’t about to hurt anyone—he was pretty sure the old hunting shotgun wasn’t even loaded—but Debbi had told him to take it downstairs with him when she’d run to his room in fear after seeing headlights outside. Their cabin was deep on private property. No one else ought to be there, certainly not in the middle of the night.

  Still half-asleep, his mind muddled by dreams tainted with the memories unearthed by that evening’s news story, he couldn’t help wondering if he was actually awake.

  The face staring back at him from the doorway was the same one from his dreams, the same one from the newscast, familiar but completely impossible.

  “Eric?”

  He nodded, swallowed, couldn’t say the name that rose to his lips.

  Vanessa was dead. Legally dead.

  “Can you put the gun down?” The woman spoke with Vanessa’s voice, which for all the years that had passed was still the same, maybe a little tired, even frantic.

  He lowered the hunting shotgun but didn’t let go. More awake now—quite shocked awake—he realized a number of things all at once.

  This was the woman from the picture on the news, the woman who’d killed her husband just before dinnertime in a quiet Chicago suburb. She was dangerous. Her children were in danger. The reporter had called her Madison Nelson.

  Should he let on that he knew who she was?

  And why did she remind him so much of Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead? What was she doing here, in the cabin where he and Vanessa had spent so many happy times as children and teens?

  Before he could sort it out, a voice echoed from outside the house.

  “Mommy?”

  The woman darted back out of the cabin.

  Still unsure what was going on, Eric nonetheless realized the voice he’d heard probably belonged to one of Madison Nelson’s daughters—what were their names?

  “It’s okay, Abby.”

  Eric remembered the moment he overheard the woman soothing her daughter. Abby and Emma. And Sammy.

  Abby had clambered half out of the Toyota Sequoia—the same vehicle featured in the news broadcast. Eric couldn’t see in the darkness, but he felt certain the front of the vehicle was probably banged up, at least a bit.

  Abby clung to her mother, and the woman stroked her hair and held her close. “I’m right here. Mommy’s right here, honey. We’re at the place I told you about—the cabin.”

  “The most wonderful place in the world?”

  “That’s the one. It will look more welcoming once the sun rises. Let’s get you into bed.”

  “With the kitten quilt? Did you find the kitten quilt?”

  “I didn’t have time to look. We’ll see. Can you walk? I need to carry your sister.”

  Eric listened, still unsure whether he was dreaming or what exactly was going on. The woman sounded like a loving parent, but weren’t most psychotic killers supposed to seem normal on the outside? More disturbing still, Eric felt sure that somehow, though this woman matched the description of Madison Nelson, she was Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead.

  After all, she had a key to the cabin, and she knew about the kitten quilt.

  Abby slid down from the high SUV and blinked up at him warily. “Who’s that?”

  Eric looked at the
woman—Vanessa? Could it be Vanessa? Or was she Madison now?

  She cast him a brief, uncertain glance. “That’s my friend Eric. He’s okay.”

  Something welled up inside him at the words and the reassurance that filled the little girl’s face. Even the girl looked a lot like Vanessa had looked when they were kids together, playing in the yard here at the cabin, chasing fireflies after dark.

  What had happened? Eight years ago, one of his best friends had disappeared, and now this woman was here, knowing things Vanessa would know—acting and talking like Vanessa, even looking like her, aside from the blond hair and eight years of passing time.

  When the little girl stumbled uncertainly after her mother, Eric held out his hand.

  Abby looked up at him with eyes so much like Vanessa’s had been at that age, he couldn’t speak. But the little girl trustingly placed her hand in his, and he steadied her as they walked into the cabin.

  “Debbi and I have the upstairs bedrooms,” Eric explained as they entered, as though this was a regular, planned visit, and he hadn’t just been pointing a gun at the woman.

  “The downstairs bedroom just has one bed—”

  “It’s a bunk bed now, the kind with a single on top and double below. Some buddies of mine sold it after college. I thought the cabin could use it.”

  “Perfect. This way, girls.”

  Eric let go of Abby’s hand as her mother led her toward the bedroom. Still not quite certain he wasn’t dreaming, he tried to assure himself he wasn’t doing anything illegal by offering hospitality to a murderer—after all, he didn’t know for a fact she’d murdered anyone, did he? Maybe it was self-defense? Maybe a lot of things had happened in the past eight years. All he knew was that he’d prayed for years that his friend would be safe, and now all of a sudden, here she was with little girls who needed a helping hand.

  He wasn’t about to turn them away. Besides, even if she was a psychotic murderer, he ought to make sure her kids were safe. Shouldn’t he?

  Eric bounded up the stairs to fetch the kitten quilt, which was usually kept folded at the foot of the bed in Debbi’s room. The beloved blanket from their childhood had come with the cabin, and even though it was a little juvenile for his twenty-five-year-old sister, it was too soft and delightful to get put away in a closet, unused.

  His sister peeked at him from the doorway as he approached her room.

  “It’s the Toyota Sequoia—I shined my high-beam flashlight out the window. The license plate matches the one on the news.” She followed him into her room, where her laptop sat on the end of the bed, open to a news page about the missing children and their murdering mother. “That’s Madison Nelson, isn’t it?”

  “Shh. If it is, do you want her to know you know who she is?”

  Debbi’s eyes widened, and she clamped her mouth shut.

  “Something’s going on.” Eric lifted the laptop, pulled the kitten quilt out from underneath it and explained briefly, “I’m nearly positive that’s Vanessa Jackson downstairs.”

  “Eric, no.” Debbi’s voice fell into the chiding tone she’d used long before when he’d vowed to go out searching one more time. “She’s been declared—”

  “I know.” Eric didn’t want to hear the words again. “But nobody ever found out what happened to her. All I know is, Vanessa was my friend. I’ve got to help my friend.”

  Debbi grabbed his arm as he stepped toward the bedroom door. “Even if it means aiding a known criminal?” She showed him the cell phone she held in her hand. “I was about to call the police.”

  Eric sucked in a breath, his conscience in sudden conflict. Any other time, he’d say it was the right thing to do. “If Vanessa wanted to go to the police, she’d have done it already.”

  “So we let her kill us in our sleep?”

  “She’s not going to hurt us. Not in front of her kids.” He’d seen enough of the way the woman interacted with the girls to know she was purposely protecting them. That she was used to protecting them. But how far had she gone to protect them?

  Debbi cut off his thoughts. “That didn’t stop her from killing her husband.”

  “We don’t know what happened.” Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to know, exactly. He could guess at a few things, but all of them involved the kind of ugliness and hurt he wouldn’t wish on anyone, certainly not on the girl he’d cared for so strongly. “We should at least wait and hear her story. Can you wait that long?”

  “How long will that be?”

  “Give me an hour, maybe two. If she won’t tell us what’s going on, then you can call the police.”

  “Fine.” Debbi flashed him the look she always gave him when he outfished or outmaneuvered her. Her final words floated after him on a sigh as he headed back down the stairs. “Although I don’t see why she’d let us live once we know what she’s up to.”

  * * *

  “Mommy, the kitten quilt.”

  “I’m going to look for it.”

  “No, it’s there.” Abby pointed.

  Vanessa turned to see Eric standing in the doorway, an uncertain look on his face, kitten quilt in hand. “Ah. Thank you.” She accepted the quilt, which solved one tiny problem while introducing various others.

  Her first priority from the moment the shadow of Virgil’s Land Rover had darkened the basement walls had been to get her girls tucked safely into bed at this cabin. But she hadn’t expected anyone to be there, certainly not Eric, the friend she’d long ago wished would be more than a friend, whose presence complicated everything. She felt a stab of guilt as she avoided looking him in the eye, instead focusing her attention on tucking the quilt securely around her daughters on the double-size lower bunk.

  “Good night, Mommy.” Abby and Emma effectively dismissed her, snuggling in under the blanket as though they were on one of the countless innocent visits she and her sister had made to the cabin a generation before. She’d prayed for something like this for them—but not this way, not going through what they’d been through, or what yet lay ahead.

  “Good night.” There was nothing more to do or say. She couldn’t put off facing Eric any longer.

  She closed the door behind her and stepped toward the living room, deciding as she did so to ask questions first, to play offense instead of defense and maybe put off answering too many questions until she knew a bit more about what was going on.

  Eric stood in the middle of the cabin’s great room, near the table that separated the open kitchen from the sofa and television on the other side.

  She glanced at him only briefly, saw confusion and maybe even anger on his face, and quickly looked away, taking in all that had changed and all that had stayed the same in the cabin. Her grandmother’s knitted afghan still topped the sofa, but it was a newer sofa. Some of the pictures on the walls were the same. Some had changed. The familiarity of it all made her want to sob with relief, but she held herself together. She had to. For the kids.

  “So, you—” Eric started.

  Vanessa remembered her plan and cut off his question quickly. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s my place.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s mine.”

  “Alyssa sold it to me.”

  “So my grandfather—”

  “He died. Six years ago.”

  She’d told herself that much was likely. Her grandfather was old, and his health had been declining rapidly, but the words still hit her like one of Jeff’s controlling blows.

  And just like in the early days when Jeff hit her, Vanessa fought back. “So Alyssa sold you her half? Half the cabin was supposed to go to me.”

  “Your sister sold me both halves.”

  “She can’t sell my half—”

  “She can. You were declared legally dead.” Eric took a step toward her. “What’s going
on, Vanessa? Or should I call you Madison?”

  Vanessa pinched her eyes shut at the words, which struck her like another blow. “How do you know—”

  “It was on the news.”

  “What was?”

  Eric opened his mouth, looked toward the ceiling and made a resigned noise in his throat. “Maybe you should just watch it yourself. I can find it online. But first—what happened to the baby? Sammy? He wasn’t in the vehicle.”

  Vanessa heard real concern, maybe even fear in Eric’s voice, almost enough to drown out her own terror over what the news might have to say. “I left him with my sister.”

  “Alyssa knows you’re alive, then?”

  Much as she’d have liked to confirm his words, she knew it wouldn’t be entirely honest to do so. “She’ll figure it out. I need to see that newscast.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Eric climbed the steps and returned with a laptop, which he set on the table. The website was already up on the screen.

  “Debbi had it open,” he explained quietly as the broadcast began to play.

  Vanessa reached past him to adjust the volume, just loud enough for her to hear without risking the girls overhearing anything from the other side of the bedroom door. She’d made too many sacrifices to preserve their innocence, to let it be destroyed now.

  “Authorities are asking everyone in the Chicago region to be on the lookout for this vehicle, driven by Madison Nelson of Barrington, who is believed to have shot her husband dead before driving through the back wall of their garage with their three children in the vehicle.”

  “Dead,” Vanessa repeated softly. She’d expected it from the moment the Land Rover pulled into the driveway. Still, hearing the words, seeing the images of the house where she’d been held captive for so long, made her tremble.