The Girl and the Black Christmas (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 11)

by A J Rivers

For a few seconds, there’s nothing but silence. I get the uncomfortable, creepy feeling something is about to happen. I’m just about to lift my head to look when movement flashes across the corner of my vision. My head snaps up, and I look at the window to my left.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  “I think so,” Sam says.

  I wait for something else to happen, but it doesn’t. I go back to scrolling and the silence settles back in. A few more moments pass, and the flash of movement happens again. It’s unnerving. This time, I don’t look back down at my computer. It’s putting me on edge, and the sound of my phone ringing a second later makes my heart pound in my chest.

  “Did you see me?” Xavier asks.

  “What is going on?” I ask.

  “Did you see me?” he asks again.

  “If you were the creepy thing that went by the window, then yes, I saw you,” I say.

  “Which window?” he asks.

  I realize the movement only came from the window to the left, and not the one on the far side of the cabinet in the kitchen.

  “The one in the living room,” I tell him.

  “You didn’t see any other movement?” he asks.

  “Should I have?” I asked.

  “Come outside,” he says.

  The call ends and I look at Sam. “He wants us to go outside again.”

  “It’s getting late, Emma,” he says. “We shouldn’t be out there.”

  “You know if we don’t go, he’s going to keep Dean out there while he runs in circles around the cabin,” I note.

  “Yeah, I do know that,” Sam chuckles. “You’re lucky I love you, you know that?”

  I lift one eyebrow at him. “Oh, is that right? I’m lucky?”

  He holds his arms out to the side like he’s putting himself on display. “Come on. Look at all this. And you’ve signed up for life. A constant stream of it.”

  “Well,” I say with a hint of a laugh. “I preordered the subscription. Let’s go before he calls again.”

  Sam and I haven’t started talking about a wedding. I’m not even wearing a ring. In fact, after waking up in the hospital, there were a few days when I was fuzzy on the whole engagement front. I thought I remembered asking him, but I couldn’t be completely sure. I definitely didn’t remember whether Sam answered or not.

  Maybe it wasn’t the best moment or circumstances to start making life-changing decisions. But I don’t want to wait anymore. Sam is my home, the place I feel safest. He makes me happy and knows me like no one else ever has. It’s always been the two of us. From the time we were too young to know what it meant, we were bound to each other.

  I left him once because I thought it was the right thing to do. For both of us. Not because I didn’t think we should be together, or that we wouldn’t be happy together. I left because I knew he would give me a life so secure and content and happy there would be no need to think about anything else.

  If I had stayed with him then, I never would have become an FBI agent. I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to walk away from him and put myself in the kind of danger I’ve been in. I would have just wanted to be with him.

  In that way, I did exactly what I needed to do. I made sure I could solve cases and chase down criminals so they could be held accountable for what they had done. But now I’m not going to choose anymore. I’m ready to be exactly where I want to be. With Sam.

  Those are all the kinds of things I should have said to him. Maybe in a better situation than lying in his arms, half-conscious, bleeding from a gunshot wound. If I had, it probably would have been easier for me to know the outcome. When I woke up at the hospital, he was beside me. But it wasn’t entirely clear if we were engaged or not.

  At this point, I know he heard me, and he does want to marry me. But I don’t have a ring. We don’t have a wedding date. We haven’t talked about what Bellamy thinks of as critically vital things such as theme colors and napkin styles. But I know he loves me and one day we will be married. For right now, I’m going to be happy with that.

  We get outside and find Dean standing in the middle of the open area in front of the cabin. I don’t see Xavier.

  “Where is he?” I ask. “Did you lose him again?”

  “I’m here,” Xavier calls, popping out from beside the house.

  I press my hand to my heart and turn to him. “What are you doing?”

  “Watch this.” He runs around the other side of the cabin. “You didn’t see me here.” He disappears for a few seconds, then shows up on the other side of the cabin. “This is where you did.” He does another lap. “Didn’t see me.” Next window. “Saw me.” A third lap. “Not here.” Next window. “But here.”

  “Okay,” I say, holding up my hands before he could go around for a fourth time. “I’m getting dizzy.”

  “Maybe your inner-ear fluids are disrupted.”

  “Or maybe you are running around in circles,” I fire back.

  “Yes,” he says, seeming to snap out of the contemplation of my ears and back to whatever was originally going through his head. “You were pretending to look at your notes, right? Just like the first night you were here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you noticed where I went by the window.”

  “Yes.

  “But you didn’t see anything that night?” he asks.

  “No.”

  Xavier looks around for a few seconds, then nods. “Okay.”

  He starts for the front door to the cabin.

  “Wait,” I say. “That’s it?”

  “Should there be more?” he asks, pausing on the porch and turning around to look at me.

  I open my hands out to my sides. “Don’t you think you should give us a little hint about what that was all about?”

  “I told you,” he shrugs. “That’s where you could see me going by the cabin. Which means if anybody else was going by that side of the cabin, you would be able to see them, but not anyone going on the other side. Unless you were standing by the window in the kitchen, which conceivably, you could be. But you weren’t at that moment. But perhaps I should have asked you if you were in the kitchen on that night. No, you said that you were looking at your notes. So, you were sitting on the couch. Just like you were tonight. But you weren’t talking to Sam. You think that has to do with anything? Maybe not. Why don’t you go back inside? I’ll try it again.”

  He starts down the steps, and I hold up my hands and move toward him.

  “It’s fine. You don’t need to do it again. I was sitting on the couch that first night. Why does that matter?” I ask.

  “Just thinking,” he says.

  He walks back up toward the front door. As soon as he gets onto the porch, he suddenly collapses, landing facedown, sprawled across the wood.

  The three of us gasp and run toward him. But before we can even get up the steps, Xavier lifts his head and turns to look at us.

  “What the hell?” Dean demands. “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking.” He gets to his feet to go inside.

  Chapter Seven

  I expect to walk into the cabin and find Xavier sitting back on the couch reading his book again. Instead, the living room is empty, and I hear the sound of the bathtub in the bathroom towards the back of the building.

  “Is he getting ready to take a bath?” I ask.

  “Yeah, he does that,” Dean says. “Must be something on his mind.”

  “Is there ever a time when there isn’t something on his mind?” Sam asks.

  “More than usual. When he’s thinking through something or something is really bothering him, he sits in a bath. Sometimes all day. A couple weeks ago, he spent so long floating around, he came out looking like a corpse.”

  I cringe. “That’s graphic.”

  Dean shrugs. “It is what it is.”

  I look down the hallway again. “So, he just sits in there? For however long he’s going to?”

  “Yep,” Dean sighs, dropping down onto
the couch. He yanks one of the blankets draped over the back, covers himself, and reaches for the remote sitting on the coffee table.

  “That doesn’t bother you?” I ask.

  “He does what he needs to do,” he shrugs. Dean turns away from the TV to look at me. “Emma, he isn’t like you. He isn’t like anybody I’ve ever known.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Then let him do what he needs to do.”

  “You’ve really gotten attached to Xavier, haven’t you?” I ask.

  Dean nods. “I have. It’s funny. I moved in with him and started hanging out with him because the court said I had to. I like him, and it felt as if we had hit it off, but I didn’t realize how much he needed me. Now, I feel as if I need him.”

  I sit down beside him. “Me, too.”

  We watch TV for the next couple of hours, but I’m not really paying attention to what’s on the screen. I’m trying to figure out what he could have been doing outside. The bathroom stays quiet, and finally I get up and go stand outside the door.

  “Xavier?” I call.

  “Floating,” he calls back.

  “Okay,” I say. “I just wanted to check and make sure you don’t need anything.”

  “Answers,” he says.

  “Answers?” I ask. “To what?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “My brain hasn’t asked me yet.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Do you want to talk through it?”

  “Too busy,” he says.

  “Floating?” I ask.

  “Listening to the water,” he says.

  “Okay. Well, if you need me, I’m right out here,” I say.

  I go back into the living room and notice Dean isn’t sitting on the couch anymore. A few seconds later, the smell of popcorn fills the air and I realize how hungry I am. He comes back in the room with a massive glass bowl piled with what looks like several microwaved bags’ worth of popcorn. Tipping a smaller bowl he holds in the other hand over the popcorn, he drizzles golden melted butter over the fluffy kernels.

  “Do you think this counts as a well-balanced dinner?” he asks.

  “Defend,” I say.

  “Well,” he says, “as a result of a very long conversation with Xavier, I am now the proud owner of the information that according to food anthropologists, the contemporary food we refer to as corn is not anywhere near the food that would have been grown by the natives hundreds of years ago. That particular food, known as maize, was far coarser and would not have been eaten the way we eat it.”

  “I applaud you for your ability to present information with the same level of ambiguity and confusion as he does, but I don’t think I see what that has to do with dinner,” I say, reaching into the bowl to fish out several of the puffs with my fingertips.

  “Hold on, I’m getting there,” Dean says.

  “Give him a minute, Emma,” Sam says, moving from the chair where he has been sitting next to the sofa and reaching around to grab some popcorn. “You let Xavier go all the way into questioning whether the sign in that corn maze was developed under the assumption of an alternate reality, where we were a living history museum being studied by pilgrims encountered by time travelers and being educated in the future of humanity, before you photoshopped a new version on your phone and made him use that as the instructions to get out.” He tosses some of the popcorn into his mouth. “Through the exit we could clearly see.”

  I shake my head. “I swear, people should be required to have basic spelling skills before they paint anything onto a sign being used in a puzzle. It would save so much time and hassle.”

  Sam shrugs. “Well, to be honest, it would probably really only save time and hassle for us.”

  “That’s true,” I admit.

  “Anyway,” Dean says. “In the same conversation I learned that modern nutritionists studying the food we know as corn have widely and extensively debated what food group to consider it, waffling between considering it a grain and a vegetable. In recent years it has even been thought of as a fruit because of its unique seed structure.”

  “Unique seed structure?” Sam asks.

  “All the individual little pieces attached to the cob.”

  “Oh, like a raspberry,” Sam says.

  “Same thing I said. And much like me, you would be wrong. A raspberry is an aggregate. Lots of little fruits attached together.”

  “So, what is it?” I ask. “What was the final verdict?”

  “It’s all of them. And butter is a dairy, making it a golden, delicious liquid protein source,” he says. “Balanced dinner.”

  “Alright,” I say with a firm nod. “I accept.”

  Xavier appears at the end of the hallway, wet hair across his forehead and a towel wrapped around him like a fuzzy blue strapless cocktail dress. He stares down at his hands in front of him.

  “I look like a corpse.”

  Dean throws his hand out toward Xavier and shoots me a look.

  Hours later, I wake up stretched across the couch with one of the blankets draped over me. The lamp positioned on the bookshelf behind me is on, casting some light into the room, but the rest is dark. Sam and Dean aren’t here. I must have fallen asleep at some point, and rather than waking me up, Sam just covered me up and let me rest.

  It was a sweet gesture, but I don’t want to be alone. I sit up and start to stand when I notice I’m not.

  “Xavier,” I say.

  He looks at me from the chair where he’s sitting in the dark, staring ahead of him. “Hi, Emma.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Sitting,” he says.

  “I can see that. Why are you sitting in the dark not doing anything?”

  “I am doing something,” he says.

  I draw in a breath and comb my hair back away from my face with my fingers. “Right. Sitting. You just told me that.”

  “No. I mean I’m thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “The window.”

  He still hasn’t looked at me.

  “Xavier, what’s bothering you so much about that window?” I ask.

  “I don’t like uncovered windows. You see too much,” he says.

  “You mean from the outside?”

  “From the inside. It turns a house into a cage.” His head tilts to the side. “How did Elliot get to the porch?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, curling my legs up again and cuddling up against the chill in the room. “He walked up onto it. He was already shot by the time he got here.”

  “But you didn’t see him go by the window,” he says.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Or anyone else?” I shake my head, and he lets out a sigh. “I don’t know what that means. You didn’t see him. You didn’t see anyone. Where were they?”

  “On the other side of the cabin, I guess. He parked his car and called his contacts to come get it if they didn’t hear from him,” I say. “He already knew he was in danger and might not get out of it alive. He hid his dog tags in the wall of the hotel.”

  “You didn’t hear a car? Or a shot?” he asks.

  “No. Why?”

  He pauses for a long time. “I don’t know.” Another pause. “What time is it, Emma?”

  I reach over to the coffee table for my phone. “Three.”

  “What time does the sun come up?”

  “Around six-thirty, I guess.”

  He nods and stands, heading toward the hallway. Just as he gets to the entrance, he turns back to me. “When you can see the moon in the sky during the day, do you think it’s telling the sun the secrets of what it saw?”

  “I don’t know, Xavier. Maybe,” I say, leaning my head back against the couch.

  He gives a slight nod. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Chapter Eight

  Seventeen years ago…

  It was supposed to be just that one time. Just one indulgence, and that was it.

  But he couldn’t resist anymore. Not after that firs
t moment he saw her. He couldn’t keep himself away, couldn’t fight the irresistible draw that brought them to that moment. As soon as he saw her that first time, he knew there was nothing he could do to stop himself.

  Not that he really wanted to.

  He knew he shouldn’t do it. He knew every thought, every breath, every movement, every touch, every last moment weren’t right. No one needed to tell him that. No one needed to lecture him or get through to him.

  He knew. It wasn’t a question or hesitation. He simply didn’t care that it was wrong. It was what he wanted. What he needed. But it was only supposed to be that one time.

  He wasn’t going to let himself fall into that deep well of fantasy and fulfillment any more than that. Once was a taste, a dip that washed over him and quelled the endless gnawing need. Another time and he might drown.

  But no matter how much he told himself that, no matter how many times he promised it, the need rose up again.

  Only this time, it was more than just the urge. It wasn’t just the fantasy. He had experienced it now. It wasn’t thought or imagination. It wasn’t just a feverish dream that left him lying awake. That wasn’t enough to make it irresistible.

  It was the reaction of the people around him. Before he gave in the first time, he wondered what it would be like to walk out of that room and back into the reality of his regular life. To step out of the pages of a fantasy and back into his neatly organized and structured datebook.

  How would people look at him? Would they be able to tell?

  As soon as it was done, would there be a change that came over him, letting anyone who came close to him sense the shift?

  And afterwards, he watched. He waited for the reaction and gauged everyone around him. He watched how people looked at him, some with hope, others with something close to suspicion. There were moments, singular seconds that hung, frozen in the flow of a day, when he thought for sure somebody knew. That they heard something or saw something. That he slipped and wasn’t holding it all in as well as he thought he was.

  But those passed. Everyone knew something had changed with her. There was no question in their minds about that. They just didn’t know what it was. There were so many questions, but none of them swirled over to him, and somehow that just made the hunger stronger.