Dear Santa

by Alice Orr

  Her lips moved. Vic couldn’t understand her murmur.

  He leaned closer. “What did you say?” he asked.

  This time, when she spoke, he could make out the words but couldn’t believe what he heard.

  “Take me to bed,” she whispered.

  Her voice was dreamy, and her face remained soft with slumber. Her eyes didn’t open, and her lips had barely moved. Surely she was talking in her sleep, maybe referring to an almost subconscious desire to rest somewhere more comfortable than a rocking chair. Nonetheless, her words seared Vic’s nerves all the way to the white-hot center of himself that had lain all but dormant for quite some time. In fact, at the moment, he wouldn’t have been able to remember when he was last stirred so powerfully if his life depended on it. All he knew was that taking her to bed was exactly what he longed to do.

  Vic bent down and slipped his arms beneath Katherine’s body, one arm under the crook of her knees, the other across her back just below her shoulders. He lifted her out of the chair with the afghan still tucked around her. She was as light as he’d expected her to be. The scent of her hair and skin, heightened by the warmth of the fire, filled his head with such sweetness that for a moment he thought he would have to sit down himself until the intensity of that first wave of fragrance had passed.

  “Get a grip on yourself,” Vic told himself forcefully.

  He stiffened his spine along with his resolve and concentrated on taking even, gradual steps toward the front of the house. With what was left of his sensible mind, he figured he’d carry Katherine up the front stairs. This way, he could avoid passing Sprite’s room and maybe waking her. He didn’t like to think that he had ulterior motives for not wanting a conscious child in the vicinity. Still, he was a man, and the most male parts of him were very aware of that right now.

  His bedroom was the only other one on this floor. Vic carried Katherine through the doorway he’d ripped off and replaced again with his own hands. This was his place, and he’d imagined more than once what it would be like to bring a woman here who was equally his. That wasn’t the case now, and he knew it. He had no claims on Katherine Fairchild. She was only here because she’d been scared out of her wits by what she found in her apartment.

  The memory of that ruthless vandalism and the heartbreak over it he’d seen in Katherine’s eyes brought Vic at least partway back to himself and what was really going on here tonight. He carried Katherine to the bed and put her down there gently, just as he’d done with Sprite in the room down the hall at the other side of the master bathroom. He pulled his arms free from beneath Katherine’s body and straightened up to reach for the extra blanket folded across the foot of the bed. He draped the blanket over Katherine and was tucking the satin-trimmed edge under her chin when she took him by surprise yet again, as she’d done downstairs in the kitchen.

  Now, her arms were suddenly around his neck, disengaged from the blanket and the afghan before his disbelieving mind could grasp what was happening. She pulled him toward her, and it never occurred to him to resist. She lifted her face toward his with her eyes still closed. Their mouths found each other instinctively, even in the dim light.

  Her lips were soft and warm and still gently parted, as they had been in sleep downstairs by the stove. Was she sleeping now? Vic couldn’t think clearly enough to figure that out, and he didn’t really care. He wrapped his arms around the bundle of her, blankets and all, and lowered himself over her. She clung to him, and they pressed as closely together as the layers of wool between them would allow.

  He could taste her lips and feel them, full and willing, beneath his, but he hesitated. He didn’t crush her mouth as his most basic urges were commanding him to do. He didn’t thrust his tongue between her lips though he ached to take possession of first her mouth then all of her. Something held him back, like a No Trespassing sign or an invisible bar at the door. Then, she parted her lips and tightened her arms around his neck.

  Vic’s senses received her message even before his mind could register its meaning. He groaned deep in his throat and let his tongue be welcomed by hers. They tasted each other and breathed each other in. Her hunger was as great as his. He could feel it. He wanted to cry out with a bellow from the bottom of his lungs. Instead, he covered Katherine’s mouth ever more devouringly with his and marvelled at how she responded with an eagerness as primal as his own. She was definitely awake now.

  Vic tore at the tangle of blanket and afghan between them. He felt her hand grappling as well, helping him clear away the barriers separating them from each other. The blanket fell to the floor, but the afghan was more difficult to unwind from her body. Still, he had just begun to allow himself the fantasy of her silken skin beneath his fingers when a scream split the night and sliced through their passion with as brutal a cut as any cleaver could have made.

  KATHERINE RUSHED down the hall behind Vic. The aura of what had just happened between them back there on the bed clung to her as tenaciously as the afghan, which had trailed with her all the way to the door till she kicked it aside before dashing into the hall. She pushed away the image of herself in Vic’s arms as well. She’d have to deal with that later. Sprite was screaming. For the moment, nothing else could matter more than getting to her side. Katherine squeezed past Vic through the doorway at the end of the hall. The room was suddenly flooded with light. Vic had flipped the wall switch. Sprite’s scream rose to a thin, high shriek in response to the startling brightness.

  “Turn that off,” Katherine snapped.

  She’d have to apologize for her tone later on. The light dimmed again, but Sprite’s screams didn’t diminish either in pitch or intensity. Katherine had reached the bedside, but she didn’t take hold of Sprite right away. Instead, she began making soft sounds of comfort and reassurance.

  “We’re here, Sprite. Everything will be all right now.”

  Katherine repeated variations on that theme in a cooing monotone she hoped wouldn’t surprise or frighten the obviously terrified little girl. She understood that the words were less important than the calming tone in which they were spoken. She sat down slowly and carefully on the edge of the bed. Sprite was lying in a tumble of the same quilt she’d been covered by downstairs. Her face was shadowed in the dimly lit room. She sucked in gasps of air between screams as her small hands flailed in front of her face. Katherine made the first physical contact by touching those hands gently. She continued her murmur of reassurance and hushing sounds.

  Sprite kept on flailing but just enough less vehemently for Katherine to detect the change. She let her own hands move with Sprite’s while, at the same time, encouraging them toward quiet. The child’s screams had begun to subside. Katherine thought about turning on the bedside lamp but decided against it. Any sudden change wouldn’t be wise just yet. Meanwhile, Sprite’s screaming had started to shape itself into words. Katherine strained to understand, but the child was still too tightly in the grip of hysteria to do anything other than gasp out incomprehensible syllables. Katherine continued her gentle monologue a few moments longer before pressing for more.

  “Try to take a deep breath, Sprite,” she said, just above a whisper. “Breathe with me. Then we’ll talk.”

  Katherine took slow, deliberate, exaggerated breaths and moved one hand to Sprite’s back and stroked up and down there. Katherine kept those strokes even and circling in a hypnotic rhythm. Sprite responded slowly, but her sobs were quieter now. They grew more so by the minute under Katherine’s patient ministrations. At last she thought it might be all right to attempt a more complicated communication.

  “You can tell me whatever you want to,” she said.

  Sprite sniffled and shuddered. Her large eyes were wide open, catching the faint glimmer of light from the hallway. She said something but shoved her thumb into her mouth at the same time so the words were lost. Katherine took hold of Sprite’s hand and eased it away from her mouth.

  “I couldn’t understand you,” Katherine said. “Could you pl
ease tell me that again?”

  The shadow deepened across Sprite’s face so her eyes were no longer visible. Katherine realized that Vic had stepped closer, into the path of light from the door. He was probably trying to hear what Sprite had to say. Katherine thought about asking him to back off in case the child might be intimidated by his size. She would have done just that if Sprite hadn’t breathed a small sigh right then and started to talk.

  “My brother,” she said.

  “What about Coyote?” Katherine asked, being very careful not to let her eagerness to know the answer creep into her soothing voice.

  “He’s up on his roof,” Sprite said. As her gasping slowed, her words took on a plaintive, pleading tone.

  “He’s on a roof?” Katherine encouraged. “What’s he doing there?”

  Sprite shuddered. “He’s freezed into a snowman. I have to help him get down.”

  She collapsed against Katherine and began to sob. Katherine embraced the little girl’s thin shoulders. They swayed together in a rocking motion. Katherine could feel Vic hovering nearby. She could almost hear the questions he must be dying to ask, and Vic wasn’t known to be a patient man. However, he would have to be patient now, for as long as it took this precious, frightened child to feel safe enough to speak again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vic still had the gun tucked in the back of his waistband. Ordinarily, he would have hated walking heavy, like the tough kids at the center called it, but not tonight. Tonight the pressure of metal against the small of his back felt as if he’d brought a friend along. Vic was grateful for the presence of that friend, because this wasn’t a night to be out on your own, even for him, especially not where he was going.

  The snow danced and blew, fine snow that silted into his face like wet sand and made him blink his eyes to see. He’d parked the Trans Am near Clinton Avenue at what he hoped would be an inconspicuous end of the block. This weather would probably keep the car heisters at bay, and he did have a steering-wheel bar lock and a guard on the column. Still, it would be just his luck to end up on the victim list of the one really dedicated auto thief in the neighborhood.

  He was back on Tooley Pennebaker’s street again, across from her building where Sprite’s terrified revelations had sent him. She claimed that her brother, Coyote, had a hiding place on the roof of one of the buildings on the other side of the street from Tooley’s. Sprite had described where it was, but in a blizzard at night with only streetlamp light to go by, Vic wasn’t exactly sure which building was which.

  One positive thing could be said about this weather. It made Ten Broeck Street, this block anyway, look better than its usual shabby self. The pale snow brushed everything clean, like a cityscape Christmas card, with pools of soft light here and there from the pole lamps that were still in working order. The blowing snow played other tricks on the eyes, too, creating the illusion of dark, moving shapes, almost visible in the whirling cloud of flakes. He skirted around those shapes more than once before telling himself they were about as real as the phantoms in Sprite’s nightmares.

  That thought didn’t play well with his more sensible side. Even as he walked toward the alley of what he figured had to be the right building, Vic considered exactly what he was doing. He’d come out here to wander through what was basically a very dangerous part of town, even for him, in the middle of a snowstorm. He’d done that on the strength of the word of a sleepy little girl who suffered from night terrors. This could be the wildest of all wildgoose chases, and Vic had begun to feel like the goose.

  Sprite said Coyote told her he got into the building through an unlocked window off the alleyway. Front doors would be kept bolted tight at night in this neighborhood if anybody in the building had any sense. A kid who’d clocked as many hours of street time as Coyote would know that. He probably managed to sneak in that front way once during the daytime then rigged the basement window so nobody could tell it was no longer locked. Vic understood about such tactics. He’d used them more than once himself when he was younger. He hadn’t been as young as Coyote then, but still too much of a kid to be on his own.

  One of the things Vic had learned back in those days was to keep his behind out of alleyways after sundown. He peered down this one now. All he could see was a dark tunnel between two dark buildings. Every breath of city smarts Vic had in him said he shouldn’t go in there. But—what if Sprite knew what she was talking about? What if Coyote was huddled up on top of one of these roofs? He could be frozen by now, even in the makeshift shelter she seemed to think he’d put up for himself. Vic pulled the yellow, hard-rubber flashlight from his jacket pocket and stepped into the alley.

  The flashlight was even less use than he’d expected, hitting the snow that fell from the space of sky between the buildings and turning it to gray fog. He aimed the beam at the ground ahead of him in the hope he would be lucky enough to pick out any obstacles before he tripped over them. He switched the light toward the building wall on his right every now and then to check the location of the windows. He tried each one as he came to it, rattling the frame and checking the ledge for shims Coyote might have stuck in to keep the bottom of the window ajar.

  Vic kept an eye on the alleyway in both directions, too. He didn’t care to be snuck up on, and this flashlight he was holding made him more visible than he was comfortable with. His rattling had produced no movement at all from the first three windows. He was beginning to think his doubts about Sprite’s claims were right. Why would a boy Coyote’s age tell his kid sister about his secret hiding place, anyway? This was a jerk’s journey Vic was on, and he knew it. He flicked off the flashlight. He’d pretty much decided to get out of here before trouble found him. He gave the next to the last window a halfhearted shove all the same, and nearly fell over when it angled inward a few inches. A harder push and the opening was wide enough for a skinny kid to get through. Vic wasn’t quite so neat a fit. He had to crouch down and go in feetfirst, which put him in a much more vulnerable position than he liked. He had to ease his shoulders through one at a time. He told himself that when he left this place he was going out the front door.

  A short drop and he was on the basement floor with the flashlight snapped instantly on and beaming around into every nook and cranny among the boxes and other odd stuff that gets left in the cellar of an apartment building. Vic was fully aware that somebody besides Sprite could know about the open window and be using this place to flop in. Folks that desperate tended not to like being stumbled upon and generally carried some kind of weapon to use against intruders. Vic reached behind him for the handle of his own weapon as the light beam made its sweep. Fortunately, he didn’t see anybody. He was alone down here.

  He exhaled harshly. He didn’t mind admitting that this scene had his nerves on the edge for sure. The light found the exit door, and he hurried toward it. He was going to get this over with and be on his way back home as fast as he could manage it. The thought of home reminded him of Katherine waiting there, and little Sprite with her eyes huge and round from fear for her brother. Vic pushed the exit door open onto the stairwell from the basement. Nothing on the stairs but a couple of crumpled candy wrappers. This was the kind of private corner kids sought out as an escape from apartments crowded with family, but there was nobody here now. Vic pressed on. The image in his head of Sprite’s eyes gave him no other choice.

  He climbed all five flights of stairs from the basement to the top floor without incident. If anybody in any of the apartments along the way heard him passing or saw the flicker of his flashlight in the dim halls, they gave no sign. A stealthy presence outside the door late at night in a neighborhood like this one wasn’t likely to invite open curiosity. More often than not, anyone who knew Vic was out here would keep quiet till he passed by, then slip another chain or bolt or police lock into place with a prayer that, like the dark angel, he’d just keep on moving. Nobody’d call the cops, either. That kind of thing could bring reprisals, and all most people in this neighborhood
wanted was to be left alone.

  Vic was wishing for the same thing, and wasn’t disappointed all the way up those five flights of stairs and through the heavy fire door at the top of the additional flight to the roof. He found a brick in the corner just inside that door and propped it open. He figured somebody had left the brick for just that purpose. This could be Coyote’s secret place after all. He could be up here right now. Vic hurried out onto the roof, almost forgetting to flash the light in front of him before he did.

  The cold was much more biting up here than it had been at ground level. The wind was stronger, too, whipping wet snow into his eyes and down his collar. The flashlight beam was all but useless against this wall of snow. Vic kept it trained downward anyway. The last thing he needed was to come upon the edge of the roof by surprise. The walls atop these buildings tended to be short enough to fall over, especially for a guy his height on a night like this.

  Vic kept as close as he could to what he guessed was the center of the roof, but he knew how easy it could be to get disoriented and miscalculate his location under these conditions. He swept the light beam back and forth across what he could make out of the roof floor, which wasn’t much. He might have missed the white-covered topple of cardboard slabs altogether if his boot hadn’t hit the slick surface of one of them beneath the snow and almost sent him sprawling. He trained the light more closely on the mound of cardboard pieces. It was high enough for someone to be hiding under, especially a pint-sized kid.

  “Coyote, are you in there?” Vic called out.

  The sound of his voice was carried away so quickly by the wind that he barely heard his own words. He dropped to one knee and began scraping snow away, pulling lengths of cardboard clear and tossing them aside. All the while he searched, he was praying silently. Much as he wanted to find Coyote, he didn’t care to have that discovery happen here and now. This rooftop was way too cold for a kid in a flimsy jacket, even under all this cardboard. Vic flashed the light over each layer as he uncovered it, all the way down to the floor of the roof, which had been kept surprisingly dry by the heap of dismantled cartons on top of it.