Christmas Delivery

by Patricia Rosemoor

“Nothing. I, uh, fought him off.”

  “If nothing was stolen…”

  Lexie seethed. He didn’t want to write up the report. As usual, Chief Hammer was trying to get out of doing any work.

  “What if I was hurt?”

  “Are you?”

  “Not really.” Though the side of her face was still a bit sore where the attacker had hit her.

  “You know, Lexie, it was probably some out-of-towner just looking for money during the Christmas season. You should have given up your pocketbook and he would have fled.”

  Yeah, that would have made things easier for everyone. Lexie clenched and unclenched her jaw. “He didn’t want my bag. He had me on the ground and his hands were all over me and—”

  Hammer raised his hand for her to stop. “Draper!” he yelled. “I need you to take a report.”

  The police chief really was adept at avoiding work.

  A young officer named Sam Draper appeared at the door and waved her out of the room and over to a desk where he took her report. He hemmed and hawed to himself a bit before saying, “If this guy was interested in robbing you, I don’t get why he didn’t just take your shoulder bag.”

  “You and me both.” She didn’t want to say she’d been rescued. She didn’t want anyone to know that Simon was alive any more than he did.

  “You say he had you on the ground and was feeling your, um, pockets?”

  “Right.”

  “Any idea of what your attacker could have been looking for?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Not until that moment. Suddenly she thought of the key Marie had given her. The key she’d slipped into her back pocket. She stopped herself from feeling for it to make sure it was still there. She wiggled her butt against the back of the chair and felt something hard that must be the key. Thinking caution would serve her well at this point, she said, “No idea at all.”

  Draper said, “I really don’t know that we’ll be able to get this guy, being that he was wearing a mask and all. Are you sure you can’t identify something about him? Height? Body type? Something about his hands?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I was so freaked…it…it seemed like a nightmare.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll follow you home and drive around your place, give the area a good look-see to make sure the guy’s gone.”

  Lexie nodded. “Thanks, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Only when she rose and turned to go did Lexie realize that Chief Hammer was leaning against his office doorjamb. He’d been watching her the whole time, but she had no clue what he was thinking. His face was expressionless.

  Draper followed her home in the police vehicle, an SUV, then pulled up next to her and rolled down his window. “Stay put while I circle the area, make sure it’s safe.”

  “Will do.”

  She followed Draper’s progress with her gaze until his vehicle disappeared behind a stand of trees. Her thoughts wandered, going from the key and what her attacker might want from it to Simon.

  Where had he been all these years? Why had he left in the first place? He’d said he had no choice. How was that possible? Lexie began regretting sending him away without getting answers to her many questions.

  Startled from her thoughts as the police vehicle pulled up next to her again, she lowered her window. Moonlight silvered Draper’s half-regretful expression.

  “No one around,” he said. “Wish I coulda got the guy for you, but at least you’re safe. House looks locked up tight, too. I can check inside if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lexie rolled up her window and grabbed her shoulder bag, then slid out of her SUV. Moving to the entrance, grateful that Draper was watching her back, she unlocked the door, then, pulse quickening, she let him in first and quickly followed. Minutes passed, seeming like forever. He came out of the kitchen, gave her a thumbs-up and headed upstairs. Lexie breathed normally only when he came back down.

  “All clear.”

  “I really appreciate your looking out for me.”

  He gave her a crooked smile and tipped his hat. “My job.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  Closing the door after him, Lexie would like to think this was the end of it, that her attacker wouldn’t be back, but she wasn’t so certain that was true. She went around the house, closing the blinds.

  At least Katie was with her parents and sister for a few nights and didn’t have to be afraid. Her parents…She would have to call them. Sam Draper’s wife was one of the town gossips. Shelley Zachary, Brandon’s housekeeper, being the other. Lexie was sure that everyone would know what had happened by morning.

  She couldn’t let her parents hear it from someone else, so she would have to call them and tell them what happened, leaving Simon out of the story. Though she hated lying, Lexie couldn’t tell anyone Simon was back. Not yet, anyway.

  Before making the call, she needed to put the key someplace safe until she could figure out why it was so important. But where? She looked around the room, her eyes lighting on the staircase. There was a hollow in the newel. She and Katie had used it to hide messages to each other ever since Katie learned to write. No one else knew about their special hiding place. Since Katie wasn’t going to be home for a couple of days, the key would be safe there.

  Taking the key from her back pocket, she unscrewed the newel.

  “Why are you so special someone would attack me to get hold of you?” she murmured, turning the key in her fingers.

  No answer came to her. How would she ever figure it out?

  Setting it in the hiding place, Lexie went to the phone to make that call to her parents.

  Chapter Five

  Not wanting his presence known until he figured out the mystery of his past and a way to avenge the horror that had been done to him, Simon had camped out where he and Lexie used to go to be alone—a fishing shack in a stand of trees about a hundred yards from the water. To get there, he had to pass the swampy area that everyone in town always avoided—which had just been revealed as a mass grave.

  On the way to the shack now, Simon slowed his truck when he neared the Duck Blind, which his father owned, at the west end of town, where the commercial buildings trailed off. Rufus was just coming out of the bar-restaurant. His salt-and-pepper hair had thinned a bit as had his still-muscular body. Even from a distance, Simon could see the short, scraggly beard he’d always had. To Simon’s surprise, his father didn’t seem to be drunk. His hand was steady as he locked the door and he walked a straight line heading for the only car left in the small lot to one side of the building.As far as Simon could tell, his old man was stone-cold sober.

  Warmth flooded through him, and he realized that his father’s apparent sobriety made him happy. There had been times when he’d felt his father really had loved him, though mostly that had been before his mother died and Rufus hadn’t been drinking so heavily. Afterward, his father had immersed himself in booze.

  Thinking about the old man had always plunged Simon in a dark mood. Now perhaps he would have reason to put those bad memories behind him. He only wished his father could have sobered up when he was still around. If he had, things would have gone very differently in Simon’s life.

  A thought that made him stay in the truck.

  He wanted to catch up with his father, but he wasn’t ready to do so just yet. Their rocky relationship was still too clear in his mind, especially the argument that had made Simon decide to run away. He’d tried to talk his father into cutting back on the drinking. He’d even poured half a bottle of whiskey down the drain. The old man had responded with his fists and by saying that Simon was no son of his.

  That had broken Simon’s heart.

  The wound had never healed, and yet Simon watched from where he’d stopped near the tree line until his father drove off.

  Then he went on his way, driving as far as he dared. He’d found a place to hide his truck in a stand of pine trees before reaching th
e swampy area where, as the media had reported, dozens of bodies had been found, some from deaths a century ago; many others more recent.

  Who had done this to them? The same man responsible for his fate? He’d spent years dreaming about using the skills he was learning on the man. In his mind, he’d punished the bastard for what he’d done in every way possible.

  But if the same man was responsible for this atrocity…

  Tentacles of fog wove throughout the area, but Simon could still see the crime scene tape and several pieces of heavy equipment that had been left alongside the excavation. Usually there was a cop car somewhere around—the reason he didn’t want to take his truck all the way to the fishing camp, lest he be spotted. But tonight the police seemed to be elsewhere.

  Simon wondered how many more bodies would be found.

  The mass grave reminded him of several incidents in the war-torn areas he’d fought in. There had been no time for funerals and neat graves with headstones commemorating the lives of the dead. They’d been piled one on top of the other, taking away the last of their dignity.

  But these dead hadn’t been part of a war. From what he understood, these poor souls had been tricked into coming to this country, thinking they would get a better life, but had ended up as spare parts for people who could afford to skip the donor lists.

  So much evil in this world. Everywhere. But this was unfathomable.

  Simon couldn’t make his legs carry him past the mass grave, not without stopping and paying the victims his respect. He bowed his head and said a silent prayer for their souls.

  And then he said one for his own.

  He, too, had done unforgivable things—not out of choice, but out of necessity—and he was ready to do more. Those responsible for the nightmare he’d survived needed to be dealt with, and Simon didn’t believe that justice would be done unless he made sure of it himself. And he was determined that justice would be done.

  A chill suddenly swept over him, as if he were standing in a pocket of cold air.

  When Simon raised his head and opened his eyes, he saw a figure materializing in the fog. In the stand of pine to the east of the mass grave, a man was staring at him. No, not a man. A teenager with a mop of pale hair over hollow eyes and wearing a light leather jacket and ripped jeans.

  Simon’s pulse jagged and, for a moment, he forgot to breathe.

  The figure was so familiar. Simon would swear this was that kid he’d seen shot thirteen years ago!

  It couldn’t be.

  “Hey!” Simon shouted, forgetting he was trying to stay undercover. “Who are you?”

  The ghostly figure gestured to Simon as if asking him to follow before moving off in a swirl of fog. Unable to help himself, Simon complied and followed the kid on a path nearly straight back to his truck and realized this wasn’t far from where he’d been taken while on his way to get Lexie that night so long ago. Pockets of icy air rippled along his skin. No matter how hard he tried, how fast he ran, Simon couldn’t catch up to the wraith.

  Simon absolutely believed that the souls of the departed haunted people. He’d lived with one—the man he’d killed in self-defense—for months in Somalia. Only when he had reconciled his own actions had the dead man’s spirit crossed over. Over the years he’d been shadowed by other ghosts, but he’d learned to steel himself against them and they’d eventually left him alone.

  Left him empty and hard…damaged goods…without a soul of his own.

  So why was he being haunted now? He hadn’t been responsible for the kid’s death.

  What did this lost soul want from him?

  Once in his truck, he lost the apparition, had to go slow on the road, searching the land from the road to the water as he drove. He spotted the ghostly figure off and on in between the trees all the way to the edge of town, where he ditched the truck behind a warehouse and followed on foot.

  The sidewalks were nearly clear of pedestrians, the streets of vehicles. No one seemed to notice the mist-shrouded kid. Down the block, a stray dog was going about his business, but stopped when the kid drew near. It didn’t make a sound, but it froze and its ruff went up and then it warily backed off.

  Simon’s ruff went up, too.

  What the hell?

  The kid walked along a red brick fence that surrounded the gray stone church at the center of town, Jenkins Cove Chapel. Suddenly, he disappeared through an opening.

  Heart pounding, Simon ran faster so as not to lose him.

  The fog was lighter here, the chill greater, and once past the fence’s wooden gate, which had been left open, Simon realized where he was.

  The cemetery.

  Why had the kid brought him here?

  Following the curving redbrick path lined by boxwood on both sides, Simon kept track of the kid’s mop of pale hair, which appeared on the other side of the hedge, then lost him altogether. When he came to the open area dotted with gravestones and markers, Simon only half hoped he would actually find him again. He gazed around, past a couple of large willow oaks and a magnolia tree in the center of the graveyard, then spotted the kid at a far gravesite, touching the stone that identified its occupant.

  Again, the kid looked up at him with hollow eyes and gestured that he should come.

  Reluctantly, Simon did. Not wanting to cross anyone’s grave—he’d had enough of that in his former life—he stayed on the brick path, keeping his gaze locked on the figure still summoning him.

  One minute the fog seemed to circle the kid, the next he seemed to fade away into the mists.

  “Wait! Don’t go!”

  But the demand came too late. The kid was already gone. And Simon was moving to the headstone he’d touched, had obviously wanted Simon to see.

  A deep, arctic cold suddenly surrounded Simon and then the breath was knocked out of him as he stopped in the spot where the kid had disappeared. Looking down, Simon understood why Lexie believed he was dead and buried. The headstone bore his name and the dates of his birth and of his supposed death on Christmas Eve thirteen years before.

  Not a man who easily believed in what he couldn’t see, Simon had no doubts about who had led him here. Of who was buried in his grave. He was certain the kid he’d seen shot had taken his place.

  Thirteen years ago and his ghost still wandered, unable to rest, Simon thought.

  How many ghosts inhabited this area?

  How many souls were denied eternal rest?

  He reached out to touch the headstone as if he could communicate more easily with the dead. The stone was icy, but if he’d really thought he could bring back the kid’s ghost or otherwise resurrect him, he would have been sorely disappointed. Nothing happened. No surprise.

  Of one thing he was certain. The kid had been buried in his stead. How had they pulled that one off? He and the kid looked nothing alike. A closed coffin, then? How had he supposedly died so that no one would have raised the alarm? Who had been in on his supposed death?

  More questions that needed answering.

  Another reason for him to stay undercover awhile—to find the answers.

  Did ghosts seek retribution? he wondered.

  Considering the evil that had stalked the town unchecked, probably not.

  But now the town had to deal with him.

  Heart heavy, Simon headed for his truck and a short while later drove past the mass grave. Still no cop, so he drove all the way to the fishing shack and did the best he could to hide the vehicle on the camp’s far side.

  Had he really returned to Jenkins Cove to seek revenge for what had happened to him? Simon did want to identify the one responsible and learn the reason behind it, did want that person brought to justice, but somehow he wasn’t as energized by the thought as he had been when the news about the mass grave had hit the media.

  Then he’d convinced himself that’s why he needed to come back—to expose everything associated with his own abduction—but the doctor responsible for harvesting organs was dead and his business ended, so what
could he really accomplish? No doubt many secrets had died with the doctor, including ones that had to do with him.

  Drake Enterprises had been implicated in the modern-day slave trade, but the authorities had barely begun their investigation. According to a newspaper article, the Drake connection didn’t seem to hold water. There simply was no evidence, just the word of a man who was not only dead, but who had been crazed with grief at the loss of his wife, another victim.

  Simon still wanted answers, certainly, and he wasn’t above exacting retribution, as well.

  But more than either, he wanted Lexie Thornton.

  After seeing her, Simon faced the truth: He’d been lying to himself all along.

  Even though he knew she wouldn’t want him once she learned the truth about how he’d spent the last thirteen years, Simon admitted he’d come back to Jenkins Cove so that he could reclaim the woman he loved.

  As he approached the shack, a crack like a twig breaking underfoot froze Simon to the spot. Someone was there, on the other side of the camp. The cop who should have been at the mass grave?

  Silently backing up, Simon was about to step behind a tree when he spotted the silhouette of the intruder.

  A silhouette he would know anywhere.

  What the hell was Lexie doing out here?

  AGITATED BY THE ATTEMPTED robbery and even more so by knowing that Simon wasn’t really dead, Lexie hadn’t been able to settle down for the night. She might not be able to do anything about the assault, but she sure as hell could do something about Simon. She could get the truth out of him. Then just maybe she would tell him about his daughter. Above all, she had to think of Katie. She no longer even knew this man who was her daughter’s father, but she had to give him a chance to explain himself.

  With that in mind, she’d left the house yet again and had driven to the spot where Katie had been conceived. Somehow she’d known Simon would be here. The moment she saw him, her pulse picked up and her breath shortened.“What are you doing, Lexie, wandering around in the dark and after being attacked?”

  Not exactly the welcome she’d hoped for, but then why should she have expected him to be any friendlier than she had been when she’d thrown him out. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark and there was just enough moonlight to see his mouth set in a straight line.