Twilight Christmas: A Carolina Coast Novella (Carolina Coast Novels Book 3)

by Normandie Fischer

  It looked to Louis like God had really been busy this Christmas making good things happen all around. Yep, God seemed big enough for just about anything.

  Anything at all.

  Thank you for reading Twilight Christmas. If you enjoyed it, please consider posting a short review on Amazon—and do check out Normandie’s other books, especially her other Carolina Coast novels.

  BONUS READ follows immediately—simply click to turn the page and travel to Italy…

  Bonus Read: TWO FROM ISAAC’S HOUSE

  1 Rina

  A moment in time and the rabbit hole opened, tumbling Rina Lynne smack dab into the middle of her own personal wonderland. The voice in her head cried, “Too much, too soon.”

  She shushed it. This wasn’t too much, nor was it too soon. She’d been freed from the need to cower, and this—oh, yes, this—was her chance to soar, if only for a season.

  A train’s whistle ricocheted in the cavernous station, and voices shouted over the hiss of brakes, upping the tension as she compared her ticket to the sign above her head. Please let her not be on the wrong track about to board a train that would spit her out in Milan, Frankfurt, or Bucharest—instead of the Umbrian town of Perugia.

  Dragging her albatross of a suitcase down the platform, she muttered an under-the-breath word she’d been taught never to say. That luggage salesman had certainly seen this Morehead City girl coming. He’d flashed his oily smile and promised she could carry her world in one rolling, easy-to-handle bag. She should have exchanged it before flying 4600 miles to a country where she didn’t speak the language.

  A tall man—a very tall man—mounted the steep steps, wearing a backpack and carrying a duffle bag. He glanced down, a definite twinkle in his blue eyes, before he reached back, grasped the handle atop her gargantuan case, and hoisted it up with ease.

  “Thank you so much,” she said, adding a smile and a “Grazie.”

  He nodded. His “You’re welcome” sounded very American. Her smile lingered as he disappeared into the train and while she searched for a seat.

  She pictured the glint in those eyes. His height had made her five-foot-ten frame feel petite, and wasn’t that a novelty? Jason, at barely five-eleven, never wanted her to wear heels, but sometimes a girl needed fancy to feel feminine.

  What if…?

  Stop it. There would be no what-ifs.

  She wasn’t in Italy to find romance because, of course, she’d already found it with Jason. These next months were about seeing something of the world and making memories.

  A man seated next to the window of an otherwise empty compartment remained hidden behind his newspaper when she pushed her suitcase through the door. His legs, her legs, and the case took up all the available floor space, but she couldn’t heft the thing to the rack above. She drew a paperback from her purse and settled in, determined to ignore him—until his rustling paper recaptured her attention.

  He folded it and shifted his gaze to the window as the train accelerated out of town. His cropped black hair and caramel skin, the flat-tipped nose over a shortened upper lip, along with a well-trimmed black mustache made him look like a Mafia goon. And here she sat, alone with him in this small space, although safe, surely, with her suitcase between them and an open door to her right.

  When he turned in her direction, his eyes appeared as slits. She ducked her head, but not before she saw the ragged scar that sliced through one eyebrow.

  The train clackety-clacked north, its rhythm lulling her toward sleep, but she couldn’t doze off alone in a compartment with a man who looked like he’d slipped off the set of The Godfather. And, yet, would she be so fearful if he were handsome? Or if he were that American?

  Then, just as she was talking herself into compassion for him, he reached over his head to slide a magazine from the pocket of his duffel bag. That innocuous movement opened his jacket to reveal something tan and V-shaped hanging from his shoulder, a leather something with a black handle sticking out the top. She tried to look away, anyplace but at the gun, and shifted her attention to the corridor. When she stole a glance in his direction, the full-faced photograph of a bearded mullah stared back from the middle of exclamatory squiggles. So, not only a gunman, not only a B-grade-movie-type thug, but an Arab (or Iranian?) gunman, probably a terrorist, maybe one of those death-squad bullies. Al Qaeda? Hamas? ISIS?

  She concentrated on slowing breaths that would expose her fear. What if he wore one of those bomb things under his shirt? Terrorists hated Americans. They especially hated Jews. She was all of one, half of the other.

  Tan and gray towns flashed past the window. Some jumped out of green backgrounds as if plucked complete from a storybook, and others appeared sculpted into the stones. Olive trees patterned the slopes, their leaves glinting silver in the sunlight. And there beside the tracks was the stream-like Tiber, so different from Bogue Sound, the pre-ocean tidal area that separated the North Carolina mainland from the Outer Banks.

  Her thoughts fled to the waters of home, to the Sound and the islands fronting it, to her Sunfish and the peace that came when she tucked herself onboard and took off for hours at a time. Like a surfboard zipping over the waves on an ocean breeze, her little boat flew across the water, hampered neither by shoals nor tidal restraints on the way to and from Cape Lookout.

  Too bad Jason didn’t like to sail, but she’d be back out there someday, Jason or no, her one point of independence in a world that had offered too few chances to rebel.

  Before her father’s death, her life had been circumscribed and limited to trips to Atlantic Beach or sailing her little Sunfish. Death brings change, but how often does it recalibrate a lens to this extent? Uncovered secrets can dry tears faster than most anything else. Certainly faster than her father’s old slap-to-the-cheek method or his cold words, which had begun shortly after her mama’s death from cancer all those years ago.

  The Arab/Iranian gunman shifted position. He checked his watch, set the magazine on the seat opposite his, and stood. Negotiating past her suitcase and feet, he left the compartment and turned toward the front of the train.

  She’d move, find a toilet, go look for another seat. She tucked her book away and gathered her purse. No one would touch her big bag. Still, she whispered, “Stay,” as if it were a dog.

  The bathroom wasn’t very clean, but the door locked, and the toilet paper dispenser had real, if slightly scratchy, tissue. A papered seat made the accommodations infinitely superior to the hole in the floor she’d met at a non-upgraded-for-tourists trattoria yesterday. “Relax. Remember adventure.”

  Talking aloud to the walls did as much good as sticking out her tongue at the mirror and succeeded only in making her feel ridiculous. But ridiculous was a step up from terrified.

  A lot of people carried guns. Not any she knew, aside from the Morehead City police, but people did. Movies were full of men with shoulder holsters, and some were on the side of peaceful, law-abiding, non-interventionist, non-terrorist humanity. She just needed to relax and act naturally. Soon, she would get off the train, and the gunman and she would go in different directions. And she’d never have to see him again.

  She jumped when a thud sounded against the bathroom door. Someone was awfully eager—or in need. She called out, “Just a minute.” The next moment something slid down the door’s length. The red bar above the handle would tell whoever was in the corridor the toilet was occupied. Maybe if she stayed quiet, he, she, it would go away, go try some other restroom.

  The door handle jiggled. She called again, trying to remember the Italian words and came up with “Un momento.” After a long silence, a sharp slap echoed off the metal wall. She flinched back and held her breath. A whoosh, a rumbling, and clanging noises amplified. It sounded as if the outside door of the car had opened, the door for entrance and egress, supposedly shut except when the train was at full stop. Something raked along the floor, bumped, thumped, and a door banged shut. The outside noises stopped. And then—quiet. At least,
a relative quiet. The track’s rattle still echoed from the drain below the toilet.

  The effort to muffle breaths that wanted to whoosh through her lips forced her eyes closed. Someone might still be out there.

  At a loud knock, she nearly fell off the seat. Words in Italian, a child’s voice whined. She croaked out, “Sì. Coming,” then washed her hands and opened the door.

  A smiling woman waited with a small boy. Just an ordinary child with an ordinary need. Rina glanced in both directions before heading back to her suitcase and the safety of the known.

  The gunman was back, flipping through his magazine again. She caught her toe under the suitcase and fell forward, landing on the empty space beside him. “I’m sorry, so clumsy of me.”

  He whipped his gaze in her direction. “Anh.”

  Was that a word in whatever language he spoke or merely a grunt in answer to her apology? He didn’t look confused, so she assumed he understood English.

  She tried to smile as she recovered, but her upper lip caught on too-dry teeth. Out the window, the sun still shone, and little wisps of cloud still decorated the sky as the train lumbered toward its destination. She glanced at her watch but didn’t register the time as the gunman returned to his magazine. Nothing had happened. Everything was normal. The thump had meant nothing. Neither had the banging.

  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

  Maybe she’d dreamed it all. Maybe the man across from her had toppled out of one of Auntie Luze’s romance novels and was really an Arab sheik—no, an outlaw—who carried a ruby-encrusted dagger with which he planned to kidnap and hold her for ransom at his desert outpost. Before she could people the daydream with a hero, two women walked past the compartment. One, tall and red-haired, spoke over her shoulder to the second. “He wasn't in the club car?” Her voice carried the flavor of the South.

  The other woman’s accent was British. “No, and the train’s not that large, is it?”

  Two women wandering the corridor, chatting, and a man reading his magazine—each behaving normally. All was well.

  It was, as long as the scarred man didn’t follow her off the train. As long as she never had to see him or his gun again.

  2 Tony

  Tony Rasad flung the pillow off his head and blinked as the afternoon sun hit his grit-filled eyes. The trip had been grueling: a delayed flight out of Amman, the plane diverted to Athens because of mechanical issues, and then the train that had deposited him here in Perugia. He’d slept the night and half the day away, barely noticing his accommodations. Until now.

  The room was incredibly ugly, all purples and blues in a sort of fake splendor. A melancholy as heavy as the room’s plum-colored curtains settled, and he wanted it off him, it and the anger at being sucked into a useless operation by a few men who said he could help the cause of peace.

  Right. Sure. He was six-foot-four and wandering among midgets. How did the boys in Jerusalem imagine he’d pass unnoticed in Italy?

  He clamped his lips against a curse, but the fault was his. He’d let his cousin Zif and Zif’s friends at Israeli Headquarters talk him into this masquerade. He’d bought the tickets. He’d flown to Rome and taken the train to Perugia. No one had hijacked him.

  He’d damped his frustration last night with a few glasses of good red wine after the English-speaking barman had tried to dose him with a wretched brandy called Stock 84. One sip later, and he’d slid the snifter across the counter and asked for the best they had in Chiantis, and, no, he didn’t care about the cost. The wine had been as smooth as it was soporific.

  He climbed from the bed, padded over to the window, and pushed it open. The scent of fresh coffee wafted up from the terrace and, behind it, the perfume of some flower, oleander perhaps. Cups rattled. Muted conversation floated on air with just a hint of chill to it.

  His thoughts turned to the long-legged beauty from the train and her struggle to lift that ridiculous suitcase. He liked how tall she was. Tall could stare at his chin instead of his shirt buttons. And her accent spoke of the South, making him want to hear more. Her height and that dark wavy hair of hers—oh, right, and the gray-blue eyes and those lips—how could he not be curious?

  Curious also about what had brought her here. He’d seen her flag a taxi as he’d left the station in search of his own transportation. Was she playing tourist? Studying the language? Perugia wasn’t the sort of place to attract the traveler in search of adventure, not from what he’d read about it.

  So, questions to ask when, if, he encountered her again.

  If he dared.

  He shouldn’t dare. He should keep to his agenda and be done with it.

  But three months was a long time to go without any English conversation. Granted, he might finish in a week or two. Or four.

  He’d requested a three-month sabbatical from work to coincide with the length of the course, but it was an unpaid sabbatical. Good thing he had enough in his investment account to tide him over, because the stipend from Israel wouldn’t stretch to luxury. And Achmed, the creep, had given him squat.

  Except for those orders to find the leak in Achmed’s pet student group here in Perugia. A student group that had come under the scrutiny of Tony’s Israeli cousin because of Achmed’s interest in it. What had Zif said? “If the man sends you to Perugia, he must be using those boys as more than a recruiting arm for Abu Sadiq.”

  After a little digging, Zif had come back with information from Israeli intelligence sources. “Looks like Abu Sadiq has been using Perugia as a front or even a conduit for terrorist activities in other parts of Europe, including Switzerland and France, a sort of terrorist cell in the making. We’ve tracked Internet postings and hard-copy letters from Perugia. Now that Achmed’s given you an entrée into the group, you can provide eyes on the ground.”

  Tony wished he’d never heard of Achmed or the man’s own personal Palestinian terrorist group, Abu Sadiq. Even the name bothered Tony. Take the Arabic word abu, which meant father. That wasn’t so bad, but couple father with the name Sadiq, which meant any number of things in English, including truth and virtuous, and he thought he’d puke. The idea of killers puffing out their chest because they were sons of truth and virtue—or fathers of it, depending on how you looked at the name—sickened him.

  Why had he agreed to any of this? Playing double agent had felt wrong from the beginning. Of course it had, with “playing” the operative word. Playacting the terrorist sympathizer, playacting the Israeli informant. Well, no, he didn’t suppose he really played at the second. But the first?

  Of course, Achmed would have shot him on the spot if he’d said, “Lá shukran, no thank you, not interested.”

  No, his problem stemmed from having agreed to infiltrate Abu Sadiq on even the most casual basis. Now everyone had claws in him.

  His stomach growled, reminding him that his last food had been consumed hours ago. He didn’t want caffeine in his system, which might get in the way of the sleep he’d like to return to as soon as possible. Better a cool beer and a sandwich. He dialed room service.

  “Pronto.”

  “Hello, I mean, ciao.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Oh, you speak English? You don’t know how happy that makes me. I’d like to order a birra—make that two of your best. I don’t know, maybe a pale ale?”

  The man mentioned brands that meant nothing to him, but he agreed to one and asked also for a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich.

  “And if the waiter can just set the tray inside, a tip will be on the table.”

  “Subito, signore. Right away.”

  He filled the claw-footed tub in the bathroom with steaming water and let the heat work on his tense muscles. When he heard the door click shut behind the waiter, he dripped over to the food and carried it back to the bathroom. Two bottles of beer, a sandwich, and a hot bath. What more could he want?

  Peace, perhaps. A trip home to the lake cottage in New York State where spring blooms would be
bursting forth. His mother had planted dozens of perennials that took care of themselves. And his little sailboat was stored there. Or how about a week on the beach in Tel Aviv, sailing on the Med? Yeah, he could think of a lot of things he’d rather be doing.

  Although he was shedding fatigue and, with it, some of the hostility he’d been hoarding since his last interview with Achmed, enough stuck to make him want to tell Achmed and Bahir, along with his cousin Zif’s crew, just where they could all go.

  He was an American. With Israeli cousins. A man who didn’t belong anywhere near a terrorist camp. He remembered how excited his childhood friend, Bahir, had been when he’d discovered the job offer Tony’d received in Amman. “Tony, you can help the cause! Be one of us!”

  It killed him to think about Bahir. To remember that long-ago innocence when they’d dashed from one house to the other and played on the beach near Beirut, thinking they were brothers. Thinking they were the same. In the days of their childhood, neither he nor Bahir had known the truth.

  They weren’t brothers. They’d never been and never would be.

  When Achmed and Bahir discovered his lies? Heaven help him. And uncover the truth they would. He was a lousy actor. Most days, he felt like a bumbling fool.

  He should have told Bahir the truth back when they were boys, right after he’d learned it from his parents. But that would have meant betraying them. So he’d kept his lips zipped and let Bahir believe that he, too, stood on the Palestinian side of the fence.

  And then good old cousin Zif at Israeli Headquarters had suggested Tony help the homeland by putting his ears to the ground at the Abu Sadiq camp. No field work. Just a little transfer of information back and forth.

  So, here he was, pretending to help his boyhood friend Bahir and Bahir’s boss by passing on information he gleaned when he traveled from Amman to Ashkelon or Haifa as an engineer for the Scarborough Oil Company—because, hey, he was an American and could move about freely in Israel. Who would question him?