An Angel for Christmas

by Heather Graham

There was simply no way to know the truth; maybe Luke DeFeo had escaped because he was desperate to find a way to communicate with the law. Maybe he had escaped because he was a cop, and he was going to come back.

  And maybe every word that Gabe was saying was the truth. He’d done nothing but show them gratitude and kindness since he’d been with him.

  She stepped forward, coming to stand behind him. “I think we need to believe in Gabe. He’s been nothing but level and kind—he risked his life for Genevieve, and I don’t care what DeFeo said—Gabe risked his life, and you don’t do that unless there is something really decent in you. He wants to set out to find Luke DeFeo. I say we let him go, and I say that I go with him.”

  “What?” Stacy said incredulously, sliding off her bar stool to stare at her daughter.

  “Mom, I’m well over twenty-one,” she said quietly.

  “No, I should go,” Mike said.

  Morwenna shook her head. “No, Dad. You and Mom need to stay. You need to be here, because you’re really great parents.” She paused, looking at Genevieve and Connor, not wanting to scare the children, but hoping her parents would understand.

  If something had happened to Shayne, Bobby or Cindy—and something was to happen to her, God forbid!—the kids would need stable, loving parents. And that, she realized, they were.

  She smiled suddenly. “Gabe will never hurt me. I know it. I know it just as I know the sun will rise in the morning. And I’m going to untie his hands, and we’re going to go out together. When we reach Shayne and Bobby, I’ll come back with them. But they have to know that DeFeo is out there, and he could be very dangerous. We can’t accomplish that with one person—I’ll need to come back, and Gabe will need to find DeFeo.”

  “Now, wait, I can go out with this man,” Brian Williamson said.

  “Or me,” Mac volunteered.

  “I’ll be able to find my brothers. I know that I’ll be able to find my brothers,” Morwenna said.

  “This is crazy!” Mike said, still studying her.

  “It’s what we need to do, Dad. Mr. Williamson, you need to stay with your kids. And Mac, well, you just need to watch out for everyone here. And I need to find my brothers, and Gabe needs to stop DeFeo,” Morwenna said firmly.

  “And my mommy!” Genevieve said. “You need to find my mommy!”

  “If she’s with them,” Morwenna said.

  “She is,” Connor said. “She is. My father went to find her. He knew that she was out there, and he went to find her. And I know that he did.”

  “Morwenna!” Her father lowered his head. “Morwenna, we just don’t know!”

  But Genevieve came to stand next to Morwenna and Connor. “I know!” she said. “I know that Gabe is good, and that he can find my daddy. Gramps, please, let him go, and let Auntie Morwenna go with him to bring my mommy and daddy and Uncle Bobby back.”

  Her father stared at her. She didn’t know if he was thinking that he couldn’t really stop her, or if he was feeling the same way; they had to be right about Gabe Lange. He nodded slowly. “You’re taking my only daughter out there,” he said to Gabe.

  “I’ll be careful with her,” Gabe promised. “I swear to you, I would lay down my life for her.”

  Genevieve tugged on Morwenna’s shirt, and Morwenna hunkered down to her. Genevieve looked at her with a child’s wide eyes and then reached out to touch the little gold angel she was wearing around her neck.

  “You’ll be protected. You have your angel.”

  Morwenna smiled.

  Faith, again.

  Children could be so amazing. And it could be argued that faith could lead to stupidity, and that fanatical faith could lead to horrible things, but this wasn’t that kind of faith. There was something in Gabe Lange’s eyes unlike anything she had ever known before.

  He made her believe.

  She walked across the tavern, collecting her coat and gloves and scarf.

  “We’ll be back before you know it!” she assured the room cheerfully.

  “Wait!” Mike protested. “You’re just walking out with nothing—”

  “We’ll find Bobby and Shayne and the equipment. Dad, I know this mountain, and the valleys. We’ll find them soon—I know it. I’m good, I’m fine. Have faith in me!”

  Mike looked into her eyes. He smiled slowly and painfully. “I do have faith in you,” he said.

  Gabe followed her, and turned back. “You are going to be all right, and so are the others. I will find DeFeo. And I will stop him.”

  Bobby drove the snowmobile slowly and carefully; even so, the air was biting, and bits and chips of snow and ice flew before them and around them. Shayne’s face was numb.

  And yet, he felt a sense of wonder as they moved through the snow.

  He had never been a violent man in any way, and certainly not with his wife or children. But when he looked back, he could see the danger signs that had led to his divorce. He had been oblivious to the amount of time he was gone—he felt that his days had been full from beginning to end. He had changed diapers. In fact, when trying to explain why she was leaving, Cindy had told him that he’d been a wonderful father when the kids had been babies. He was still a wonderful father.

  He had tried to understand when she’d told him that she’d rather be alone on her own than always alone with him. That hadn’t made sense. Not then. He’d been perplexed; he didn’t go to strip bars, he didn’t head out on wild nights looking for some thing new, hoping to get lucky with an exotic stranger.

  But she hadn’t thought that, apparently.

  And he hadn’t seen it coming, and when he did, it had been too late. She hadn’t been angry; she had told him that she just didn’t know him anymore, and he certainly didn’t know her. And it was better to be alone, going about life on her own schedule than wondering what his might be, or if and when they were going to see him. Maybe if she wasn’t always on the spot, he’d show up for his son’s baseball games, or realize that Connor was falling in love with music, much like his uncle Bobby, who would really stop and listen to him at times.

  Now, of course, it was all so clear.

  He still loved his wife.

  He was certain that even if she had fallen out of love with him, she still cared about him.

  And his hold on her was firm; he realized at that moment, as long as he had breath in his body there was hope, and if they never made it back together again, he was desperately glad that she was alive. She was a wonderful person, and an exceptional mother, and thank God, no matter what they chose to do themselves in the future, they were lucky—they knew how to be family.

  Cindy moved slightly in his arms, wedged between him and Bobby on the snowmobile. She looked up at him, and she smiled.

  She didn’t try to speak, the snowmobile was making far too much noise.

  He wished he could try to explain; he had been indignant, so certain that he had done nothing wrong.

  And he hadn’t. He just hadn’t been there.

  But the way that she looked at him then…

  He brought his lips as close to her as possible, and whispered against the roar of the motor, “Cindy, I…don’t ever feel that you have to…to look at me that way or be too grateful… I mean, I know I wronged you, and I’m just so grateful that you’re alive!”

  “I feel alive right now,” she told him. “And I feel that I’m with you as I haven’t been in forever, Shayne.”

  He started to lean his head against hers. Then he heard his brother shout over the loud whir of the snowmobile. “Almost there! Just one more bend!”

  Shayne nodded. He moved his head enough to smile at Cindy.

  “The kids will think that you’re the best Christmas present ever,” he told her. She smiled.

  Then Shayne heard Bobby shout, “What the hell?”

  He slowed the snowmobile, but too late.

  They hit something again, something buried beneath the white drifts.

  And the snowmobile veered to the side—thank fully inwar
d, toward the mountain—but then it careened into the pines, cracked against a tree and overturned.

  “You know where you’re going, right?” Gabe asked Morwenna.

  She looked at him; it was bitterly cold. They’d already made the walk down, and made it through the snow. But it seemed that the going was rougher now. It was difficult to make sure that she was staying on the road, and it seemed that here, even more so than higher, the snow had collected in deeper piles.

  She shrugged with a sheepish smile. “Down,” she told him. She added anxiously, “They should be getting back up toward us, but I keep thinking we should hear the motor of that snowmobile—it’s old, and it’s loud.”

  “We’ll catch up with them soon,” he said.

  “And how do you know that? And aren’t you looking for DeFeo—not my family?” she asked him.

  He looked ahead, and there was something grim in his expression.

  Morwenna gasped. “You think that DeFeo is after my brothers! But, why? Why would he be after my brothers? Why wouldn’t he just want to escape?”

  “He wants to use them,” Gabe said after a minute.

  “Use them? As hostages? Gabe, he’s unarmed, and my brothers aren’t exactly puny!”

  “He has his ways.” Gabe looked at her then and sighed. “There are many things that you can steal from someone that aren’t really tangible.”

  “That made no sense! What could he steal from my brothers?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” he said. “He might be after something extremely tangible—like the snowmobile.”

  She kept looking at him; he had changed his mind—regarding what he might have said to her.

  “Gabe, what are you really trying to say?” she asked, and her concentration was so hard on his face as she tried to read what was behind his passive expression that she stumbled and fell into him, bringing them both down into the snow.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed, pressing her gloved hands into the biting snow to rise above him, blushing.

  He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. He stared up at her for a long moment, and there was something of wonder in his eyes, and then he sighed. “We need to move,” he told her.

  He laughed, getting his footing, and helping her to find hers once again.

  “We’ve got to keep walking,” he told her.

  “We’ll freeze,” she agreed. “And we have to find them.”

  “We will find them.”

  “You’re so sure!”

  “Ah, well, you see,” he said lightly, “I believe in Christmas, for all that it means.”

  “You’re not talking about a lit tree and ornaments, are you?” Morwenna said, smiling at him. “You are sunshine and light,” she added dryly.

  “Ah, well, I know that it’s sometimes hard to see, and often impossible to understand, but I do believe in a greater power, and I may be a cop, but I do believe that most people are inherently good. We have basic needs, and then we have wants…and then we have desires. We’re easily hurt, and when we’re hurt, we’re defensive, and we lash out. There really are seven sins, you know,” he said lightly.

  “And we all, in some way or another, fall into them all?” she asked.

  “Not all of us into all of them,” he said, grinning. “And,” he added, “Christmas Day is special in many ways. You know—if you’re a kid, you wait for Santa. If you’re Christian, you believe in celebrating the birth of the man who taught us that we could be saved from all the bad we can fall into because we are human. No matter how people see their faith, the world is really one big family, and they say, too, that it’s a family above and below the world as well.”

  “Heaven and hell?” Morwenna asked him.

  He grinned. “Think of it all as one big family. Except there was one child who was very, very bad in his behavior. He envied his sisters and his brothers, and he envied every other creature, certain that everyone and everything was loved more than he was. And so let’s say his parent sent him to stand in the corner, and while he was standing in the corner, he plotted a zillion other ways to get into trouble—and to get others to get into trouble with him. Now, as badly as he might be behaving, like any child, he’s still loved. But his brothers and sisters have to look after him all the time, and make sure that he doesn’t hurt others or get them into trouble with him.”

  Morwenna stared at him incredulously. She laughed softly. “Okay, so we’re all one big family. God and man and—”

  “All the angels,” he told her. “Those who are well behaved, and, of course, the brother who just can’t seem to behave. But, you see, here’s the good thing—as bad as things look, and as bad as they are at times, we do have Christmas, when we celebrate the fact that good will outweigh what’s bad. Belief is the hardest thing in the world…belief in what’s intangible, and belief in ourselves.”

  Morwenna looked ahead, and she didn’t know why, but she was suddenly reminded of the scene she had seen on television. Mexico. Over a hundred million strong—and a country with tons of tourist cities. But Alex had managed to get himself captured—with Double-D Debbie—for a few seconds on camera. She had been hurt, yes. Hurt—or had she felt humiliated? Or was it both? Of course she felt hurt. But had she known? Had she realized, when they couldn’t come to an agreement over the holiday, that there was something that…that just wasn’t there?

  And if she was so hurt, why didn’t she feel it now?

  Because she loved her brothers; her brothers loved her. And they were out there somewhere.

  She turned and looked at Gabe and laughed. “You are one crazy policeman, you know?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m also a very lucky one today.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I happened upon people who prove the point that decency and goodness can so often win out. Miss MacDougal, I do indeed rest my point!”

  She shook her head, smiling.

  “If we find them,” she whispered then.

  “We will,” he assured her.

  “How can you be so certain that everything will be all right?” she demanded.

  “Because of you, right now. Because I know that you won’t stop until you find them.”

  She laughed again, with a dry note in her voice. “No, you don’t know the mountains. Terrible things happen so easily. There are high ridges that fall straight down a thousand feet. When there’s weather, there are horrible potholes that can wreck almost any kind of vehicle. And there’s treacherous ice. And the weather is so cold—we can all freeze on the mountain.”

  He smiled at her again. “Well, then, I will have been privileged to have known you all.”

  She met his eyes, and she felt oddly warm and certain despite the cold. “No,” she said softly. “I think we have been privileged to have known you.”

  He looked back at her for a long moment.

  “Look!” Gabe pointed out. “Look—there are some tracks, and something…”

  “Something what?” Morwenna demanded.

  “Something heavy was dragged through the snow,” Gabe said.

  And it had been. There was a flattened path of ground ahead of them.

  “Hurry!” Gabe said, and he started ahead of her, somehow making tremendous speed across the slick ground.

  And then it seemed that the world around them groaned, as if there was a crack of thunder that had split the sky. The sound echoed and ricocheted through the trees.

  “What…?” Morwenna began.

  “He’s found them,” Gabe said grimly. “DeFeo has found your brothers.”

  Bobby had felt himself lose control; it had been like spinning on black ice…no, he had been spinning, but it’s because they had hit something beneath the snow that shouldn’t have been there.

  The impact of the vehicle had shuddered down the length of him.

  And then he’d landed in the snow, and for a moment, he was aware only of the cold, the feel of the air and the pain in his body. There was something on top of him. The world wa
s white…

  He was pinned beneath the snowmobile.

  “Shayne!” He cried his brother’s name. “Cindy!”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Shayne said. “Cindy, Cindy…”

  He felt his brother trying to scramble around him, pulling his ex-wife from the wreckage.

  “Is she all right?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m—I’m okay!” Cindy said.

  “Bobby?” Shayne asked, rushing to his side.

  “I can’t—I can’t get out,” Bobby said.

  “Can you feel your legs, can you move them?” Shayne demanded.

  His brother was there, down on his knees in the snow, next to him. Bobby tried to wiggle his toes and move his ankles. He didn’t think that anything was broken; he was just stuck.

  “Yes, yes, I can move everything,” Bobby said.

  Shayne nodded. “All right, I’m going to try to move the snowmobile. And when I do, you have to wriggle out quickly.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Shayne, what do I do?” Cindy asked.

  “You can try to add your weight when I lift,” Shayne told her. “Ready?”

  Cindy stood by him, ready to lift.

  But though Shayne was strong, and had Cindy’s help, the weight of the snowmobile was just too much.

  “Listen, you two just get back to the tavern,” Bobby said, forcing cheerfulness into his voice. “Get help, and get back here.”

  “I’m not leaving you like this,” Shayne told him.

  “Hey, Shayne!” Bobby protested. “We can’t all just stay here—where will that get us?”

  “I’m going to get a pulley system going…we’ve still got the rope. Cindy, you should probably be in a hospital, but can you take the rope—you remember how to do the knots, right?”

  “Of course,” Cindy said. “Hey, I didn’t spend time with Dad for nothing! I mean, your father,” she amended quickly. “I’ve got it. I’m really all right, Shayne, I can help. Give me the rope.”

  “All right,” Shayne said, pausing and looking around. “There…walk over there. That tree looks good and sturdy and it’s at the right angle…take that end of the rope, Cindy, and make sure it’s a good knot.”

  Bobby heard the snow crunching as Cindy hurried off to do as she had been instructed. He watched as Shayne studied the snowmobile and the way it had fallen and then started to loop the heavy nylon rope around the snowmobile. “With the tree helping to create a lever system, we will get this thing up in no time,” Shayne promised him.