Island Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

She did as well as she could. Even with Tante Daniels it was always difficult. With Tanya? Much harder. But she tried.

  “You made me who I am. And I love who I am.”

  Miranda finally did look at her, but she saw no tease, no game. Not even any Holly-like mischief, though Miranda was unsure what that might actually look like on a person’s face.

  “I didn’t just buy that pretty little plane for the fun of it. Or because your parents paid me professional hourly rates while I lived here for most of two decades with no real expenses. I invested well, and now run a series of autism clinics all over the west coast. I focused on small towns, where children on the spectrum can be most easily lost by the system. That jet gets me to all of those obscure spots so that I can help the most kids possible.”

  “Oh. That sounds…nice.” It was well beyond the nice of making cookie boxes. It was the kind of nice that… The English language seriously needed an overhaul.

  “It is.”

  Miranda studied the next shape but couldn’t seem to focus her eyes on it. She finally hung her head, letting her hair slide forward. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “For being such a failure. All that work you did, and I’m not at all normal. I’m a crash investigator with a crashed brain. That is one of the few metaphors I actually can understand.”

  “Miranda, if I could make a neurotypical version of you,” she picked up the nutmeg rasp and waved it over Miranda’s head like a fairy godmother’s wand, “it would be a crime. You wouldn’t be you at all. You are a great crash investigator. How many hundreds or thousands of lives have you saved with the problems you’ve uncovered over the last seventeen years? That’s incredible. You’re incredible. The more I work with these kids, the more I’m convinced that many ASDs have been given some kind of gift way out there ahead of the rest of us, if only I can help them find it. Don’t forget that you did all the hard work; I just tried to show you the way.” Another of Tanya’s most common sayings.

  But it was another example of how she’d helped Miranda become a functioning, self-reliant adult. If only she could do better, then she’d be…doing better.

  “But why do I feel so royally screwed-up.”

  Tanya set aside her magic nutmeg rasp and laughed. “Welcome to the human race.”

  Miranda would have to think about that. Or see how she felt about that.

  In the meantime, she mixed up some royal icing, and fit the next piece of gingerbread solidly into place.

  By the time she thought to look up, Tante Daniels no longer sat in the shadows.

  Neither did Tanya.

  7

  Christmas morning was all about hot cocoa and baking.

  Mike made a savory Chelsea bun Christmas tree laced with slivers of last night’s roast beef and seasoned with gravy.

  Tanya had made a loaf of the Dresden Stollen sweet bread that she made every Christmas. The years she didn’t visit, Miranda would find a loaf in her post office box. She should have known that Tanya would be coming; there’d been no loaf waiting at the post office in town.

  Her own contribution had been a big platter of eggs, bacon, and maple sausage.

  And of course there were cookies. They’d packed each box tightly with her favorites. Miranda had insisted that they needed to pack all four, even though Tanya had arrived. She could take it away with her.

  There weren’t just sugar cookies and coconut macaroons, but also giant Paul Bunyan everything cookies, ginger-cubed shortbread with a dark chocolate ganache, peanut butter breakfast bars topped with shredded coconut, and Italian panforte. There were still plenty of leftovers.

  Rather than eating at the table, they treated that as the buffet, then gathered at the other end of the great room.

  The towering bay window looked out on the broken sunlight lancing through gaps in the retreating clouds. The curve of the island rolled down to the water, still wind-whipped into foaming spray where it ran between the conifer-covered islands that dotted Puget Sound.

  Knowing everyone was coming, she’d cut down a big tree this year, an eight-footer that was covered with lights and years’ of kid ornaments. Many had been made by her with Tanya’s help. Once she’d started making them, it was hard to stop so there were dozens upon dozens of them in every size and shape she’d been able to imagine.

  Much to her surprise, there were also gifts under the tree.

  “Hey, I said no gifts.”

  “So, we broke the rules. Or Mike and Jeremy did. You know that I always do everything you say, Miranda.”

  Since she knew quite the opposite was true of Holly, Miranda suspected that it was all Holly’s doing.

  As she’d broken her own rules, it was hard to complain too much.

  First there were a number of gag gifts. The funnest one was a party pack of wooden planes little bigger than her hand. Slip the wing through the slot in the fuselage, stick the little tail piece in another slot in the back, and throw.

  Soon there were planes in dozens of styles and paint jobs scattered up and down the length of the great room.

  She and Tanya exchanged the first real gifts.

  The hand-knit cashmere scarf she’d found of the San Juan Islands seemed to make Tanya very happy.

  “It’s representative though not an accurate depiction of the San Juans,” she explained. “It has trees made of knits and purls, waves in chaotic patches, and a cable down the middle that looks like a boat wake.”

  Tanya put it on immediately and declined to take it off even though they were inside. At Miranda’s offer to turn up the heat, Tanya shooed her back into her chair.

  Her own gift was a luxurious terrycloth bathrobe. She pulled it on, not because she was cold be because it was so cozy. Now she understood why Tanya didn’t need the heat turned up but still wore her scarf.

  She’d spent a long time hunting for just the right gift for the others.

  Mike opened his first.

  “It’s the Benchmade Table Knife. Holly said they were known for making really good fighting knives. They only make the one chef’s knife, but I added the black-anodized tactical grade steel. It should stay sharp for much longer than most knives.”

  When he finally spoke, it was so softly that she could barely hear him. “I’m going to have to cook dinner all over again now that I have the proper knife to do it. Thank you, Miranda.”

  Holly inspected it carefully before turning to Miranda. “Damn fine blade, Miranda. Well done, you.” Then she winked, which Miranda would take to mean that Holly had, for once, actually meant what she’d said.

  Jeremy had always carried the largest pack for his site investigation tools, but it was just an open-top camper’s bag. If he wanted a tool from the bottom, he had to empty the whole bag. She’d had a custom bag designed with numerous pockets and pouches of varying sizes, all separately accessible. Once he had unzipped, rezipped, and unzipped again each pocket several times, and stopped saying how perfect it was, he rushed up to his room, brought the old bag down, and was soon happily tucking tools and instruments in one pocket then another to find the best arrangement.

  Holly had been tough, until she remembered the hats that she always made the team wear. They were bright yellow, billed caps for her favorite soccer team, the Australian Matildas all-women champions.

  “Season tickets to…Who are the Thorns?”

  “They’re not the Matildas, but they’re one of the better all-women soccer teams in the US. They play just a few hours south of your Gig Harbor team house in Portland, Oregon. I purchased seats for all four of us for the season. So, whenever we aren’t out on an investigation we can—”

  Holly screamed, leapt over the coffee table, barely missed flattening Tanya, and clamped Miranda into a crushing embrace.

  “—all go together,” Miranda barely managed to complete her sentence properly for lack of air.

  Holly actually had tears in her eyes as she nearly throttled Miranda again before collapsing onto the couch bes
ide her.

  “Well, Miranda, you’ve certainly made the rest of us look like total slackers.” She draped an arm over Miranda’s shoulders and kept her in a hard hug.

  There was only one tiny present left under the tree.

  Mike fetched it very solemnly and handed it to her.

  Miranda reminded herself to look pleased no matter what it was. Something Tante Daniels had taught her, back when she was still Tante Daniels.

  She carefully undid the paper.

  Holly just growled beside her, “Of course you’re one of those people.”

  “What people?”

  “Ones who unwrap rather than tear and shred.”

  Miranda looked down at the box and considered. Unwrapping…felt right.

  “I am,” and she continued until she had the jewelry-sized box exposed. She opened the blue velvet case. There was a note inside that simply said, Look behind you.

  So she turned and did.

  Her quilt from the upstairs library was draped over something hanging on the wall.

  Miranda circled the couch, rather than leaping over it as Holly had, and gently removed the quilt. Somehow, without her noticing while she was sculpting, a glass display case had been mounted there. Inside were planes.

  Some were diecast models the size of her palm.

  Others were elegant crystal little bigger than her thumb.

  A few were plastic toys.

  But they were all very distinct and easily identifiable for their model type. And there were so many.

  “We had Jeremy go through his log of all your reports. This is every plane you’ve ever investigated. It took some hunting, but we think we’ve got them all.”

  Miranda could only stare at them in surprise. The monstrous C-5 Galaxy, her second crash investigation, was barely two inches long. It was dominated by an A-10 Thunderbolt II, a far smaller craft in real life. Boeing’s 757 was there, along with an Airbus 320 passenger jet that sat beside a two-passenger Cessna 152 whose model was exactly the same size.

  And in the center, at a place of honor, was a four-inch metal diecast F-86 Sabrejet.

  Jeremy came up beside her. “You didn’t actually investigate a crash on that one, but you did make an emergency landing on the National Mall, so I think that counts.”

  “Every one of those,” Mike waved a hand at the cabinet, “represent a crash solved, recommendations for future safety made, people taken care of.”

  “It’s—” Miranda hated unfinished sentences, but despite several attempts, couldn’t find the end to this one. Tanya was right. Miranda had done something pretty amazing with her “crashed” brain.

  “I think she likes it a wee bit,” Holly was chuckling.

  “It too bad my gingerbread model won’t fit in this case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Miranda led her and the others over to the kitchen counter. She lifted up the tea towel that was covering her finished gingerbread sculpture.

  Her original plan had been to build a gingerbread F-86 Sabrejet, which had made her say what she’d just said. But that was before she’d recalled making the last-minute change.

  Once again, her…weird brain—that was better than crashed, wasn’t it—had thrown the wrong image up in the middle of Christmas morning.

  Rather than her jet, she’d built a to-scale model of their private office at the Tacoma Narrows Airport. Complete right down to Holly’s couch, Jeremy’s workbench, and Mike’s espresso machine. It was where this team all came together.

  Then she noticed that something else was there that hadn’t been there when she’d finished just before dawn.

  There were people.

  Four little people.

  That’s what Jeremy must have been working on yesterday.

  A gingerbread Mike sat in his armchair looking smooth and casual. A blonde-haired Holly slouched on the couch with her gingerbread feet in mismatched socks resting on the coffee table. Jeremy sat at his workbench, and a tiny Miranda sat at her rolltop desk.

  Then she looked more closely.

  They were all smiling.

  As everyone crowded around to point out one detail or another, Miranda put a hand to her heart. She knew, she simply knew, with no doubts, that this is what Christmas was supposed to feel like.

  Raider (excerpt)

  If you enjoyed that, be sure you don’t miss Miranda next adventure.

  Raider (excerpt)

  Ankara, Turkey

  Siberkume – Cyber Security Cluster

  Subbasement #2

  * * *

  Metin struggled against the collapsing code racing up his computer screen.

  The American satellite’s onboard software was self-correcting—constantly checking its synchronization and alignment.

  His right-hand computer screen showed the geographic shift he’d managed to induce in seven of the thirty-three satellites in this single system. It wasn’t systemic but, exactly as required, it was very localized.

  On his central screen, the American code he had decrypted was about to rotate. Every hour, the encryption routine scrambled itself. He’d had one hour to decrypt and infiltrate his own code before the door closed again, and he’d have had to start over from scratch.

  It had taken fifty-seven minutes for his program on the left screen to crack that code. That had left him only a three-minute window to alter the data broadcast that the satellites beamed downward.

  After three months of trying, his first successful hack had finally told him which path he’d needed to pursue. A week to break down and rebuild his code had taken out the element of chance that had let him crack it the first time.

  It still wasn’t an easy task, but he’d done it! In under the required hour and targeted the exact location called for in the new mission profile.

  But, between sixty minutes and sixty minutes-and-one second, the window into the American’s code imploded once more into encrypted gibberish.

  Metin collapsed back into his chair, drained as if he’d been on the attack for sixty hours, not sixty minutes.

  The noises around him came back slowly, the same way Gaye Su Akyol eased into her Anatolian rock videos.

  Siberkume was humming tonight, though with a very different tune.

  In the big room’s half-light that made it easier to stay focused on the screens, there sounded the harsh rattle of keys, soft-murmured conversations, and quiet curses of code gone wrong. It washed back and forth across the twenty stations crammed into the concrete bunker like a familiar tide. The sharp snap of an opening Red Bull can sounded like a gunshot. He liked that the Americans—all it took was watching the many eSports players Red Bull sponsored to know he belonged—were running on the same fuel he was, but still he’d beaten them.

  He snapped his own Red Bull because he definitely needed something to fight back the shakes from the sustained code dive.

  Siberkume might not have the vast banks of hackers like the Russians or Chinese, but he was part of a lean, mean, fighting machine.

  General Firat came striding up to his station like he owned the world. Since he ran Siberkume, he certainly owned Metin’s world.

  “I’m sorry, General. That was the best I could do this time.” It was the Cyber Security Cluster’s first real test of their abilities against a force like the Americans. He was the one who’d done it, but it was better to be cautious with the military. Their moods were more unpredictable than his sister’s crazy cat.

  “No, Metin. That was a very good start. Very good. You are çacal—‘like the coyote’.”

  General Firat thumped him hard enough on the shoulder that his keyboarding would be ten percent below normal speed for at least an hour.

  But “Metin the Coyote”?

  He could get down with that. It was seriously high praise.

  “I’ll get the effective window wider, General. I don’t know if I can beat the hourly reset. But now that I know how to get in, I can hone my code. I’ll make it faster so we have more time.�
�� Though he had no idea how. He’d already streamlined it with every trick he knew to beat that one-hour limit.

  Unless he could talk his way onto the Yildiz SVR supercomputer…

  Wouldn’t that be hot shit? (He loved American slang and ferreted it out whenever he could sneak online.)

  “Yes, yes.” Clearly the General hadn’t understood a word of what he’d said about what could and couldn’t be done.

  Metin considered simplifying it, but he wasn’t sure how. It didn’t matter; General Firat didn’t pause for a breath.

  “Be ready. You have one week for the next level test. You are the very first one to make it through. Your skills have not gone unnoticed. Well done, Çacal. Bravo!” The general must mean it as he said the last loudly enough to be easily overheard by the ten closest programmers before striding off into the dim shadows of Siberkume.

  Metin grinned across the aisle at Onur.

  Onur groaned, but Metin didn’t rub it in too much. Onur’s sister Asli was the most lovely girl in the world, and his ability to visit with her, without appearing to visit with her, depended largely on Onur’s continuing friendship.

  But to rub it in a little, he rolled back his shoulders and pushed out his chest like Blackpink’s Rosé being so nice and just a little nasty. They’d watched all of the group’s K-pop videos over a totally illegal VPN to YouTube. It was one of the luxuries of working at Siberkume: access to the outside world—if you didn’t get caught.

  I’ve so got the stuff.

  Onur snorted and gave him an Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yeah, right! look. Onur didn’t look anything like Ewan McGregor, even with the expression. Of course, he himself didn’t look much like the superhot Rosé.

  Get Raider. The next Miranda Chase adventure.

  Available at fine retailers everywhere.

  Raider

  About the Author

  USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. “Matt” Buchman started writing on a flight south from Japan to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Just part of a solo around-the-world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.