Kristin Hardy

by Her Christmas Surprise (lit)

  But he was home now. It was Christmas Eve, he reminded himself. He needed to get on his Christmas cheer.

  “Trey?” He heard a quick tap of heels and Olivia threw herself into his arms. “Thank God you’re back,” she said in a rush. “He’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “Bradley.”

  “Bradley? In the house?”

  She shook her head. “Not here. Not now, anyway. He stopped by earlier. With a man. Someone foreign.” She shuddered.

  Skele, he thought.

  “I tried to call you.”

  “There’s a power outage. Cell service is knocked out.” He felt her shaking, an ongoing tremor that she didn’t seem able to suppress. “What did he say?” Lex asked urgently, drawing her over to a couch to sit. “Mom, come on, try to calm down. What happened?”

  “He…he was different. I don’t know, closed, hard. I begged him to turn himself in and he refused. He wanted something in Pierce’s office.”

  The key, Lex thought immediately. “Did you go with him? What did he take?” He fought the urge to rush her, fought the urge to check for himself. She was holding on by one very thin thread. “Mom, did he take the key?”

  “I don’t…what key?”

  Lex exhaled slowly and fought for calm. “It’s really important that you tell me exactly what he said.”

  “He asked who’d been in the office. He seemed angry. I told him you’d been there. And Keely. Oh, she stopped by earlier. She said something about going to the house.”

  At the house alone, with Bradley. And Skele. “Jesus,” he said.

  “What’s going on?”

  He was on his feet before she finished the words. “Call the cops,” he shouted, running to the door. “28 Candlewood Highway.”

  “Lex, wait. I can’t call the police on him.”

  “Do it,” he snapped. “Tell them a woman’s in danger there. Tell them what Bradley’s done. Tell them to call Stockton. Now.” And he sprinted for his Jeep.

  The wheels of the car crunched to a stop on the snowy driveway before the house. Keely turned off the engine, her sigh of relief sounding very loud in the sudden silence. It had taken over half an hour but she was here.

  Somehow it didn’t seem nearly as imperative as it had when she’d been comfortably curled up in her parents’ house. Why hadn’t she just waited for morning and daylight? What difference would another ten or twelve hours have made?

  Darkness pressed in around the car. When she got out, the silence was almost oppressive, save for the faint ticks of the heavy, wet snowflakes hitting. Outside the car, she found the silence was almost oppressive. She was used to garages, streetlights, civilization. The emptiness all around her made her skin crawl.

  The enormous black anodized flashlight her father had given her might have been big enough to double as a baseball bat, but the beam didn’t seem to go very far in the woods. It was as though the acres of darkness sucked up every ray the flashlight emitted. Out in the darkness, a stick snapped and the hairs rose on the back of her neck. A raccoon, she told herself, or a cat, or some night critter that was probably just going about its bloodthirsty little life, unconcerned and unaware that it was scaring her silly.

  She wrapped her jacket more tightly around herself and hurried to the side porch. The sooner she was inside, the better.

  It was embarrassing to admit just how creepy it was to turn her back to the darkness long enough to unlock the door. And how creepy it was to walk into a black house. She’d definitely been out of her mind to come there alone, but she was too stubborn to admit she was chicken and run home. As soon as she stepped inside, she whirled to lock the door behind her, her heart thudding in her ears. What she needed was a few dozen spotlights or torches. What she had was the flashlight. It wasn’t enough.

  It was all she had.

  In the end, she settled for standing it on end on the desk so that the beam shone up to the ceiling. The resultant illumination was dim but more or less even. Thank God Bradley had bought a laptop rather than a desktop system or she’d have been dead in the water. With the laptop battery, she’d have at least three or four hours to look around.

  Assuming she was right about the password.

  The laptop was new enough that it was WiFi ready, so she just turned on the antenna and let it find the network on its own, signing on with her parents’ username and password. And then she was at the VoIP site. She could feel her heart beginning to thud a little faster. More than anything, she wished Lex were there with her.

  With a few clicks of the keys, she typed in the two parts of the sign-on. “Okay, Bradley, come through for me,” she muttered, and pressed Enter. For an endless moment, she just heard the sound of the pulse in her ears. Then the log-in screen disappeared.

  She had entry to the files. Keely whooped without thinking, the sound eerie in the empty house. She felt as though she’d just gotten the key to the secret garden.

  The list of voice mail messages went on and on. There were easily two dozen or more, several of them five or ten minutes in length, all of them no more than six months old. Intrigued, she clicked on one of them, turning the sound all the way up.

  And Bradley’s voice filled the room. “You have a routing number for the bank transfers?”

  “Yes, of course. I can get you whatever you need.” The speaker had a heavy Slavic accent; Skele, she was betting. The conversation centered around ways and means of transferring money from the coffers of a vendor corporation owned by Skele to Skele’s own coffers.

  It wasn’t a voice mail message, it was a full-on conversation. Bradley had taped his phone calls and played those tapes to his voice mail, she realized. And they were safe. He didn’t need a computer, didn’t need a flash drive or audiotape. The VoIP company servers were keeping the files. If Bradley needed them, he could access them at any place and anytime, provided he had an Internet connection.

  As leverage went, it was rather brilliant.

  She worked her way through the messages on the list. Conversation after conversation contained damaging admissions by Skele. Midway down the list, she hit pay dirt. Again, it was Skele, speaking in his heavy, ponderous voice.

  “I wish to be able to clean at least half of the money by the end of the year. I want more LLCs.”

  Bradley’s response was unintelligible.

  “Then you will make it convincing,” Skele said in anoyance. “The board of directors, we need more American names.”

  “I don’t have more names.”

  “Find some,” Skele rumbled. “Use your mother, your girlfriend.”

  “They won’t want any part of this.”

  “They will never know.”

  They will never know.

  Relief made her weak. That was it, proof in Bradley and Skele’s words that she and Olivia were innocent. In those few words, her entire life opened up.

  Hands shaking, Keely dug through her purse for Stockton’s card. Her cell phone was dead because of the power outage. E-mail would have to do. With a few keystrokes, she saved the voice mail message as an audio file and sent it to him in an e-mail.

  The next message was older. This time, Skele and Bradley weren’t such good buddies. This time, they were fighting. Skele, it appeared, wanted to scale up the operation. Bradley was getting cold feet.

  “I have hundred million coming in next week from contact in Syria. I must wash money.”

  “I can’t do it that quickly,” Bradley said, “not unless you want to get caught.”

  And over the sound of the recording, she suddenly heard the door open.

  She’d leapt to her feet and spun around before she even registered moving, to see Bradley—Bradley—standing in the gloom there.

  “Why, Keely. What a surprise.”

  He looked different. Bulkier, maybe. Harder. There was something sinister about his face in the dim light. His eyes were shadowed.

  And in his hand, he held a gun.

  He wasn’t alone. Skele, she th
ought with a shiver. It had to be. If ever she’d looked into the face of a killer, this had to be it. There was an unsettling, almost brutal sensuality to his features—fleshy lips, wide forehead, heavy jaw. Bradley held his gun like it was part of a costume he was trying on; Skele held it like it was an extension of his hand.

  But it was his hooded eyes that made her skin crawl. The expression they held was worse than total indifference. It reminded her of the time she’d seen an alligator during a trip to Florida, a sense of looking into the eyes of some primordial consciousness that merely recognized her as moving, not alive.

  “Bradley.” She switched her gaze to him. “What are you doing here?”

  Her heart hammered against her ribs as though it were trying to batter its way out. Her only choice was to keep them talking and see if she wound up with any chance for escape. To run through the frozen woods in the darkness, she thought forcing down the panic that pressed into her throat. Good luck.

  “What am I doing here? Well, it’s Christmas.” Bradley stepped into the room, followed by Skele. “Doesn’t everybody come home for the holidays? I’ve got a good reason to be here. You, on the other hand, are a whole different matter.” His eyes hardened.

  “It’s my house, last time I checked,” she said.

  He blinked. “You’ve been a busy girl, I see.” He’d drawn near enough to see what she was doing, to hear the conversation playing.

  “You didn’t leave me with a choice.”

  “Do you like the house? I just couldn’t think what to get you as a wedding present,” he said. “Then again, we’re not getting married, are we?”

  She stared at him, wondering how she’d ever thought she loved him. “I guess that depends on you,” she said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded. “Going with you could be the best thing. After all, if I stick around, I’m probably looking at jail time, or so they tell me. As is your mother.”

  He flicked her a dismissive glance, where she stood beside the computer. “With all her money, she’ll get off.”

  “Yes, well, all her money. That’s an interesting question. They’re talking about confiscating a large part of it because of the money you funneled through her account.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Skele whip his head around to stare at Bradley.

  “What money?” His voice was silky.

  “Nothing. It’s of no concern to you,” Bradley said.

  “I have twenty-five million dollars in frozen accounts because of you. It is of great concern to me.”

  Slowly, an infinitesimal fraction at a time, Keely slid her hand out toward the flashlight that still stood upended on the desk. The darkness was her friend.

  “The money she’s talking about is not your money,” Bradley said.

  “It is all my money.” Skele moved closer to the computer, his mouth hardening. She’d been wrong when she’d thought his eyes held only a primordial expression. They could also hold malice. “And what is this?” He gestured to the screen. “That is my voice, and yours, talking of business.”

  “Business records,” Bradley blurted, swallowing.

  “These business records, they have only one purpose.” Skele stared at Bradley, then down at the screen, a vein on his temple pulsing.

  Keely’s hand crept nearer to the flashlight. Skele and Bradley were completely focused on each other, turned half away from her. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. One chance, she thought, stretching her fingers. She would have one chance only.

  “Vilis, don’t get excited.” Bradley’s voice sounded too loud, too hearty. “That’s why we came here, to dust the computer and get rid of loose ends, right?”

  “Yes, we get rid of loose ends.” He raised the gun.

  And Keely swung the heavy flashlight with all her might into the back of his head. The impact reverberated through her fingers, jarring the flashlight loose. Skele dropped like a stone.

  Bradley swung around to her in shock, the gun leveled at her heart.

  Keely swallowed. “Bradley,” she said.

  He retrieved the flashlight and studied Skele’s prone body. “I suppose I should say thank you. I honestly think he meant to kill me.” He sounded surprised.

  He didn’t shift the gun.

  “He’s had practice killing people, I understand. You should be more careful who you choose to do business with.”

  His brows lowered. “You shouldn’t be here. If you hadn’t been, everything would have been fine. You always were too smart for your own good.”

  It took her two tries to speak. “It won’t do you any good to kill me. They already have an airtight case.”

  “Not without the laptop. And you. You heard Skele. No loose ends.” Shadows hooded his eyes.

  “Bradley, don’t do this,” she whispered.

  “I have to,” he said, almost pleading. “No loose ends.” He thumbed off the safety.

  There was a sound and Lex burst through the door, grabbing at Bradley’s arm. A deafening explosion filled the room. Plaster showered down from where the bullet had entered the ceiling. The revolver skittered away.

  Keely watched in horror as the two brothers grappled on the floor in the dimness, rolling over, knocking into Skele’s unconscious form, fighting to get to the gun. “Stop it,” she shouted, grabbing at the flashlight where it fallen, frantically trying to figure out a way to end the nightmare. And then she saw it—the gleam of metal by Skele’s hand.

  “Stop.” She snatched the gun from the floor. “Now.” With shaking hands, she cocked the weapon.

  The sharp click had the two men on the floor freezing, their heads whipping around to stare at her.

  “Enough, Bradley. It’s over.” Her voice strenghtened. “It’s over,” she repeated as sirens sounded in the distance.

  There were moments in life, Keely thought as she and Lex walked out of the police station, that you knew you’d never forget. Bradley pulling the gun, Lex leaping through the door. And yet, somehow, even in that moment, with Christmas morning dawning, the whole thing was impossible to believe. Less than twelve hours before, two men had held guns on her. Now, in houses all around them, children were wakening to the magic of presents and Santa Claus.

  Bradley and Skele had been taken to the hospital, the laptop confiscated by Stockton for review. Stockton and his colleagues had questioned Keely and Lex all night. They’d been scolded, thanked, congratulated, exonerated.

  And now they were outside, finally with a moment to themselves.

  After everything that had happened, all that had passed between them, she hadn’t a clue what to say. He had broken her heart and quite probably saved her life. He had saved her life and he was going to disappear into the sunset and she’d more than likely never see him again.

  She couldn’t bear it.

  She stopped and swung around to look at him. Their breath came out in plumes of white in the chill air. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough, but it’s all I have,” she said. “You were wonderful.”

  “I should thank you. You were the one who stopped it.”

  “We both did.”

  “We’re a hell of a team.”

  “We were,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Thank you. I owe you my life.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek.

  And he grabbed her and pulled her to him convulsively, so that she almost couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m an idiot,” Lex said savagely.

  Keely blinked. “What?”

  “I’m a pinhead. I so screwed up. I could have lost you. I love you and I could have lost you.”

  She stared at him, stunned. “What do you mean?” she asked faintly.

  “Oh, God, Keely, I was out of my mind tonight when I was driving over there, knowing about Bradley and Skele, knowing that you were in danger. I was so wrong last week. I got scared,” he said simply. “I’ve been on my own so long that I just couldn’t deal with what was happening.

  “And then tonight when I realized all o
f a sudden I might lose you, I found out what it was like to be really scared.” He shook his head. “It’s no good without you. I realized that. If you’re not with me, whatever else there is, it just doesn’t matter.”

  He swallowed and took her hand in his. “I love you, Keely. That was what you saw in my face the night of the gala. I was just too dense to realize it. I want to make this work.”

  And she laughed and threw her arms around him. “Oh, do you mean it?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”