The Twelve Lies of Christmas

by Kate Johnson

  But instead all I said was, “You should stay here. I’ll get the hotel to send up some books and magazines or something. Whatever you need. Charge it to the room.” I winced. I was giving a con artist carte blanche. “Don’t go outside. It wouldn’t do for someone to see you when you’re supposed to be dead.”

  She was quiet a moment.

  “As soon as we’ve got Daz and this is all sorted, then you can be alive again,” I told her and tried to smile.

  Sam nodded and gestured to the TV in the hotel room, which was showing silent news footage.

  “It’s already out,” she said. “The news. Not my name or anything, but the news of the explosion is out.”

  “Good,” I said. “Daz won’t be looking for you.”

  “My—” she began, then stopped. “Can I call my parents?”

  There was a long moment during which I felt really horrible. Sam had parents, of course she did. And it was Christmas Eve, and the breaking news all over the country was that a bomb had gone off in a townhouse in Mayfair. They must be going crazy.

  And I was about to make it worse.

  I remembered, when I was very small, one of the few occasions my grandmother mentioned my mother. “Bastards didn’t even telephone me,” she said. “I found out from the bloody telly. My daughter’s face on TV, just another casualty. Bloody terrorists.”

  Damn.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Not while Daz is still out there. I don’t want him tracing the call or anything.”

  Panic flared in her eyes. “You don’t think he’d go after them?”

  “No,” I said, although I was lying. “But give me their address, and I’ll get someone to watch the place. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Sam watched me warily. “How can I trust you?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You can’t,” I said and walked away, feeling like hell.

  Chapter Six

  Christmas, as I may have previously stated, was not exactly a fun-filled time for me, but this particular Christmas Eve really took the biscuit. I spent most of it interrogating a belligerent Anatole and whinging Yuri, receiving sporadic updates from Luke and from One and worrying about Sam.

  There was a pretty strong chance Daz didn’t believe she was really dead. After all, he could have had someone watching the back of the house, not the front, and then he’d know everything.

  I don’t know why I was so desperate to protect her. Yeah, I’d promised, but why had I promised?

  She was trying to embezzle money. I ought to be turning her over to the police.

  By the time it had turned dark, I was ready to drop dead. I was tired. I was dirty. I was coated with blood, some of it mine, because when I went to pick up the Russians, Anatole was out cold but Yuri was awake, and he had a gun. His sprays of automatic fire had missed me, but the foot he kicked at my nose hadn’t. It had spread to a nice black eye and hurt like hell.

  I left the station, walking into a winter wonderland of excited children and twinkling lights, and thought about going home to just sleep until I got the call from Luke to move in on Daz.

  But there was something I had to do first.

  How can I trust you?

  I got in the car One had arranged for me, went to West Kensington and found myself standing outside Sam’s hotel room, wondering what the hell to say. Hi, my name’s Nate, and I’m a spy. Yeah, fantastic. She’d love that.

  I paced up and down, working it out in my head. Christ, I was supposed to be good at thinking on my feet. It was my bloody job. And here I couldn’t even tell a girl my name, what was wrong with me?

  I banged on the door before I procrastinated myself to death and the hotel billed me for the groove I was pacing into the floor. There was a pause before it was opened, and then Sam was standing there in a hotel bathrobe, a fork in her hand, raised to stab. Her skin seemed quite dark against the whiteness of the robe, and very smooth. Her dark hair was loose and her face was bare of makeup. She smelled like roses.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said and lowered the fork.

  Me. Nate.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is.”

  I hustled her inside and shut the door behind me, leaning on it for a second, my eyes closed.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. “You look—you’ve been hurt…”

  I opened my eyes, looked straight into hers.

  “Nate Kelly,” I said.

  This clearly wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She gave me the same facial gesture I’d given her that morning. It said, “What?”

  “Nathaniel Kelly. Nate. My name,” I added.

  Sam looked at me for a moment, her eyes slightly narrowed.

  “I’m a spy,” I said. “I work for the government. The British government. This is my last assignment. I’m retiring soon. I-I was born in Northern Ireland. My mother was killed by the IRA. I used to be in the army. I…”

  I ran out of things to say. Sam was still silent, still watching me, still smelling gorgeous, still looking so incredibly desirable.

  “I have no idea why I’m telling you this,” I confessed, and then she smiled.

  “Nat and Nate,” she said, and her eyes sparkled. “We sound like fucking cartoon characters.”

  I’m really not sure what happened next. Well, that’s a lie, I’m totally sure of what happened next, it’s imprinted in my brain forever and ever; but what I mean is I’m not sure how it happened. One minute we were standing there looking at each other and trying not to laugh, and the next we were kissing.

  She tasted like everything I’d ever wanted. Maybe it was the festive season making me sentimental, but there it was. Sam Taylor, con artist, the opposite of what I should want.

  We broke apart when her nose hit mine and I winced, nearly biting her tongue off.

  “Ow,” she said.

  “Right back atcha,” I replied, gingerly prodding my injured nose.

  “What happened?”

  “I hit Yuri in the foot with my nose.”

  Her eyes widened. “Anatole’s Yuri?” I nodded. “Are they…did you…?”

  “They’re in custody,” I said.

  “And…Daz?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. I glanced at my watch, for the first time wanting to hide under the covers instead of going out there and nailing the bad guy. Of course, that might have had something to do with who else might be under the covers with me. “Maybe sooner.”

  “Shouldn’t you be…somewhere else?”

  I touched her face. “Yes.”

  Sam took a deep breath, and I watched her chest rise and fall with interest.

  “I’m glad you’re not,” she said, and proceeded to demonstrate to me why.

  She lay soft and warm in my arms as the clock ticked over past midnight. The best Christmas present I ever had.

  “So,” I said into the quietness, “what’s your excuse?”

  She turned to face me. “Excuse?”

  “For…not living like a moral and honest citizen.”

  “Hey, I’m moral.”

  “But not honest, Natalya.”

  She smiled lazily. “I do what I do to get by,” she said.

  “Have you ever considered, I dunno, getting a job?”

  She shrugged. “No. I’m not trained for anything. Being a grifter’s the only thing I know how to do.”

  “But why?”

  She was silent a while and then she shifted position, turning on her side and leaning her head on her hand, looking at me earnestly.

  “My parents,” she said. “They’re decent, honest people. They’ve always done everything by the book, just the way they’re supposed to. Always paid every bill on time, taxes and mortgage payments and everything. And now they’re both approaching retirement with nothing to live on, unless they sell the house and give up everything they’ve ever worked for.”

  “No private pensions plan?”

  She snorted. “My dad was supposed to have one, but his firm went bust. Just like he was supposed
to have an endowment mortgage that’d pay the whole thing off for him and give him cash in hand. But that went south too. They filed a claim and all, but you know how it is. Story of their lives. They do everything they’re supposed to and get stung.” She sighed. “You know what they say, if you want something done properly…”

  “Don’t rely on the state to do it for you,” I filled in, and she smiled.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “So you decided to con your way to riches, is that it?”

  “Look,” Sam said, “I figured out when I was a teenager that no one ever got a penny ahead by being honest. When I was fourteen or fifteen, my school organized a trip to Russia, and I really, really, really wanted to go, but of course my parents couldn’t afford it. So I did the honest and decent thing and tried to get sponsorship, did odd jobs, you know, and I raised about thirty quid, which wouldn’t have even got me to the airport.”

  “So you started scamming?” I pictured a fourteen-year-old Sam, all skinny legs and big brown eyes, conning money off people. The image was kind of adorable.

  “I did. And I got my money, and I went to Russia—which, incidentally, is why I picked that for Natalya—and that was it. And after seeing what happens to you when you work like a dog all your life and never get a penny ahead, I decided that wasn’t going to happen to me.”

  “That’s very touching,” I said. “Let me guess, you’re saving up to buy your parents a decent retirement?”

  “I’m saving up to buy their house off them,” she said, “so they can live in it for free.” She paused and looked embarrassed. “And yes, set up a retirement fund too.”

  “And not a penny will ever go in your pocket?”

  She gave me a knowing look. “I’m not stupid,” she said.

  “I never for a moment thought you were,” I said, which was almost true.

  I pulled her back into my arms, where she felt safe and warm and right, and enjoyed feeling her skin against mine, her heart thumping in her chest, the scent of that rose shampoo filling my brain.

  “Are you really retiring?” she asked.

  “Yep. Soon as this is over. Last mission, bosh, I’m out.”

  “What will you do?”

  The prospect of long, empty, boring days stretched ahead of me.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “Go back to the army?”

  “God, no.”

  There was a silence, during which I could almost feel Sam working up to ask me something.

  “Nate…”

  “Yes?”

  “Was it… Did you become a spy…because of your mother?”

  I closed my eyes. “No,” I said. “And yes. That’s partly why I joined the army, but then I also joined up because the kids’ home was kicking me out and no one else was offering me three squares a day.”

  Then I heard what I’d just said and winced, bracing myself for the wave of sympathy.

  “Kids’ home?”

  “Yeah. My nan died when I was nine, and since some trigger-happy terrorist had already shot my mother, there wasn’t anyone else.”

  “Your father…?”

  “Buggered off before I was born.”

  Another silence.

  “Wow,” Sam said. “You must think I’m such a brat wailing my parents have been badly treated.”

  “They have,” I said. “At least they were smart enough to stay away from terrorists.”

  My heart beat. I sighed.

  “And the army,” I said. “It’s easier to blame the IRA, but no one really knows who shot her. Wrong place, wrong time. Let’s just say I have a strong dislike of people who kill other people to make a point.”

  “Like Daz?” Sam asked softly.

  “Yeah,” I sighed again. “Like Daz.”

  I listened to her breathe a while longer. The night before could be really rough, no sleep, nerves, the sure and certain knowledge that there was a really big chance you might die in the morning. And you know, right now, that bothered me way more than it ever had done before.

  “I don’t want to talk about Daz,” I said.

  “When are you going in? Tomorrow?”

  “Whenever they call me.”

  “Like a dog.”

  “Yep,” I said. Dogs get put to sleep if they bite. Cheerful thought.

  “Will you have to kill him?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know.” Probably. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Sam snuggled closer. “Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” she said, and I could only agree.

  Chapter Seven

  Luke called me just before dawn to say the last shipment had arrived and that he’d got several of Daz’s men in custody.

  “Time to move in,” he said, “before King Daz hears his shipment has been confiscated.” He hesitated a tiny second. “You don’t have to come—”

  I thought of the letter bomb and said, “I do. I’m on my way.”

  I rolled out of bed into the cold air, away from Sam, and started pulling on my clothes. Shirt with bloodstain on it. Kevlar. Gun brace.

  Sam was still in the bed where I’d left her, all warm and soft and deliciously rumpled. She watched me silently. When I slotted Belinda into her holster, Sam’s gaze never left the gun.

  “I—” I began, but she shook her head immediately.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You can’t say anything that won’t sound like goodbye.”

  I held her gaze for a moment. “Merry Christmas,” I said, and she just said, “Is it?”

  So I turned to go, feeling like hell, hating Daz and my job and the world in general, and when my hand was on the doorknob, Sam’s voice called out to me.

  “Nate. Come back, okay?”

  I glanced back at her, saw the fear in her eyes and nodded. And left.

  Daz’s London pad was only a short drive from Sam’s hotel. At least, it was in the early hours of Christmas morning. Parked down the street, out of sight of Daz’s building, were a couple of vans containing, I guessed, big men in black body armor with very large guns.

  “Merry Christmas,” Luke greeted me sourly as I got out of the car.

  “Yep, season of goodwill, blah blah. Must be a quip there somewhere but I’m really not in the mood,” I said as we moved towards the apartment building.

  “Time to find out who’s naughty and nice?” Luke suggested.

  “Yeah, that’ll do.”

  Behind us, the black ops teams spread out and did that commando thing they do. Luke nodded to a few of them; he used to be SAS. Probably went to boarding school with them, played rugby or something.

  The security guards were taken care of with tranquillizer darts as we passed through the silent lobby and took the stairs to Daz’s penthouse, whereupon the early-morning silence died a death.

  The black ops teams crashed into the apartment and immediately took it over, scattering like a swarm of bees. There were thumps and yells as we followed them in and made for Daz’s bedroom. He kept a staff, plus various shady types, living with him. For protection, I guessed.

  They weren’t protecting him much. Shouts of “Clear!” rang from every room—including the bedroom where Daz ought to have been.

  Luke and I glanced at each other, swore inventively and moved in to see for ourselves. The bedroom was empty, the sheets thrown back, the curtains billowing in the breeze from the open balcony doors.

  “Shit,” Luke said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I turned to the black ops guy behind me. “Seriously, was no one watching the back of the place?”

  He looked as sheepish as one can while wearing a helmet with visor.

  “Laptop,” Luke said, seeing it open on the desk. I went out to the balcony, just to check if Daz was hanging from the fire escape, but he was nowhere to be seen. Fresh, cold air blew in my face, a breeze straight off the river, and across the way I could see into an apartment decked out with a very tasteful and expensive-looking Christmas tree.

  “Been checking
phone records,” Luke called. “Had a tap on a line in… Lincolnshire. Call received five minutes ago from a central London number, a networked—Nate? Where’re you going?”

  “South Ken,” I yelled as I skidded out of the apartment. “Sam.”

  If I’d driven fast on my way to Daz’s, I was going at warp speeds on the way back. Dammit, dammit, dammit! How could I have not realized he was tapping their phone? Why didn’t I get anyone to check? What the hell was Sam doing calling her parents in the middle of the sodding night, anyway?

  As soon as I turned my back…as soon as I went after Daz. Dammit, couldn’t she have waited until I got back?

  The hotel lobby was deserted apart from a sleepy clerk who watched me fly by with vague interest. The elevator took bloody years to arrive. Thoughts, images, horrible fantasies of blood, Sam’s blood, flickered through my brain like a hideous zoetrope. By the time I lurched along the corridor to her room, my heart was hammering in my throat and my head was light with fear.

  I’d never felt like this before. I sure as hell never wanted to feel like it again.

  Her door was open. Just standing open. The frame was splintered and broken. I said a swift prayer to every god I’d ever heard of and swung round into the room, Belinda first, ready to shoot Daz on sight.

  But I had absolutely no need to, because Sam had already stabbed him in the crotch with her trusty fork, wrapped the phone cord around his wrists and was standing over him, aiming Daz’s own gun at his head.

  I stood. I stared.

  She was completely naked.

  I stood. I stared.

  “I asked Father Christmas for a pony,” Sam said, kicking Daz with her bare foot. “I got an ass.” She turned to look at me. “Guess I should have been nicer, huh?”

  I stood. I stared.

  “Nate?” Sam said, and I slowly put Belinda away, shot Daz with a tranquillizer—I’d have preferred a bullet, but they get really pissy about that sort of thing when you’re giving evidence—and stepped over him to Sam.

  Then I kissed her, long and hard, lightheaded with relief.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said against my mouth, and I smiled.