Honey stopped suddenly and whirled around, causing Tessa to crash into her. A devious smile turned up one corner of her mouth.
“You are adorable.”
Tessa’s face heated up with a flare of temper. She didn’t want to be treated like a mascot for a bunch of sketchy Enigma agents. The thought had occurred to her more than once that she’d become a living, breathing dose of a strong antidepressant for the group. She’d been told on more than one occasion she was their conscience. They even called her their “good girl.”
“Our chariot awaits, Cinderella.” Honey placed her hand on the door handle of the Cadillac Escalade and opened it. “Hop in. I’ll get this running in no time.”
“Honey, I think this car belongs to the FBI. Look at the license plate!”
She slid in and explored for a set of keys. When she found a keyring under the driver’s seat, she held it up like she’d found the Holy Grail. “Come on. We’ve got to get going.” Honey reached over and picked up a cell phone off the passenger floorboard. “Another Christmas miracle.”
“We can call Chase and Enigma. Maybe the Grass Valley Police.” She reached in and tried to relieve her of the phone, only to have it jerked away. “I need to see how they are.”
“You need to get in the car.”
“Give me the phone.”
Honey turned the key in the ignition and put it in reverse then backed it out after pulling the door shut. Tessa ran after her and banged her fist on the hood, when the car abruptly stopped. Her feet hit a patch of ice, and she found herself sprawled near the front tire. The sound of the engine revving up caused her to scramble to her feet, only to fall again next to the driver’s door. The glass squeaked down, dropping a pile of snow on Tessa’s upturned face.
“Yes?” Honey said coolly. “Can I help you?”
Slapping at the snow over her eyes and nose, Tessa tried once more to rise. She glared at her new partner in crime then made her way around the car to climb inside.
“That’s a good girl.”
“Shut up.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Chase inspected their handiwork. He had to admit, the boys possessed a devious side he admired. Would it be too soon to put them on the radar of the folks at Langley or the Pentagon? Even their little sister, Heather, came up with a few good ideas to stop the warmongers that would soon storm the castle. He caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, standing behind him with their arms crossed over their chests, feet spread apart and their lower lips stuck out, resembling MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines. All they needed were the sunglasses. He realized he also resembled the famous general, and the children were imitating him, not MacArthur.
“You guys got any sunglasses?” He walked over and pulled his out of the inside pocket of the leather jacket he’d worn earlier and slowly placed them on his nose.
They nodded and scampered upstairs to their rooms. It sounded a great deal like thunder as they rejoined him at the bottom of the steps. Each one put on their glasses as if ready for inspection. Sean Patrick’s were mirrored aviators, much like his. Daniel’s were black rimmed with a subtle insignia that indicated they were either connected to Harry Potter or the rebellion in Star Wars.
And then there were Heather’s. She struggled to get them on straight, so Chase reached down and gave them a twist to adjust the lopsided shape.
“What are these, Heather?”
“My sunglasses.”
The boys snickered.
“They look like bunny ears.”
“That’s because they are. I have a hat to match. Wanna see?”
“No. Do you have any real sunglasses that are a little more intimidating?”
“Intimidating? I have some reindeer ones my Mimi sent.” She smiled up at him with expectation.
“I think I’ll get you guys real glasses for Christmas. The kind special forces wear.”
“Cool,” the boys chorused. Heather hesitated but joined in their excitement.
He refocused on their creations. With any luck, whoever planned on coming after him would be slowed down long enough for him to disarm them. Would there be one or two? Thugs or professionals? Armed or brute force? And who would be behind such an attack? Although it was true, he’d made enemies over the years, a lot of them were no longer sucking oxygen. The others were in a secret black site enjoying the repetitive questions of interrogators with numbers instead of names. The possibility meant armed thugs hired to do someone else’s dirty work.
“Chase, our outside lights just went dark,” Sean said using his index finger to peek behind a sheer curtain. The inside lights flickered three times before also going dark.
Chapter Twelve
Get away from the window,” Chase ordered. Sean Patrick complied and joined his siblings. He moved more cautiously to the window and took a look. What if they opened fire and the kids got in the way? He reached for his cell phone as he rejoined them in the hallway. “Where’s my phone?” He stretched his neck to peer into the kitchen.
The boys shrugged. Heather stuck out her lip and batted her eyes.
“Heather, do you have my phone? I laid it down on the countertop in the kitchen.” He stroked her hair and forced himself to sound calm. “You’re not in trouble.”
She nodded and pointed to the powder room. “It jumped out of my hand into the potty.”
Chase hurried toward the room with the kids, all following while screeching, “Yuk. Gross. Ewww.”
The black rectangle floated like a dead goldfish.
“I flushed first, Chasey. Promise.”
He reached in for the rescue. Water dripped from the phone. Even though Enigma had these made to continue to operate under severe conditions, he wasn’t sure something like death by potty meant a sure thing of resurrection. Grabbing a towel, he dried the phone off before trying to connect to the outside world.
Nothing.
Maybe it needed to reboot after it got over the shock of a little girl’s clumsiness and curiosity. He checked the landline, but it, too, was dead. Someone was already closing in to do him harm. The lights flickered, and the three children jammed up against him, circling his legs with their arms.
“Okay, knights.”
Heather cleared her throat with irritation.
“And, Your Majesty, it’s time to take action. I’m going to get Sean’s baseball bat and take a look around outside. As soon as I shut the door, you lock it and barricade yourself in your mom’s room. I’ll climb up the trellis and come in the window when I’m done.”
The boys nodded like good little soldiers.
“Push the dresser in front of the door. I already took out the drawers so it would be lighter, but it still may take all of you. Then put the drawers back in and move whatever you can in front of the dresser. Understand?” More nods. “If everything is all clear, I’ll sneak into your neighbors’, the Ervins, house and call the police.”
The Ervins also worked for Enigma, but Tessa’s husband remained clueless to that fact. They’d become loving grandparents to these kids and watched after them when their mother did work for the president. The extra layer of protection helped Tessa to take the president up on his job offer. They never passed up a chance to watch the children, being without any of their own. The couple had planned the outing for weeks to celebrate their anniversary and nearly canceled when Tessa needed to pick her parents up at the airport. Chase had volunteered to run interference. He remembered thinking; how hard could it be? Now, he knew.
“They don’t have a landline anymore, Chase,” Daniel announced. “They got tired of those robo-calls trying to forgive their college loan debt or was it credit card debt?” He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I’m betting they took their cell phones.”
The sound of Tessa’s large wind chimes banged against the side of the house, followed by a thud. Chase had slipped out earlier and positioned it to a trip wire to alert him of any trouble.
“It’s showtime.” He slipped back into his coat and pulled
a dark sock hat he’d found in the closet, over his head. “Are we good?”
He got three thumbs-up. Sean Patrick pulled out a walkie-talkie from under his shirt and handed it to Chase. “I set the channels in case you need us.” The voice sounded so matter-of-fact, he had to remind himself Sean Patrick was still a kid. “Remember, you’re Silent Knight, I’m Die Hard.”
“Die Hard? You shouldn’t be watching those movies.”
“Mom said we could watch Christmas movies. She didn’t say which ones,” he smirked.
“I’m thinking she meant A Charlie Brown Christmas or Miracle on 34th Street.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Daniel is Yoda since he seems to know everything.”
“What about me?” Heather clapped her hands in delight.
Chase tapped her on the nose. “You are Princess Moonlight of the Everlasting Forest.” He zipped up his coat and headed to the front door.
The electricity remained off for now. The lights on the Christmas tree no longer sparkled, but the lights on the mantel garland, and fake candles in the window, run by batteries gave enough light to make the kids feel a little more comfortable about being separated from him. The decorative lights on the outdoor shrubs and trees had been extinguished. He picked up the bat and headed to the door with the kids at his heels.
“When I go out…”
“We bolt the door and run to Mommy’s room,” Heather chirped.
Chase felt pride surge through him. All this warm, fuzzy emotion messed with his no-nonsense, take-charge way of doing things. The people he usually worked with all had a job and executed it to perfection. Even Tessa finally showed improvement. But these kids were a liability. So many things could go wrong. If anything happened to them…
The bolt locked behind him. He waited to leave the wraparound porch after listening for anything out of the ordinary. Since he knew where the noise he’d heard inside the house originated, he moved in that direction, his baseball bat ready. But there was nothing but a few footprints indicating whoever had been lurking wore boots. The wind chime now lay in a tangled mess on the juniper.
A second pair of boot prints appeared not more than three steps away, leading toward the backyard. Careful to keep an eye on the area behind him in case another person circled around, Chase continued until he reached the white picket fence. The gate had been pushed open, wide enough for a man to slip through, causing the snow to mound up, preventing it from being completely open.
Now he knew several things. Whoever these men were, they might be too lazy or out of shape to jump over the low fence. They didn’t know him, or they would have expected him to be alert to changes in his environment. Whoever hired them must have neglected to tell them he’d been an Army Ranger then later a Delta Force officer. Could this be a warning of things to come? Did the enemy expect him to take out these problems and let his guard down? Knowing you were being hunted meant you second-guessed everything until you made mistakes. He’d been taking care of problems long enough to know how to avoid such traps. Whoever decided to snoop around would learn a hard lesson tonight.
He squeezed through the open gate and followed the footprints. When he neared the corner of the house, a man stepped out, looking toward the yard. Chase stepped up and tapped him on the shoulder. The man spun around and yelped at the same time. The intruder’s eyes went cold, and he’d started to lift an arm when he received an uppercut to the chin with a baseball bat, causing the man to spew several teeth into the air. Before the man could catch his breath, Chase delivered a kick to the man’s crotch, sending him into spasms of pain while he groped himself. Before he could make much noise to alert anyone else, Chase squatted down and shoved the man’s sock hat in his mouth.
“Take that out of your mouth, and my next swing is at your head.” Chase let him moan and nod he understood. Tears trailed from the corners of his eyes as he continued to rub his crotch and roll from side to side. “How many more are here?” When he didn’t answer right away, Chase reared back with the bat, and the man held up three fingers.
This information told him whoever sent these guys knew one or two people wouldn’t be able to take him down. The man before him appeared to be in his early thirties in spite of the Mohawk haircut. Chase grabbed him by the front of his lightweight jacket, quite a choice of wardrobe in the current weather and another clue the man was an idiot then jerked him to his feet. He shook his head, trying to loosen the sock hat in his mouth as Chase pushed him, face-first into a tree limb, heavy with snow. It immediately dropped onto the stranger. Pulling out the zip ties left over from earlier in the evening, he quickly secured his hands before attaching them to another limb with a bicycle chain he’d found in the garage.
The man-made guttural protests, probably in hopes of alerting his partners. Unfortunately for him, his captor lost patience and gave him a slam of the bat to the kidneys, making him lose footing and causing even more snow to fall onto his uncovered head.
“Now, be a good boy and I’ll come back for you in a bit. No more noise or I’ll open your pants and drop snow down there on your manhood. I figure you got about thirty minutes before hypothermia sets in, not including frostbite. Are we good?”
The man gave a weak nod of submission as Chase moved to the end of the house, bat in hand.
Pausing at the corner, he stole a quick glance into the yard, now blanketed with a deep layer of snow. No indication of another presence, only footsteps leading back to a former storage building Tessa had turned into a place she called She-Shed-Shangri-La. He had never understood why she spent money on the project until tonight. Grabbing a few minutes to herself probably kept her from going postal.
He crouched down and stayed to the side of the yard where play structures and pine trees gave him cover enough to approach. When traces of other footsteps disappeared, he noticed they’d circled back toward the house and around to the opposite side from where he’d left the first guy. Banging on the upstairs windows of Tessa’s bedroom brought him to a halt.
The children were all banging on the glass, yelling and pointing. He felt a sudden rush of anger at their noisemaking until Sean Patrick managed to raise the window and shout, “Behind you!”
In the middle of a quick pivot, the smack of a shovel hit him upside the head and he fell to the ground. A fog settled in his brain.
A gruff voice said, “Leave him. He ain’t goin’ anywhere. We need to shut those kids up before they wake the dead. We’ll finish this in a few minutes.”
Darkness moved over his eyes, and he fought to avoid unconsciousness. He got to his hands and knees and shook off the pain on his ear. They had only stunned him by hitting him in a sensitive area. It took effort, but he managed to get to his feet. The bat lay deep in the snow, and he was grateful they hadn’t taken it. He staggered at first, trying to follow their steps then stopped before rounding the house to see if the children were still watching, but they weren’t. He could scamper up the lattice, but stopping the intruders before they entered the house would be a better option.
The snowdrifts were deeper here because of the wind and slowed him down. The footsteps stopped under the dining room windows—where the glass had been broken out and had made little patterns in the snow below. His heart jumped into his throat.
The intruders were in the house with the children.
Chapter Thirteen
There’s no answer,” Tessa groaned. “Why isn’t Chase picking up?” She squeezed the phone and shook it. “What was I thinking, leaving him in charge of my kids?”
Honey started the car. “Ahh, purrs like a kitten.” After backing out of the spot, she eased into the lane between the parking lots. “I do love your American motor cars.” She pulled into an empty area and contacted the GPS service for best directions to Grass Valley. The news wasn’t good. While she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, Honey stared out the windshield, her eyes glazing over.
“We can’t continue to sit here. Someone might recognize the car and then we’re to
ast. Probably has a tracking device on it.” She tried dialing Chase again but got the same result. “They’re in trouble. I know it.” She rubbed her face in frustration. “Who would be after him, and how did you find out the information?”
“Connections,” she mumbled as her finger-drumming continued. “Need-to-know basis.”
“You’re no different than all the others at Enigma, all cloak and dagger.”
“Call your buddies at Enigma, and maybe they can send support. Their weather in Sacramento has to be better than here. We’ll go as far as we can.”
“They aren’t going to let us onto the highway without tire chains and four-wheel drive.” She dialed Enigma headquarters and got a no-service signal along with a message of a low battery. “Nothing. This thing is worthless. Someone has my phone and can possibly call the moon and have enough battery life to go into the next millennium.”
The finger-drumming stopped. “I sense frustration.”
“Ya think?” Tessa banged the back of her head against the headrest. Her eyes caught movement ahead of them at the same time Honey put the car in reverse and looked through the rear window.
“We got company. Hold on.” Honey whipped the car around as if she’d done this kind of thing before.
“Oh. My. Gosh,” Tessa yelled as a dark Hummer barreled toward them. “Go faster. Faster.”
“Glove box. Get it out.”
Tessa wasn’t sure what “it” was, but she followed orders. When their car swerved hard right to make it go forward, her head bounced off the window. “Ouch!” Once more she fumbled with the glove box and found a Smith & Wesson 1076 with several cartridges. She’d practiced on one early in her training. She grabbed it as the rear window shattered with gunshots. A fleeting thought of how Honey knew a weapon would be in there would be addressed later.
“They’re coming up fast. Do you know how to use that?” Honey demanded.
Tessa felt as if she’d slipped into a dream state, where this was the result of not enough sleep and too much stress.
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