Chapter Twenty-Eight

Boxing Day

Misty was awake with the dawn chorus next morning.

‘Wasamatter?’ Lori rolled over as her niece poked her hopefully in the ribs. ‘Sweetie, it’s still dark.’

‘But it is morning, it’s getting light,’ Misty said persuasively. ‘I want to go out and make a snowman. And Griff needs go to pee pee.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Lori grabbed the clock and squinted at it. Ten to seven, which probably did count as morning? She crawled out of bed and found her dressing gown.

If Misty was early, Drew was earlier. He’d done his thing with the stove again, and there was coffee brewed. Lori fell on it with a moan of relief. Normally she was quite lively in the morning. She didn’t know why she was so tired. Well actually she did. She had been dreaming and she wasn’t sure, but she thought that Drew may have featured in some of the dreams.

Hoping that any pinkness in her face would be put down to the heat of the coffee, she started to mix up batter for breakfast pancakes. While they ate, Misty and Drew were in deep discussion over the name of the toy dog.

‘Rex, Sniffer, Shep, Spot.’ That was Drew.

Misty gurgled with laughter and spread more chocolate sauce on her pancake. ‘He can’t be Spot, he doesn’t have spots.’

‘Fluffy, Woofie, Snowy.’

‘Snowy is good.’ Misty put her head on one side to consider.

Lori reached to wipe a smear of chocolate off her face, before it spread itself any further. Drew was giving all his attention to her niece and had barely said ten words to her. Were they both avoiding each other? Suddenly the idea made her laugh. She looked out at the garden, becoming visible as the sun rose, and then at the toy dog, standing at the end of the kitchen island. ‘I think he looks like a Snowball,’ she decided.

Misty clapped her hands. ‘I like Snowball.’ She grabbed the dog, with mercifully chocolate-free fingers, and cuddled him to her chest, crooning, ‘Snowball, Snowball, Snowball.’ She looked up over the dog’s furry head. ‘Can we go outside and build a snowman now?’

‘I think you’d better get dressed first.’

The radio was still giving travel warnings for their corner of Wales. While Misty was rummaging optimistically around the mud room, hoping to unearth a bucket and spade for snowman making, Lori found Drew standing at the open front door, looking over the valley.

Still white, as far as the eye could see.

‘I don’t think you’ll be leaving today, either,’ she said softly.

He turned towards her, frustration flaring in his eyes and the tense lines of his body. ‘We know that some traffic is moving. If I could just make it to a main road, hitch a ride—’

‘There would be no guarantee that you could find a lift. Not one to take you any distance, anyway. In this weather most motorists are probably not going very far. And it’s Boxing Day – no public transport.’

He huffed. ‘You’re probably right.’ The frustration was still there.

‘So stay.’

‘Looks like I will have to.’ He was silent for a moment, mind obviously elsewhere. ‘Sorry.’ His attention came back. ‘That sounded ungrateful. And I am grateful, but I said I would go as soon as I could.’

‘But that was before the blizzard. The forecast said it would be warmer today and there will be a thaw. Tomorrow things will be getting back to normal. Everything will be easier. Stay and help Misty with her snowman.’

The grin was reluctant. It still did strange things to her abdomen. ‘How can I resist an invitation like that?’

Drew was as good at constructing snowmen as he was at putting together fairy castles. Recognising her limitations, Lori found a carrot for a nose and some sprouts for eyes, and an old hat and scarf in one of the sheds to dress him in. Then they threw snowballs and made snow angels. The sun had come up and the temperature of the air was much warmer. Lori shaded her eyes with a hand to look up at the roof of the barn. Water was dripping off the eaves. ‘It’s thawing.’

Shooing Misty inside to dry them both off, Lori left Drew digging away the snow that had piled up around her car. Tomorrow he probably would be able to leave.

They spent an energetic afternoon, rampaging down the hill behind the house on a vintage toboggan Drew had found hanging on the side wall of the carport. By early evening Misty, overexcited and overtired, was hovering on the edge of a tantrum, mouth and chin stubborn, eyes narrow in a flushed face. Feeling partly responsible and therefore guilty, Drew faded over to the chair beside the window. He knew enough about kids to stay out of the exchange he realised would be coming. Coward.

Lori was giving her niece cool stare. ‘Time to go upstairs, I think.’

‘Don’t want to go upstairs. Want to play some more.’

‘You can play, but quietly. Upstairs. Pick out what you want to take with you.’

Drew sat still and kept quiet as Misty trailed around the room collecting her treasures, before dragging herself up the stairs, one reluctant step at a time.

Lori gave him a distracted smile and followed her.

Drew settled himself more comfortably, watching the night gather over the garden and the hill beyond. The steady drip of water and the occasional thump of dislodging snow confirmed the thaw. Clouds were rolling in, obscuring the sky.

No star-gazing tonight.

Tomorrow the holiday would be over and the world would be coming back to life. And he would be leaving. Reality check.

You think?

He looked around the barn, at the twinkling tree, at a fluffy pink cardigan abandoned on a chair, at Griff conducting some sort of stalking game with the catnip mouse in a shady corner. He’d slid into this so easily. Stuff he’d been running from for as long as he could remember.

A different reality.

New, with disturbing knowledge.

Yeah – like you don’t have to be risking your neck in order to feel alive?

He looked down at his hands. At the damaged fingers and the chain, still wrapped around his wrist. He’d spent nearly twenty years throwing himself into things that might kill him and now someone else was giving it a try. Irony. Capital I.

He’d not done too bad a job in pushing that fact away, but now he had to face it. Once he stepped outside this … cocoon … whoever it was would be waiting. Awareness settled, like a cold lump, in his abdomen.

You don’t know that they intended to kill you.

Yeah?

He had a plan now, of sorts, and he knew who he could go to for help, but that didn’t come anywhere near the churn of emotion gnawing at him. He hadn’t cared enough and now someone – a stranger, a friend, had called his bluff. In spades. Life is precious when someone else wants it.

He took in a deep shuddering breath. He’d done crazy things and been in some tough places, but it had always been his choice. Now the dark pit of someone else’s will was drawing him in. You have no control over this.

His heart was thumping hard, a surge of useless adrenaline.

Fear. It’s called fear.

Slowly he opened and closed his hands, watching the motion until his heart fell back to its normal rhythm. A potential murderer was out there, staking out the shadows. But there were things he could still control, and the highest on the list was protecting Lori and Misty. There must be no connection for anyone to find.

These two days never existed.

He’d walk out of here tomorrow, leaving no trace. After that, if he survived … He shook his head against the bleakness of the prospect. Tomorrow was for leaving. Tonight …

‘Drew? Where are you?’ Lori was coming down the stairs.

‘Over here.’ Darkness had fallen around him, enveloping him so softly that he hadn’t noticed.

She came towards him, turning on lights as she passed. ‘Were you asleep?’

‘No, just thinking.’ He looked up at the gallery. ‘Everything all right up there?’

‘Yes, eventually. She’s out like a light. Lori held up crossed fingers. ‘Hope it lasts. Are you hungry?’

He thought about it. Tea with Misty had been a while ago. ‘Yes.’

‘I put a couple of potatoes in the oven. I can warm some beans. And there’s cheese.’ She hesitated. ‘We could open a bottle of wine?’

He stood up, stepping back into the light and the moment, into the evening and the barn and the woman in front of him. Now he could smell the savoury scent of cooking. ‘It sounds like a plan.’

The meal was simple but the wine was something else. An Australian Chardonnay. He’d tasted a few similar in a winery in Australia and said so.

‘It was a Christmas present. From Misty’s mother, actually.’ Lori was absently fingering the label on the bottle. ‘You travel a lot for your books. Australia, was that research?’

Which is how he came to be telling her about Australia and Indonesia, and the Rockies and the Isle of Mull. He was still talking when they’d finished the washing up and taken coffee and Christmas cake to the chairs in front of the small wood burner in the main room. Somehow he found himself telling her the real stuff. Not the carefully chosen quotes from press releases, or the interview sound bites, or the polished and edited after-dinner speeches, but the real experiences, like waking up in a tent to find a scorpion on his chest – bowel loosening – or falling from a boulder on a Swiss mountain – bone breaking. He even told her about the debacle of the train. ‘I must be boring you rigid.’

She looked up from staring into the fire, watching the flames. ‘No, it’s interesting. What did you do – about the train?’

‘When I found out that there was no way I was going to be able to stand up on the roof of the thing when it was stationary, let alone when it was moving?’ The grin was shame-faced. ‘Used my imagination – I relocated that section of the book from a steam train in the Wild West to a cog railway on an undiscovered moon of Mars, messed about with gravity and gave my hero superhuman upper body strength.’ He flexed his shoulders in memory of a week in post-train agony. ‘I think I fixed it.’

She looked startled. ‘You do that, just make it up – I thought I read somewhere you research everything?’

‘I try, but in this case the reality showed that I couldn’t do it, and if I couldn’t do it, then the ordinary Joe who was supposed to be my hero couldn’t do it either, so I created somewhere and someone that could.’

‘Oh.’ She was looking at the fire again, thoughtful. The flicker of the flame played over her face. Her mouth. Something in his gut, and not just his gut, tightened as he imagined the taste. He wanted to kiss her. ‘Lori—’

‘Where—’ Their voices clashed. ‘Sorry what were you going to say?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ It was a very bad idea, anyway. ‘You go ahead.’

‘I was just going to ask where you were going next?’

‘I don’t know. I just handed in one book – the one with the train.’ He stopped. Normally there was another idea already circling, waiting for its landing slot, but this time there was nothing. He’d even been wondering about taking a holiday. ‘Maybe the next one will be set in the Brecon Beacons.’

‘In a snowstorm?’ She was laughing. ‘I suppose your hero would have to build himself an igloo or something.’

‘Probably.’

She was curled up in her chair, chin on hand, lit by the warm light of the fire. A log crumbled and fell, in a shower of sparks. Drew leaned into his chair, steepling his fingers, watching the flames. Watching her. They really didn’t need to talk, but some imp kept his tongue moving. ‘Are you planning another of your stories?’

‘What?’ Her head came up, eyes startled.

‘Misty’s fairytales?’

‘Oh, yes. No. Really, I’m just looking at the fire. Ideas drift in and out.’

He remembered yesterday that she’d been writing in a notebook. ‘It was a good story,’ he offered encouragingly.

‘Thank you.’ The words were clipped and formal. Somehow he had put a foot wrong somewhere. He waited in silence and saw her relax. The tension in his own shoulders eased too.

They sat quietly, looking into the firelight. It felt strange, even a little disorientating. The after-effects of what the papers would probably call ‘his ordeal’? Not that any papers were going to get hold of the details, if he could help it.

A wave of cold washed over him, despite the warmth of the fire. The hut had been all too real. Somehow it made the research trips, however dangerous and risky in themselves, seem kind of shallow. Playing around with big boys’ toys, big boys’ adventures. Yes, but it does put food on the table.

He looked up, away from the flames, as Lori uncurled herself from her chair and walked over to the kitchen. ‘I just remembered.’ She came back holding a box. ‘Chocolates.’ She put the box down on the low table between the chairs and they rummaged happily amongst the wrappings. ‘Now this is Christmas.’ Lori’s eyes glittered as she popped the cherry liqueur into her mouth.

No, this is Christmas. A warm quiet house, a child sleeping upstairs, a beautiful woman with eyes dancing in the firelight.

And none of it is yours.