Nick of Time. Elle James

against hers.

      “They’ll be my father’s.” Mary pulled free of his fingers.

      He maintained his hold. “Are you sure?”

      “Yes, of course.” She held up the tissue where words had been scrawled in pencil. “That’s his writing as well.” She squinted as she read the message. “The past holds the secrets. What do you suppose that means?”

      “I don’t know, but let me have the key. Maybe we can lift a print off it.” He snatched a tissue from the box on the dresser and carefully lifted the key from the box. “I’ll be right back.” Nick gave her a quick glance and then strode across the hall to his room, where he retrieved a fingerprint kit from his suitcase.

      “I tell you, it’s my father’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere.” Mary followed him across the hall and closed the door behind them.

      “Still, it doesn’t hurt to check prints against the databases.”

      “My father is not a criminal.” Mary crossed her arms over her chest, her chin jutting out at a stubborn angle. “Aren’t those databases geared toward criminals?”

      Nick would rather she stayed back in her own room, but given the circumstances, he didn’t throw her out. Instead, he got down to the business of lifting the prints. He’d send them to Royce back in D.C. and see if they could find a match.

      “I get it. You’re not going to answer my question, are you?”

      “Nope.”

      Mary wrapped her arms around the middle of her cottoncandy pink bathrobe. “Are you a cop or FBI agent?”

      He glanced up for a brief moment, a flash of memory pulling his lips into a tight line. “Former FBI.”

      “So you’re CIA or something like that?”

      His attention returned to the fingerprints. “Something like that.”

      She shook her head. “I’m standing here in my bathrobe talking to a stranger, and I don’t even know if he’s one of the good guys or the bad guys.” Mary had her bottom lip between her teeth, her brows furrowed into a worried frown.

      “I like to think I’m one of the good guys,” he said, returning his concentration back to his task. For the most part. Though he’d crossed the lines more times than he cared to admit.

      “Yeah, sure. And I guess it was a coincidence you showed up at the airport when I did, my father disappeared and someone broke into my room.” Her hands fisted and she propped them on her slim hips. “How do I know you’re one of the good guys? Do you have credentials to prove it?”

      He completed his task before he stood. “I’m going to wash my hands, and then I’ll tell you what I can.”

      “I get it, you’re not going to tell me anything.”

      “Pretty much.” He pushed past her, strode through the doorway and down the hall, where he washed his hands in the communal bathroom. All the while he picked through what he knew to come up with what he could tell her. He hoped it was enough to appease her. As an SOS agent, he wasn’t at liberty to divulge his true duties. By doing so, he placed his entire organization in jeopardy and he wouldn’t do that, no matter how pretty the girl was. And Mary was a knockout.

      MARY PACED inside Nick’s room. Despite her misgivings, she couldn’t or wouldn’t believe the man was one of the bad guys. So far, he’d been nothing but polite and helpful. Although she didn’t believe he was on the wrong side, she knew he was holding back information and she meant to extract it, one way or another. That he’d avoided the truth made her angry. She stoked her anger, letting it build with each passing minute.

      When Nick walked back into the room, she braced herself, ready for anything. She held the gun he’d carried in both hands and pointed it at him. “Now, tell me what you know or I’ll shoot you.”

      Nick smiled, shaking his head. “You won’t shoot me.”

      His patronizing attitude only made her angrier. “You know so much about me, what makes you think I won’t?”

      He closed the door behind him and then lunged for the weapon, yanking it from her grasp. “For one, it isn’t loaded.”

      Deflated and feeling on less firm footing, Mary straightened her back and flicked her drying hair over her shoulder. “So, I wouldn’t have shot you anyway. Just give me answers, not more lies.”

      “Have a seat.”

      Mary glanced around the room, realizing the only place she could sit was on the bed. His bed. Tingling awareness started in her chest, spread south into her belly and lower still. “No, thank you. I prefer to stand.”

      He nodded, his expression hardening into an impenetrable mask. “I came because a dead man in Brooklyn, New York, left a note to help Santa.”

      “A dead man?” The blood drained from Mary’s face and a hand fluttered to her chest. “I never knew my father had friends in New York. I don’t understand.”

      “Neither do I, but if the man took the time to send help to Santa in North Pole, I thought it important enough to check into. Given that your father is now missing, there might be credence to his request.”

      Mary sat on the bed and rested her head in her hands, willing a sudden attack of nausea to abate before she made a bigger fool of herself. When she finally had her stomach in check, she glanced up. “That still doesn’t tell me who you are and why you were with a dead man in New York.”

      “Let’s just say we received an urgent call from him but arrived too late. By the time we got there, he was already dead.”

      “We?”

      A smile tipped the edges of his lips, the effect sending danger signals ricocheting through Mary’s brain.

      “Never mind the ‘we.’”

      “Argh!” She stomped her foot. “I don’t like all the secrets. Can you at least tell me who the dead man was?”

      “Frank Richards. Does the name ring any bells?”

      Mary scratched through her memory. “I’ve never met a man by that name, nor has Dad mentioned it. My dad and I are very close.”

      “What about your stepmother?”

      Her jaw tightened. “She’s only been in the picture for the past couple months. Before that, my father and I had no secrets from each other.”

      “What do you know about his life before he moved here?”

      “My dad’s lived in North Pole ever since I was born.”

      “Where did he live before that?”

      “I don’t know, I never asked. I knew he’d been in the military, but he didn’t like to talk about it.” For someone who loved her father more than any man in her life, she didn’t know him very well, did she? Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed hard.

      “What about your mother?”

      “She was from Fairbanks, born and raised.”

      “Was?” he prodded, his voice low, but insistent.

      Mary turned to stare at the curtained window. “She died fourteen years ago in a car wreck.” Her death had been the reason Mary had stayed in North Pole as long as she did. Her father had loved his first wife completely. Olivia Claus had been a shining beacon, a consistently happy woman, content in her life in Alaska, thrilled to be a part of Christmas Towne and in love with her husband. And Santa had loved her more than life itself.

      When Olivia Claus died, Santa needed Mary more than ever.

      For the next twelve years, she’d concentrated on making her father happy. She graduated with honors from high school, went to college in Fairbanks and put off her dreams