Twin Threat Christmas. Rachelle McCalla

be safest. But if three kids go missing and then three suddenly appear somewhere else, that might lead Virgil to them. And he knows the girls are old enough to identify him. No, this way, we’re split up. If something happens to me, at least Sammy has a chance.”

      Her voice broke again, and Eric realized how difficult the decision must have been—to choose to leave her son with her sister, as a gamble that one way or another, at least part of her family might escape the criminals who had terrorized them for the past eight years.

      But even more than the pain of her story, Eric felt chilled by the threat that had led her to abandon her infant son. “Do you really think they’re trying to track you down right now?”

      “I’m sure of it.” Vanessa shuddered. “They’ve always made it a point to make an example of those who disobey them. In fact, that’s where they got my identity. The real Madison tried to run. They tracked her down, left her body in a shallow grave and made me look like the picture on her driver’s license. Jeff forced me to marry him, and that got me a new ID with his last name. Nobody ever questioned, because she hadn’t been reported missing yet. She wasn’t a minor.”

      “You’re sure they don’t know about the cabin?” Eric clarified.

      “I wouldn’t have come here if they did.” Vanessa sucked in a breath and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no!”

      * * *

      “What is it?” Eric leaned over the chair where she sat.

      Vanessa fought to keep calm, but the events of the day were catching up to her, and the latest realization was too much to bear. She’d been so focused on getting the girls to the cabin without being recognized, on making sure they got to sleep peacefully and then explaining her story to Eric, she hadn’t thought about the fact that now seemed so painfully obvious.

      “I have to leave.”

      “Leave here? Now?”

      “As soon as possible. I can’t stay here. I’m sorry—I didn’t think. I mean, I thought this was my place—mine and Alyssa’s, anyway. It didn’t occur to me she might have sold it.”

      “She needed the money to keep her concrete-sculpture business going. I was helping her out, in a way. And of course, I always loved it when your grandfather invited my grandpa and me here for fishing trips.” Eric looked a bit confused at Vanessa’s alarm.

      She hurried to explain. “But they’re looking for me. If they track me here—that drags you into this. I can’t let them know about you. It puts you in danger. I have to go.” She stood.

      “You’re not going anywhere right now.” Eric placed a hand on her shoulder, not pushing down, really, but enough to guide her back into the chair. “Your girls are asleep—are you thinking of leaving without them?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Don’t you need your sleep?”

      “I can’t sleep, not with all that’s happened and everything I have to think about.”

      Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture Vanessa hadn’t witnessed in years, which she nonetheless immediately recognized as his thinking face. She watched him, waiting for him to announce whatever it was he was thinking about, grateful for the light touch of his hand on her shoulder.

      Even as she waited, she couldn’t help noticing how much he’d changed in the years they’d been apart. She’d recognized him immediately, but only because he was a familiar part of her memories of the cabin—her grandfather and his grandfather had been inseparable fishing buddies and equally devoted to their grandchildren. So in many ways, though she hadn’t at all expected to see him there, he still fit, in spite of the gun he’d been holding.

      On closer inspection now, she saw the differences. He was taller, broader through the shoulders, the stubble on his chin deeply shadowed by this hour. He’d be twenty-five, as well, the same age she really was, though her Madison Nelson ID had her at twenty-nine. His dark hair hadn’t thinned, and his dark brown eyes still sparkled like obsidian beneath brows that had thickened with age.

      He looked good, as familiar as home and yet fascinatingly different from the boy she’d known. She’d thought about him often during the long, lonely hours of her captivity, but her memories couldn’t compete with being in his presence. She wanted to turn into the arm that was draped so lightly across her shoulder, to bury her face against his chest and sob for all she’d lost and all she might still lose, but she felt afraid to. Probably post-traumatic inhibition, but it stayed her hand.

      “Can we,” Eric spoke slowly, releasing his nose and meeting her eyes, “try to find out who’s behind this trafficking ring? If we can’t go to the police and we can’t stay here for long, really, the only way I can see out of this is to slay the dragon, to cut off its head.”

      Vanessa recognized the phrase from the game they’d played countless times in the woods around the cabin. A gnarled stump of a tree had been their dragon, its branches hooked like claws, dark and menacing. As kids, they’d hacked at it with their “swords” made of sticks.

      “They left it dead, and with its head they went galumphing back.” Vanessa paraphrased the line from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” the poetry bringing back a flood of forgotten dreams. They’d both been going to be high-school teachers, he in science, she in English. Their dreams had been so bright before Jeff had extinguished them.

      “Can we?” Eric asked again after a long pause.

      Reluctantly, Vanessa stopped remembering those old dreams and instead focused on the nightmare she was living. How could they possibly track down the criminals when she didn’t know who was really behind everything? Jeff would have known, though he’d never said a word in eight long years. But Jeff was dead now. She didn’t have any way of accessing—

      She stood abruptly.

      “What?” Eric looked startled but hopeful.

      Vanessa ran back outside and pulled the keys from where she’d left them in the Sequoia’s ignition. Besides the chip that started the SUV, there were half a dozen other traditional keys, plus a couple of smaller ones that looked as if they might go to a file cabinet or desk drawer.

      Eric waited on the porch, watching her as she ran back, examining the keys.

      “I took Jeff’s keys.”

      “What do the keys go to?”

      “Lots of things. His office building, his office—these look like they might open some files. I know he had files, incriminating files. He was extremely protective of them whenever he had to bring some home. He never wanted me to touch them.” She paused on the porch, holding the keys between them, and looked into his face, awaiting his verdict, wondering what he would think of her idea. Jeff always hated her ideas, hated that she ever thought for herself, but Eric wasn’t Jeff. “Those files would expose Jeff. We might even learn who the real head of the monster is.”

      “Do you know where Jeff’s office is?”

      “Yes. I’ve been inside the building several times when he needed to run in for something. Assuming he still works in the same place, I can find it again. I made it a point to remember, if only because I knew he didn’t want me to.”

      “Good for you.” Eric gave her half a smile.

      “So, you think it’s a good idea?”

      “To let you walk into the dragon’s lair?”

      “How else am I going to cut off its head?” She met his eyes, challenging him, hopeful for the very first time. Could she really find and destroy the head of the crime ring that had ruined her life? If it was possible, she’d do whatever she had to do. It was either that or spend the rest of her life hiding in fear.

      “You’re not going.” Eric shook his head, everything on his face saying he thought she was crazy. Then he finished, “Not alone,