Twin Threat Christmas: One Silent Night / Danger in the Manger

At her words, Eric remembered. “Your son, Sammy. You said you left him with your sister, but she doesn’t even know you’re alive?”

“I wrote a note on the shirt he was wearing. It said ‘A DNA test will prove this is Alyssa Jackson’s son.’ It wasn’t a lie,” she clarified. “Sammy isn’t Alyssa’s son, obviously, but since we’re identical twins, a DNA test would still conclude she’s his mother.”

“So, you handed him to her?”

“No. I couldn’t risk that—I couldn’t let her see me or she’d come looking for me, and that might lead Virgil to her. That’s the same reason I didn’t use Sammy’s name. No, I left him in her manger.”

“In her manger? The nativity scene? Her concrete sculptures?”

“Yes. The nativity scene is up next to the house. I watched her working in the yard, saw her go inside the house, and I left him in his car seat in the manger with his diaper bag. Then I drove away a couple of blocks and watched until she went outside and saw him.”

For all of Eric’s fears that Vanessa might be crazy, leaving her son in a manger was nearly enough to convince him. Granted, the weather that day was warm for October. The baby would be fine outside, even if he wasn’t noticed for a couple hours or more. And she had stood by to make sure her sister found him.

“But why did you leave him with her?”

Vanessa looked him full in the face, her warm brown eyes boring into his. “To keep him safe. I don’t believe, even for a second, that Virgil or the people he works for are going to let me get away easily. They’ll look for me. They’re probably trying to track me down right now. They know I know what happened. If the cops find me first, I’ll go to jail and lose my girls. If the traffickers find me...” She shook her head. “I thought about leaving the girls with Alyssa, too. I debated where they’d 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, not without someone to stand guard, to watch out for you. And you’re definitely not taking your kids. They can stay here with Debbi. We can’t take your Sequoia—it’s all over the news. We’ll hide it in the garage and take my car, but we need to do it tonight, while it’s still dark, before they have a chance to realize we might come looking and destroy the evidence before we get there. I’ll drive.”

Hope surged inside her, and Vanessa’s arms flew up, ready to hug Eric for agreeing with her plan—for wanting to be a part of it, even. But she caught herself just in time, and instead she gripped the keys harder and turned, following him back into the cabin.

“Stop right there,” Debbi ordered as they entered.

Vanessa looked up to see Eric’s sister, now in her early twenties, dropping a pair of buckshot shells into the hunting shotgun Eric had been holding earlier.

Debbi clicked the barrel into place and stared them down. “Neither of you is going anywhere. I’m calling the police.”

FOUR

“Debbi, no.” Eric addressed his sister in a calming tone. She wouldn’t shoot. She didn’t even like hunting. The gun shook in her trembling hands. He’d known she was terrified about having Vanessa at the cabin, but he’d hoped she’d give him a little more time before her fears caught up to her.

“Harboring a criminal is illegal.” Debbi’s voice wavered unsteadily. “We could go to prison because of her.”

“She didn’t kill her husband,” Eric explained.

“I didn’t,” Vanessa echoed.

Eric continued, moving slowly closer to his sister. “He wasn’t even her husband—legally, maybe, but not in the traditional sense of the word. He kidnapped her. She’s the victim of a human-trafficking ring. We have to help her.”

Debbi gripped the gun with both hands. “The police can help her.”

“No,” Vanessa pleaded with the same note of panic Eric had heard in her voice when he’d mentioned the police before. “The guys who killed Jeff are professionals. While I’m trying to convince the police to believe me, these guys will cover their tracks so thick the police will never find them. But they’ll find me and get their revenge.”

“Debbi, please.” Eric piggybacked on Vanessa’s words. “Vanessa has keys to her kidnapper’s office. We can go tonight and get evidence to put these guys away for good. But we have to go now, before they catch up to her.”

Debbi narrowed her eyes warily but lowered the gun a few inches. “Once you get the evidence, we can call the police?”

Eric looked to Vanessa for the answer.

“Yes. Once we have evidence against these guys, we’ll call the police. We can go and be back in a matter of hours if we leave now.”

“Please, Debbi?” Eric reasoned with his sister, praying she’d understand, or at least give them a chance to prove Vanessa’s innocence. His sister was scared, that was all. Normally, she was a very kind person.

Debbi shifted her weight, planting the gun against the floor like a walking stick, leaning against it as she eyed them conspiratorially. “Fine.” She blew out a breath that said she might still regret caving. “What’s our plan?”

Together, they quickly assembled everything they’d need. Eric wasn’t surprised, given Vanessa’s story, to hear she didn’t have a cell phone. Eight years before, she’d been too poor to afford a phone of her own.

“I’ll stand guard outside while you go in the building,” Eric decided. “But I’ll need some way to contact you if someone’s coming.”

Debbi pulled her phone from her purse. “She can take mine. Nobody ever calls or texts me in the middle of the night.”

“But what if we need to reach you? The cabin’s never had a landline. We don’t have any other phones.”

“You’re going to stand watch while she goes inside, right?” Debbi clarified. “You’re going to need a phone to call her while she’s inside, or there’s no point in you standing watch. Who do you think needs it more?”

Vanessa blew out a thoughtful breath, then spoke slowly. “I brought the girls here to keep them safe. I don’t have a phone. I didn’t figure we’d have a phone. So leaving them here with Debbi isn’t really any different than being here myself, without a phone.”

“It might be risky going inside the office. Riskier than staying here.” Eric accepted the device from his sister and passed it to Vanessa. “I’ll text you if someone’s coming. Do you know how to answer a text on this phone?” He sent a text between the phones so she could see how it worked.

“Got it.”

“If this thing goes off, you’ll need to get out of sight.” His fingers brushed hers as he spoke, imparting an acute sense of awareness.

Vanessa’s glance fluttered from his fingers to his eyes and back again. Her cheeks colored slightly as she thanked him and agreed to his plan.

So she’d felt it, too, then. The old chemistry, the teenager-like nervousness he’d thought he’d lost the night she never came home. He’d been crazy for her for years, but equally terrified she’d find out how he felt. He’d never told her, never let on to his feelings...and regretted it ever since. He’d prayed for a second chance....

A surge of emotion welled inside him, but he swallowed quickly, pushing it back before it could creep into his voice. “Okay, then, I think we’re ready. You’ve got your key-chain flashlight. Debbi will stay here with the girls—”

“They should sleep until after I get back,” Vanessa predicted. “They won’t ever know I was gone.”

Eric nodded, not trusting his voice anymore, the reference to her absence too much, the reality of her presence slowly eclipsing his surprise. She was alive, she was here. She looked great, but she’d been through so many awful experiences, scars buried deeper than he could see. He wanted to throw his arms open wide and embrace her, but he was terrified of how she might respond.

Debbi insisted he take the hunting shotgun and a box of buckshot. While Vanessa hastily left instructions for what Debbi should do if the girls awoke before they returned, Eric carried the gun outside and put it in his car. He hoped he wouldn’t need it, but these men had killed a man today already. He had to be prepared for the worst. They couldn’t hurt Vanessa, not again, not if he had any say in the matter.

He couldn’t think of anything else to bring, but moved the Sequoia out of the way, backed his Mustang out of the garage and then parked the wanted SUV out of sight inside.

By the time he pulled the garage door closed, Vanessa stood by his car, ready to go.

How many times had he wished for such a simple thing, to see her standing by his car, leaving with him? They’d never gone out on a proper date. He’d been too nervous to ask, and then it was too late.

At least tonight, he was able to open the door for her. Their eyes met briefly as she stepped past him and took a seat inside the vehicle.

In spite of the darkness of the northern Illinois woods at night, he could see the fear clearly on her face. Unsure what he could possibly say to reassure her, he closed her door, then climbed in behind the wheel.

“You’ll have to tell me how to find this place,” he reminded her as he navigated the twisting gravel driveway.

“Just get on highway fourteen and follow it toward Chicago for a while.” She fell silent then.

Eric had hoped to chat, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t commiserate with her because he didn’t know all about what she’d been through, nor did he feel comfortable asking, certainly not now. Perhaps they ought to discuss what lay ahead, but everything depended upon what she would find in Jeff’s office.

After a long silence, Vanessa spoke in a quiet voice. “Thank you.” Her voice hitched, as though she was about to say more, but had to fight back a sob.

Eric hesitated to respond, listening for whatever she’d been about to say, reluctant to speak for fear he might cut her off. They drove in silence awhile longer. Finally, he offered, “It’s no problem.”

She made a sound that was half laughter, half miserable sigh. “Yes, it is. You could get in big trouble for helping me. Debbi probably had the right idea. You might regret that you didn’t listen to her.”

“Never,” he vowed quickly.

Vanessa glanced at him, and he took his eyes off the road just long enough to meet her eyes.

“My only regret is that I didn’t do something eight years ago.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Something, so that you wouldn’t ever have disappeared.”

“There’s nothing you could have done. You didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“But you were vulnerable. I mean, that Jeff guy, he preyed on you. It shouldn’t have happened. How could something like that happen? To you, of all people? I mean, I know you’re beautiful—”

“I don’t think so.” Vanessa cut him off, her tone outwardly joking, sarcastic with an undertone of longing so buried, he might have thought he’d imagined it.

But he couldn’t let her believe otherwise. “Vanessa, you are. You’re beautiful, and that’s why he targeted you.”

“You don’t know why he picked me. How could you know? You never met him.”

“I know you. And I know—” He squeezed the steering wheel, wishing he’d spoken these words long before. Would it have made any difference? He was speaking them now. “I know he saw what I saw, which was a girl whose smile could make everything else bad that had happened that day disappear. A girl whose smile you want to see every day of your life. But instead of treasuring you, he took you.”

“Watch the road,” Vanessa cautioned.

Eric realized he’d gotten so caught up in his words, he’d veered onto the shoulder of the dark highway. He realigned the vehicle with the path. “Sorry. I just— I’ve regretted it all these years, and now you’re here, but these guys might show up again or the police could take you away anytime. But you have to know.” He realized his words were rambling. Words had always been Vanessa’s area of expertise, never his. “I should have said it long ago, but I was so awed by you. I wanted to ask you out, but I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”

“I would never laugh at you.”

“Oh, yeah, never?” He quoted, “‘He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin—’”

“I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing with you.”

“I wasn’t laughing.” Eric remembered vividly his attempt to play out Alfred Noyes’s infamous poem, “The Highwayman,” for the girl who’d loved it so. Admittedly, he’d looked ridiculous, his French cocked-hat, a pirate tricorn, the bunch of lace at his chin a borrowed blouse of Debbi’s. But he’d wanted so much to impress Vanessa.

“The turn is coming up, just past the railroad tracks.”

Eric turned his attention to the road and tried to forget his disastrous attempt at demonstrating his affection without actually saying how he’d felt.

Now he thought Vanessa was going to forget, as well, but she offered softly, “I didn’t know how to respond. I was so flattered that you dressed up in costume and everything. It was either giggle like an idiot or admit that I was blown away.”

“Blown away?”

“This next corner, at the stoplight. Turn right, then right again on the access road.”

Eric followed her instructions, wishing he’d chosen to hold the conversation at a time when they could actually talk. But they’d held off in silence for too much of the ride, and now it was too late. Again.

“Here it is, this office building.”

“This is it? Is this the crime-ring headquarters, or did Jeff do honest work, too?”

“Jeff never did any honest work. Hmm, you’ll want to park somewhere you can’t be seen.”

Eric pulled past the building, all the parking places out in the open. “Here, behind this Dumpster?” He turned past a few thick cedar trees that divided the lots, then came to a stop.

Vanessa glanced around. “This looks like as good a spot as any.” She opened the car door, then glanced back.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in instead? It’s so risky. If there’s anybody in there—”

“There aren’t any cars around, so I doubt anyone is inside. Besides, you don’t know your way around like I do. I’ll find it faster. That makes it less risky if I go in.”

Eric hung his head. Vanessa was right—he just felt terrible that he couldn’t do more for her. “Got everything you need?” he asked, not ready for her to walk away, not yet, when so much between them was still unsaid.

She looked down at the bundle of keys in her hand and patted the pocket that held Debbi’s phone, set to vibrate. “The sun will be up in a matter of hours. People could start arriving anytime. With Jeff dead—well, they might have the same thought I had, that his office could hold evidence. I should hurry.”

Eric reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze, but she was already climbing out of the car. Did he imagine that she squeezed his hand in return, or was that just wishful thinking?

Vanessa darted toward the building without looking back.

* * *

In spite of the number of keys on the ring, Vanessa was able to find the correct one quickly. She entered the building, glanced around the large open foyer and ascended the staircase. Jeff had always left her downstairs, under the watchful eyes of his associates, when he’d gone upstairs to his office.

Once upstairs, she came to a long hallway with unmarked doors on either side. She’d never seen which door he went in. Would it be too much to ask for a name placard? Apparently. Only two doors were labeled—Men and Women—at the far end of the hall. Vanessa started with the door farthest from the restrooms and tried the keys each in turn.

None fit.

She made her way methodically down the hallway, trying all the keys in every door, hoping, praying, wondering if perhaps she’d already tried Jeff’s door and failed to open it in her haste.

Finally, at the last door before the men’s room, she slid a key into the lock and turned the knob. Immediately, she knew she’d come to the right place. There was Jeff’s mug sitting next to a coaster. She’d thought his coaster aversion was something he did only at home, just to irritate her, but apparently his disdain for them ran deeper than that. She even caught a whiff of his familiar cologne.

Oh, dear Lord, help me now. If there’s evidence here, help me find it.

She turned on the computer and, while it was powering up, fit the small keys into the filing cabinet and desk drawers.

The papers in the filing cabinet were arranged in neat files. She found page after page of numbers on grids, years, incoming, expenses—but no words pointing to the true sources of the funds. While most of the crime ring’s income came from human trafficking and drugs, nonetheless, Vanessa was aware of at least one of their cover operations—selling luxury goods for vastly inflated prices. Few people actually bought their ten-thousand-dollar handbags or five-hundred-dollar key chains, but all the documents in the filing cabinet seemed to indicate their money came from those sources.