Finding Christmas Read online

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “As I was saying, the organization I work for received intel that Gershwin had set up a deal between Reggie Slater and Deidrick Eckhart. We’ve been after Gershwin for a long time, so we arranged to have Eckhart detained and one of our operatives came to Rescue pretending to be him. I came along to keep an eye on things. We hoped Reggie would be able to lead us to Gershwin, but as it turned out, he got himself into a dicey situation unrelated to the money deal and our plan fell apart.”

  “What does this have to do with Reggie’s death?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that Reggie is dead and Trace Rigby, the man masquerading as Eckhart, has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “We believe Gershwin figured out what we were doing and kidnapped Rigby. At this point, I’m not even sure whether he’s alive or dead. My new mission, which has come about due to my spectacular fail at keeping an eye on Rigby in the first place, is to find him, which is where you come in.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m pretty sure Gershwin is still in the area, I just don’t know where. You have contacts, and we both know you have a special gift that helps you find people.”

  “I’m able to connect with people I’m supposed to rescue,” I pointed out. “I doubt I can find some random guy I know very little about.”

  Shredder’s expression softened. “I know your gift has grown beyond simply connecting to rescue victims. I really need you to try. If Rigby is still alive, his life may depend on us finding him before Gershwin decides to cut his losses.”

  I hesitated.

  “I know how this looks. Some man you knew for a few days a year ago shows up for the first time after leaving you in the middle of your own investigation and asks you for a favor. It’s downright rude. I get that. But this is important. Rigby is a good guy. He has people who are depending on him to come home. Will you help me?”

  I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I’ll help you. But I’m going to need to clear it with Jake. He’ll need to find someone to cover my shift at the bar, and he has to know how to reach me in case of a rescue.”

  “Call him now. I’m sure I can arrange the same consultant’s fee I paid you the last time.”

  Chapter 10

  Tuesday, December 18

  Shredder showed up the next morning before I’d even had a chance to take the dogs out for their walk. He looked fully awake and ready to tackle the day, while I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed for a couple of hours. With seven dogs needing to go out every morning, I have to be an early riser, but the short days this year were messing with my natural rhythm.

  “I have new information,” Shredder said upon greeting me.

  “The dogs need to go out, so you’ll have to talk while we walk,” I said, handing Shredder back the jacket he’d just hung on my coatrack.

  “That works for me.” He greeted an ecstatic Denali, then slipped into the jacket.

  I frowned. “Denali has been all gaga over you since you showed up at my place a year ago. You hadn’t met him before that, had you?”

  “How would I have met him?”

  I glanced at Shredder with suspicion in my eyes. “It just doesn’t fit that he would adore you on sight. He doesn’t trust anyone and greets newcomers with aggression, not doggy kisses.”

  Shredder shrugged. “Denali is a pack animal. He respects the natural hierarchy that exists between members of the pack and recognizes an alpha when he meets one.”

  “So you’re saying you’re the alpha, which is why Denali adores you?”

  Shredder shrugged. “Apparently.”

  I opened the door, and all five house dogs ran out into the frigid darkness. Using my flashlight, I headed to the barn to pick up Juno and Kodi. Shredder’s explanation about the alpha male made sense in an odd sort of way, but I wasn’t buying that as the entire story. Not only did Denali respect Shredder, he trusted him. There was more to this, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what the more could be. I’d had Denali for quite a while before I met Shredder, so I didn’t see how he could have met my mystery man before last December. Maybe the dog was just a good judge of character and could see into the spirit of a man on his first meeting.

  “So what did you find out?” I asked as we got underway. I pointed my flashlight into the distance to make sure the dogs who had taken the lead were still in sight. Normally, Denali, Shia, and Yukon were all up-front, but this morning Denali had chosen to stay back with Shredder, Honey, Lucky, and me.

  “Yesterday I shared my belief that it was most likely Gershwin who had Rigby, but since then I’ve learned that the organization Rigby works for has received a ransom demand from someone named Nicolas Askar, who wants two Turkish spies currently in the custody of the CIA released in exchange for Rigby’s life.”

  “Is the exchange going to be made?”

  Shredder shook his head. “No. The deal Askar wants will never fly, but the team is pretending to consider it as a means of stalling. I’m not sure how long Askar will be willing to wait for his demand to be met; I suspect eventually he’ll give up and kill Rigby. I have to find Rigby and secure his release before that happens.”

  “Who exactly is this Askar?” I asked.

  “Nicolas Askar, whose real given name is Aslan Askar, is a hired thug who works for whoever is willing to pay his exorbitant fee. We suspect he hooked up with Gershwin because Rigby was in Alaska to find Gershwin and bring him to justice. His request for the release of the two Turks fits because Askar was born in Turkey, although he was educated in France.”

  “Why there?”

  “Askar is intelligent, and his parents had a lot of money. I guess they thought he’d receive a better education in France, so they sent him to boarding school when he was eight. From what I understand, he had a hard time fitting in with his mainly Western European classmates, and he spent a lot of time alone in his room, reading. He became fascinated with Nicholas of Myra, also known as Saint Nicholas. So much so that he took his name.”

  I paused as the wolves howling in the distance made all the dogs bark. “So you’ve been assigned to find Rigby, who you believe is being held by Askar, to secure his release before he’s killed?”

  “In a nutshell.”

  “So where do we start?” I asked as I stepped over a log.

  “I’m not certain where Askar might be holed up at this point. Given the fact that Rigby was taken from Rescue, I’m assuming Askar was also here at one point. I don’t know if he is still here, but I hacked into the chief of police’s files last night and took a peek at the report pertaining to Reggie’s murder. Officer Houston notes there were sleigh tracks found near the body. Askar is known to use a sleigh and reindeer team to get around during the winter, so I thought we’d start by trying to figure out where the sleigh tracks originated. Did you actually see a sleigh?”

  Calling Shia and Yukon, I turned back toward the cabin. “No. Neither I nor Houston saw the sleigh. I can’t even say for certain a sleigh was in any way involved in Reggie Slater’s death. The sleigh tracks we found were accompanied by tracks made by two caribou. We found the same tracks during a rescue on Saturday.”

  “And the subject and outcome of that rescue?”

  I paused to let Lucky catch up. The poor guy had a hard time navigating during the winter even when I’d cleared a path. Perhaps I should have brought the sled. “The subject was an elderly man named Nick who sometimes thinks he’s Santa. He’d wandered off from the inn wearing his Santa suit and was found sitting on the inn’s front porch with only a vague recollection of how he got there.”

  “I met Nick Clauston. I wasn’t at the inn when he wandered off; I met him the day before. You’re saying he didn’t remember anything at all about how he got back to the inn?”

  “He said he was picked up by Santa, who took him to his reindeer barn and gave him hot cocoa. When he was able to remember where he belonged, the man brought him back. My team thought it odd that if he was fou
nd wandering around the man with the sleigh didn’t notify the authorities rather than taking him home, but we were so happy Nick was okay, we didn’t question things. Do you think the same man who helped Nick killed Reggie?”

  “It’s possible the man in the sleigh was Askar. It fits in with Askar’s infatuation with Saint Nicholas. But we don’t have enough to come to any conclusions yet.”

  I stopped walking and looked around. “If the man with the caribou has been out recently, it would seem we should be able to find tracks to follow. It hasn’t snowed much the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Do you think the dogs can help?” Shredder wondered.

  I nodded. “Yukon can track a scent. He might be able to pick up something from the caribou and track it. It’s been more than twelve hours since Houston and I found Reggie’s body, so the caribou scent will be more than twelve hours old as well. But we can try.”

  “Let’s,” Shredder said. “I don’t have any better ideas.”

  Back at the cabin, Shredder helped me feed the animals. Then we leashed both Yukon and Denali and headed out to the place where Houston and I had found Reggie’s body. Denali hadn’t been trained in search and rescue. Most of the time I didn’t bring him along on S&R missions because he wasn’t used to following orders, but Shredder thought he had good instincts and was sure he could control the wolf in Denali given their special connection.

  I wasn’t sure Yukon would understand it was the scent of the caribou and not any of the dozens of other scents that littered the area that I wanted him to track, but after we followed the marks from the sleigh in the snow for a while, it seemed he picked up on the point of our excursion.

  “We might be able to backtrack to the beginning of the trip the sleigh took from the tracks in the snow alone,” Shredder observed.

  “It’s fortunate we haven’t had snow since we found the body. And the tracks are distinct. It makes me wonder if the person who left the tracks really was the one who killed Reggie. I mean, leaving these tracks wasn’t very stealthy.”

  Shredder frowned. “Yeah, although I suppose the sleigh could just have been driven in the same general area, independent of Reggie’s murder.”

  Shredder and I, Denali and Yukon walked in silence for the next twenty minutes. We followed the tracks, which led deeper into the forest. I could tell we’d headed north, then east. I had a feeling we’d come out not all that far from the inn.

  “So are we thinking this Askar killed Reggie?”

  “It doesn’t make sense he would unless he did it for Gershwin, who might have wanted him dead if Reggie was planning to double-cross him and he found out about it.”

  I glanced at Yukon, who’d paused to look around. It seemed he sensed something. Then I turned to Denali, who had worked his way around to where Shredder and I were walking. “The dogs sense someone or something. The fact that neither dog is growling indicates to me that they haven’t made up their minds about what they sense. It’s probably just an animal, but we should keep our eyes open.” I tucked my rifle under my armpit so it was ready if I needed it. I was aware that Shredder had a gun tucked into the back of his pants.

  He stopped walking and crouched down. “It looks like the tracks lead into the woods to the left. Let’s keep the dogs close. We may even want to leash them. I have a feeling we’re getting close.”

  As Shredder suggested, we put both dogs on leashes. We wanted to be able to sneak up on the house from which the sleigh tracks began when we finally found it. Shredder seemed to have an idea how to proceed, so I let him make the decisions and simply followed. After we’d walked as quietly as possible for a good twenty minutes, a large white ranch house with an old barn and rail corral came into view.

  “Looks promising,” Shredder said. “Wait here with the dogs. I’m going to sneak around through the forest and approach from the barn side.”

  “Do you think we should call for backup? For Houston?” I said

  “For all we know, we’ll find a family getting ready for lunch. I’ll do some recon and we can figure out what to do next after that.” Shredder reached down and scrubbed both dogs necks with his large hands. “I won’t be long. Stay out of sight and keep the dogs quiet.”

  I can’t express how much I hate waiting. Waiting is for the timid and passive. It isn’t a behavior I enjoy. I glanced down at the dogs. I didn’t have a lot of choice. If I tied them up and left them here, they’d have a fit, and if there was someone in the house, they’d hear them for sure. I could try following Shredder with the dogs, but the last thing I wanted to do was put them in danger. In hindsight, we might have been better off leaving them at home, but they were the type of dogs who were good to have on hand in a crisis. Bringing them had made sense.

  I had no idea where Shredder was as he made his way around the perimeter. It wasn’t until he ran across the clearing behind the barn that I had some sense of what he might do next. I could feel my heart race as I clamped down on both leashes. The next few minutes were going to be critical. Not knowing what to expect was a lot worse than knowing what was coming, even if what was to come was dangerous or unpleasant.

  The minutes clicked slowly by. Where was he? It seemed to me he’d had plenty of time to peek in through a few windows and assess the situation. Just about the time I was ready to head to the house despite his order to stay put, I saw him emerge from the front door. He waved in my direction, indicating it was okay to come forward. Hanging on to both dogs, who had begun to whine when they’d seen Shredder, I took a step toward the house. Hopefully, he didn’t have a gun to his back and the dogs and I weren’t walking into a trap.

  Holding my breath for at least the first ten steps, I began to relax when no one shot at us. Some part of me knew Shredder wouldn’t have waved us forward if doing so would put us in danger, even if he did have a gun to his back.

  “The place is empty?” I asked as I arrived at the front porch.

  “Totally. There are signs that reindeer have been here as recently as this morning, but there’s no sign of the animals or the sleigh now.”

  “What now?”

  Shredder scanned the area. “I have a feeling that…” His phone pinged and he pulled it from his pocket. He frowned.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Facial recognition scans placed Askar in Tinseltown this morning.”

  “Facial recognition scans?”

  “Basically the software looks for a match to an image you provide. The software can scan thousands of photos a minute that make their way into databases via social media, traffic cams, etc.” Shredder passed me the phone which featured a photo. “This is Askar and the photo of him standing in front of the Santa House in Tinseltown was posted to an Instagram account this morning.”

  I looked at the photo. He looked to be an elderly man with a long face and a gray beard. His sharp features were accentuated by his stern expression. He was tall and thin, with an almost regal air about him. As Shredder had said, he was standing in front of the Santa house in the small town of Tinseltown, Alaska. He didn’t appear to be posing; it was as if he wasn’t aware his photo was being snapped. I imagined the photo was taken by a tourist, and Askar just happened to step in front of the intended object.

  “Your people sent the photo to you?”

  Shredder took the phone back. “Yes. It looks like I’m heading to Tinseltown.”

  “I’m coming with you. Now that you got me in to this, I want to see it through.”

  “I suppose your unique gift could come in handy. Perhaps we should bring Yukon as well. If we can find something with Askar’s scent, he might be able to help us track him down. We’ll most likely need to stay over at least one night. You aren’t expected to go in to work today, which just leaves your animals. The last time I was here, a friend helped you out. Is there someone who can help out with the animals now?”

  “Once you confirm your directive is to head to Tinseltown, I’ll make some calls to line someone up.”

  T
he last time Shredder took me off on a wild-goose chase, Justine, the receptionist at the veterinary clinic, pet sat for me overnight. I was sure she’d do it again, but so would Chloe, and Serena would do it as well. Chloe would ask a lot of questions I wasn’t prepared to answer, though, while Serena would help out minus the interrogation, so I decided to give her a call. As I’d anticipated, she was fine with staying at the cabin while I was away “training.” All the animals knew her, but I was worried Denali would give her a hard time, so if the trip was going to happen, I’d drop him off with Jake. It would lead to questions, but it was the best option I had.

  Chapter 11

  “Are you sure about this?” Jake asked two hours later when I left Denali at his house. “This could be dangerous, and Shredder is a spy, while you’re a civilian. What does he need you for anyway?”

  “He probably doesn’t need me, but I want to go. I know you’ll worry, but I’ll be fine. You can trust me and you can trust Shredder. I might be back tomorrow, but it’ll more likely be Thursday.”

  Jake ran his hand though his thick hair. “I want you to call me to check in. Every day. More than once a day. Every few hours wouldn’t be asking too much.”

  I put my hands on my hips and looked at him. “Would you be this worried if it was one of the guys going to Tinseltown to help Shredder?”

  “No. But you aren’t one of the guys. You’re family. The only family I have. I can’t help but worry about you.”

  I felt my face soften. “I know. And I’ll be careful and call you so often, you’ll be irritated by all the calls.” I reached down and ruffled Denali’s ears. “Yukon is coming with me and Denali will be fine with you. The others will be fine with Serena, but do you think you could check on her? You never know when Homer is going to decide to be stubborn or Moose will hide and make you look for him.”