It Must Be Christmas Read online

  “Yeah,” Trudy said bitterly. “That’s why I’m in handcuffs now.”

  “You’re in handcuffs because you’re resisting,” Nolan said. “I’m trying to get a promotion here, and you’re beating me up. It makes me look bad.”

  “Great. That’s what this is about, some damn promotion? Knock a helpless woman to the ground and steal her little nephew’s Christmas present?”

  “The ‘helpless’ is debatable,” Nolan said as they went past the cabbie, who was dabbing at his bleeding nose and glaring at her. “You owe Alex an apology.”

  “He attacked me.”

  “He was trying to get you into the cab so he could get you away from here,” Nolan said. “He’s one of ours.”

  “He was trying to take the doll, so he’s not one of mine,” Trudy said, and then she saw the woman they were moving toward. She was wearing a red and green bobble hat, but she didn’t look like a Christmas shopper anymore. “Who the hell is she?”

  “My boss,” Nolan said.

  Trudy waited until they were in front of the woman, and then she said, “Is this guy really an NSA agent?”

  “Yes.” The woman spoke without any expression whatsoever, which only made Trudy madder.

  “Well, he groped me in that warehouse,” Trudy said.

  “I’m not at all surprised,” the woman said, and held her hand out for the Mac.

  Nolan gave it to her.

  “You bastard,” Trudy said.

  “Trudy, it’s national security.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Trudy snapped. “You got the codes when you got the instruction sheet, and then you got the USB key when you got the silencer. You don’t need the doll. You don’t care that a little kid is going to wake up tomorrow and know that everything in his world is a lie, that doesn’t bother you—”

  “Trudy,” Nolan said, misery in his voice.

  “—as long as your work gets done.” She wrenched away from him, her hands still cuffed behind her. “You guys, guys like you and Reese and Prescott, you don’t care about anything as long as you get what you want. Well, fine, you got it. Now take these handcuffs off me, because you know damn well you’re not going to arrest me for anything.”

  “You have to promise to stop hitting people,” Nolan said.

  “Fine,” Trudy said. “I promise.”

  He unlocked the cuffs and she kicked him in the shin. He said, “Ouch,” and grabbed at his leg.

  “You promised me,” Trudy said. “You said I could trust you, and I was as dumb as Courtney, I believed you.” She turned back to his boss. “You need me for anything else or can I go home to my devastated family?”

  “We have questions,” the woman said, and gestured to the car. “We’ll have you home in a couple of hours.”

  “Fine,” Trudy said, refusing to look back at Nolan. “I’ll tell you anything you want as long as you give me back the Mac.”

  “Unfortunately not,” the woman said.

  “Here’s your Twinkletoes,” Nolan said, holding out a shopping bag. “I found it in the warehouse.”

  Trudy took the bag. “Rot and die,” she said, and walked toward the car.

  “Trudy, be reasonable,” he said, following her. “This is national security—”

  She turned around and he almost bumped into her. “You didn’t have to kiss me and tell me I could trust you. You didn’t have to make me believe in you again. You had the NSA out here, you were always going to get that damn doll. You could have left me my dignity, but no, you had to sucker me in.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  She stepped closer. “That’s why I hate you. That’s why Leroy’s going to hate his dad and his mom and me tomorrow, because he knew there was no Santa, but we all said, ‘Trust us, Santa’s gonna come through for you.’ We hung that kid out to dry. He’s going to be right to hate us. And I’m right to hate you.”

  She turned to get into the car, and he caught her arm and said, “Trudy, I’m sorry,” and she shook him off and got into the backseat without looking back at him.

  Chapter 3

  Trudy borrowed a cell phone and called Courtney to tell her she was all right. Then she faced Nolan’s boss, who ditched the hat with the green and red bobbles and became tough, efficient, thorough, and polite, none of which made Trudy feel better. She answered everything the woman asked, and when she was finally released, it was well after midnight. She took her purse and the battered bag with the Twinkletoes and rode home through the snow in the back of a black car, too tired and too defeated to argue anymore.

  I couldn’t do it alone, she thought. I really needed that bastard’s help; nobody could have done it alone. But she still felt like a failure. If only she hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t trusted Reese, hadn’t gotten in that cab in the first place, hadn’t ever talked to Nolan at all, they’d never have known she’d found the MacGuffin and Leroy would have it now. Her throat swelled and she stared at the back of the driver’s head and willed herself not to cry. Not in front of the NSA, anyway.

  She tiptoed into the house, but Courtney called out from the dimly lit living room. Trudy went in and found her on the couch, glass in hand, her feet propped up on the coffee table that held a bowl of white icing, a lopsided gingerbread house, and a stack of gingerbread men with a knife stuck through them. She was staring into the gas fire, and the glow reflected off the tinsel on the tree while Christmas music played low and slow in the background.

  “Do you have it?” Courtney said, her voice dull.

  “No.” Trudy went around the mess on the coffee table and sat down beside her, dropping her bags on the floor. “The Feds took it from me. For national security reasons. Nice gingerbread house.”

  “It’s crooked,” Courtney said, clearly not caring. “The Feds?”

  “Turns out Nolan works for the NSA. I know. Unbelievable.”

  “I believe it.” Courtney sat unmoving, her eyes on the fire. “That’s just my luck. Even the government is out to get me.”

  “Two governments. Reese the Surfer turned out to be a double agent for the Chinese.” Trudy leaned forward, pulled the knife out of the gingerbread, and scooped up a glop of white icing.

  “Well, at least you’re meeting men.” Courtney picked up her glass to drink and then made a face when she realized it was empty. “So why did they want the Mac?”

  “It had the codes to the Chinese spy network on the instruction sheet and then something else was on this thumb drive disguised as a silencer for the gun.” Trudy smeared the icing on the roof. The white mass hung there for a moment and then began to slump its way to the edge. Not enough powdered sugar. The icing plopped off onto the cardboard base, looking like a snowbank.

  “Chinese spy codes?” Courtney said.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it, except that I saw the thumb drive. That and there were so many guys in bad black suits there at the end.” She glopped more icing on the other side of the roof. It slumped and became a snowbank, too. Definitely too thin. “Where’s the sugar, Court?”

  Courtney gestured to the kitchen with her glass.

  The kitchen looked like a war zone, bodies of mutilated gingerbread men everywhere, red and green gumdrops stuck to the island like body parts, and a drip of icing pooled on the floor like thick white blood.

  “Christmas didn’t used to be this violent,” Trudy called back to Courtney, and then picked up the powdered-sugar box, the half-filled bag of gumdrops, and some toothpicks. Toothpicks were good. She could probably have done more damage in the warehouse if she’d had toothpicks. She could have stuck several of them into Reese.

  And more into Nolan. Nolan, she thought, and blinked back tears. Damn.

  She went back to the living room. Courtney hadn’t moved.

  Trudy dumped her armload on the coffee table and sat down beside Courtney. “Forget about rotten men. There was one good thing that happened tonight. I got you a present.”

  Courtney turned her head a millimeter. “Does it have gin in it?”