Home for Christmas

Two

Preacher grabbed the guide rope, the straw coarse in his hands, and went groping down the passage on all fours. Doubts coiled around his soul just as the rope did around his wrist. What would await them out of the tunnel? Would it be any better than the mercenaries they were trying to escape? If they made it out at all.

Wyatt moaned behind him, the sound bouncing off the tight walls in a sinister echo. Preacher looked back. The faint halo of his flashlight cast a shadow on his partner’s figure slouched on the floor. Wyatt had lost too much blood. If they wanted to make it out of the caves alive, forward was the only way.

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzz.

I tear my eyes away from the computer screen and curse at the phone. I forgot to turn it off and left it on the kitchen counter. Rookie mistake. I ignore the buzzing noise and go back to my manuscript.

Forward was the only way… and…

Nothing. The flow of words is lost. Whatever brilliant segue I was about to write has escaped my brain.

I bang a frustrated fist on the dining table and stand up. I might as well check who the bugger is.

Tess, my sister.

I know what the call is about, and I have zero patience for the guilt-tripping right now.

With the phone in my hand, I lean against the kitchen counter and stare out the giant French window in the living room. The sun is shining on the tall mountain peaks covered in snow. The slopes will open soon, and I would like nothing better than to take my snowboard and join the tourists on a black run. But today I won’t allow myself to go outside until I’ve met my word count. No matter that by lunchtime, the terrain on the slopes will be either mushy, hard packed, or scattered around in impromptu moguls. I sigh as I imagine the pristine white blanket it must be now and close my eyes regretfully. Not today.

The phone stops vibrating. Will Tess give up after one call?

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzz. The buzzing resumes at once.

Nope.

If I ignore her, she’ll just keep pestering me. And even if I turned off the phone, the shadow of the difficult conversation would loom over my head as my Sword of Damocles.

Resigned, I pick up. “Hell—”

“Dad says you’re not coming home for Christmas,” Tess interrupts me.

“Well, no one could accuse you of not being direct.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Life has given you lemons this past year, agreed, but it’s no excuse to skip Christmas.”

“Tess, I have a deadline and I’m already behind. The last thing I need is to waste time booking flights, checking in and out of airports to fly home for just a day.”

“Then stay longer. You’ve been holed up in that cabin for months. I haven’t seen you since, mmm—”

The words she’s looking for are: since you announced your wife was leaving you for a C-list soap opera celebrity mere days after you’d started a complete remodeling of your house, which is now a construction site you cannot either sell or live in.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s been a minute.”

“Come on, Riv, we never skipped Christmas. If I came back from my gap year in Sri Lanka, you can take a 90-minute flight home.”

“Tess, I need to finish this book. I’m stuck.”

“You’ve been up there forever. If you’re still blocked after all this time, maybe a change of scenery will be good. Come on, it’s Christmas.”

I grab the counter with my free hand, knuckles going white. “Tess—”

“Dad is too decent to say anything, but I’m not. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t come home and use a stupid book as an excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse, I’m months behind.”

“Riven Clark, I know you. You’re using your unfinished novel as an alibi to play the hermit and avoid seeing everyone you know. Cassie pulled a number on you. She should be the one ashamed to show her face in public, not you.”

I let go of the counter to massage my temple. The call is going worse than I expected.

“Please,” Tess insists. “Please, please, pretty please, say you’ll come home.”

“Okay, I give up, you win!” Fighting her is going to cause me more stress than simply giving in.

“Yay, you’ll have a blast at home, I promise. Oh, and Dad said you can stay with him, of course. I have to call him with the good news. Talk-later-love-ya-bye.”

Tess hangs up before I can add anything, just as the doorbell rings. That’s odd. It’s early for the mailman.

I go to the door and find the town marshal standing on the porch.

“Morning, Marshal,” I greet him. “What’s going on?” I’m not used to receiving house visits from local law enforcement.

“Good day to you, too.” He tips his hat at me. “Nasty business, I’m afraid. We have a rogue wolf on our hands. It sneaked up on old Ford last night while he was taking logs into the house and almost bit his leg off.”

“Oh, gosh, wow.” I rake a hand through my hair. “How is he?”

“They brought him down to Salt Lake Regional Medical Center; they say they should be able to save the leg.”

“Is it normal for wolves to attack humans?”

“No, but we believe this is an old beast, shunned by its pack. It can’t hunt in the wild alone, and it’s getting desperate.” The marshal pulls on his short beard. “I’m making rounds to the most isolated houses, asking residents to be extra careful, especially when they go out at night. Don’t leave food waste around. And if you have to step out in the dead of night for whatever reason, at least carry a rifle.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“Ah, I forgot they don’t teach you fancy folks how to shoot in California. Well, if you ain’t going to bring a g*n, take an ax with you.” He mimics the movement of swinging the weapon with his wrist. “Those are pretty intuitive.”

An idea strikes me. What if Preacher encountered a wild beast in one of the caves? He wouldn’t have an ax to defend himself, but he could use a knife. My mind swirls with the possibilities, the scene taking form in my head.

“Thank you,” I say, eager to go back to my laptop. “I’ll be extra careful and let you know if I hear any suspicious howling.”

I say goodbye to the marshal and rush back to the computer, my fingers flying on the keyboard.

…Two blazing points of yellow-green flame shone with the reflected light of Preacher’s flashlight bouncing off the stone walls. Preacher considered turning the light off, but that would only give the big cat the advantage of total darkness—of which he was the seeing master. No, Preacher secured the flashlight to the straps of his backpack and unsheathed the knife at his belt, ready to fight for his life…

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzz.

“Aaaargh,” I scream in frustration.

With the marshal ringing at the door right after I hung up with my sister, I forgot to turn off the phone—again!

I get up ready to smash the damn thing and go incommunicado until Christmas, but then I see it’s an unknown number calling—someone with a local area code. What now? A grizzly bear woke up early from hibernation and is targeting authors with writer’s block?

I pick up. “Riven Clark.”

“Hello, Mr. Clark, this is Kelly Anne from the Richter Real Estate Group,” my real estate agent says in her adorable southern lilt.

“Hi, Kelly Anne,” I say, surprised. I should have her number in my contacts. I stare at the screen to double-check. “Did you change your number?”

“No, sorry, I’m calling from my personal phone. Work one died.”

“Oh, okay. What’s up? Is there a problem with the rent? I’d planned to come into town later today to deposit my check.”

“No, no, Mr. Clark, nothing like that. Stop by whenever it’s most convenient for you. Today, tomorrow, there’s no hurry. I was calling you for an entirely different reason. Am I catching you at a good time?”

No point in telling her she, my sister, and the town marshal are doing their best to disrupt my writing. “Sure,” I say, and drop the phone on the counter, putting her on speaker. I need more coffee.

“Oh, great. You’re booked at the cabin until April, of course, but I was wondering if you were going home for the holidays by any chance.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve just been strong-armed into making that decision by my sister,” I reply. “Why?”

“How sweet, your family must really miss you.” Kelly Anne chuckles. “And since you’ll be gone, would you be interested in subletting the cabin for Christmas week? Park City is sold out this year. I can’t believe the number of people we’ve had to turn down for the holidays.” She chuckles again. “It’s called peak season for a reason. Anyway, if you sublet the cabin, you could make all of April’s rent back in a single week. Is that something you’d consider?”

I pour water into the coffee machine’s tank and ponder for a second. I’m not strapped for money by any standard, but saving a month’s rent wouldn’t be the worst thing, especially considering how much the renovations on the house are going to cost. Besides, Cassie will probably ask her lawyers to strip me of every last penny she can grab. “I could,” I say, and add coffee to the filter. “But what about my stuff? I wouldn’t want to leave my clothes around the cabin and have strangers poke through it.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem, Mr. Clark. One of my teams could pack everything for you and store it for the week, and of course, unpack before you come back. What dates were you planning to leave?”

“I haven’t booked my flight out of Salt Lake City, yet.” I pull up the calendar on my phone, looking at the dates. I could stretch my stay to a week and make everyone at home happy. Then they might back off a little and let me write in peace until Easter. “What if I left on the twenty-first and came back on the twenty-ninth? That would leave you a full week in the middle.”

“That’d be perfect, Mr. Clark. I’ll free those dates up on our calendar and I’ll leave some papers for you to sign at the agency. You can formalize the agreement when you drop off your rent check.”

“Okay, I’ll come down as soon as I’m finished writing for the day.”

“Take all the time you need, as I said, no hurry. Thanks so much and I’m looking forward to seeing you later.”

We end the call, and I turn on the coffee maker.

As I watch the dark liquid drop into the pot, I try to mentally return to a dingy cave alongside Preacher, the treasure hunter hero of all my adventure novels. In my mind, the trickle of the coffee transforms into dirty water seeping from the cave’s ceiling and dropping, cold and chafing, down Preacher’s collar as he and the beast circle each other in a dance of death.

Dance of death, that’s good.

I have to type it before I forget. But this time, before I get back to my laptop, I turn off the phone.