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

Abby looked up at him with eyes so much like Vanessa’s had been at that age, he couldn’t speak. But the little girl trustingly placed her hand in his, and he steadied her as they walked into the cabin.

“Debbi and I have the upstairs bedrooms,” Eric explained as they entered, as though this was a regular, planned visit, and he hadn’t just been pointing a gun at the woman.

“The downstairs bedroom just has one bed—”

“It’s a bunk bed now, the kind with a single on top and double below. Some buddies of mine sold it after college. I thought the cabin could use it.”

“Perfect. This way, girls.”

Eric let go of Abby’s hand as her mother led her toward the bedroom. Still not quite certain he wasn’t dreaming, he tried to assure himself he wasn’t doing anything illegal by offering hospitality to a murderer—after all, he didn’t know for a fact she’d murdered anyone, did he? Maybe it was self-defense? Maybe a lot of things had happened in the past eight years. All he knew was that he’d prayed for years that his friend would be safe, and now all of a sudden, here she was with little girls who needed a helping hand.

He wasn’t about to turn them away. Besides, even if she was a psychotic murderer, he ought to make sure her kids were safe. Shouldn’t he?

Eric bounded up the stairs to fetch the kitten quilt, which was usually kept folded at the foot of the bed in Debbi’s room. The beloved blanket from their childhood had come with the cabin, and even though it was a little juvenile for his twenty-five-year-old sister, it was too soft and delightful to get put away in a closet, unused.

His sister peeked at him from the doorway as he approached her room.

“It’s the Toyota Sequoia—I shined my high-beam flashlight out the window. The license plate matches the one on the news.” She followed him into her room, where her laptop sat on the end of the bed, open to a news page about the missing children and their murdering mother. “That’s Madison Nelson, isn’t it?”

“Shh. If it is, do you want her to know you know who she is?”

Debbi’s eyes widened, and she clamped her mouth shut.

“Something’s going on.” Eric lifted the laptop, pulled the kitten quilt out from underneath it and explained briefly, “I’m nearly positive that’s Vanessa Jackson downstairs.”

“Eric, no.” Debbi’s voice fell into the chiding tone she’d used long before when he’d vowed to go out searching one more time. “She’s been declared—”

“I know.” Eric didn’t want to hear the words again. “But nobody ever found out what happened to her. All I know is, Vanessa was my friend. I’ve got to help my friend.”

Debbi grabbed his arm as he stepped toward the bedroom door. “Even if it means aiding a known criminal?” She showed him the cell phone she held in her hand. “I was about to call the police.”

Eric sucked in a breath, his conscience in sudden conflict. Any other time, he’d say it was the right thing to do. “If Vanessa wanted to go to the police, she’d have done it already.”

“So we let her kill us in our sleep?”

“She’s not going to hurt us. Not in front of her kids.” He’d seen enough of the way the woman interacted with the girls to know she was purposely protecting them. That she was used to protecting them. But how far had she gone to protect them?

Debbi cut off his thoughts. “That didn’t stop her from killing her husband.”

“We don’t know what happened.” Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to know, exactly. He could guess at a few things, but all of them involved the kind of ugliness and hurt he wouldn’t wish on anyone, certainly not on the girl he’d cared for so strongly. “We should at least wait and hear her story. Can you wait that long?”

“How long will that be?”

“Give me an hour, maybe two. If she won’t tell us what’s going on, then you can call the police.”

“Fine.” Debbi flashed him the look she always gave him when he outfished or outmaneuvered her. Her final words floated after him on a sigh as he headed back down the stairs. “Although I don’t see why she’d let us live once we know what she’s up to.”

* * *

“Mommy, the kitten quilt.”

“I’m going to look for it.”

“No, it’s there.” Abby pointed.

Vanessa turned to see Eric standing in the doorway, an uncertain look on his face, kitten quilt in hand. “Ah. Thank you.” She accepted the quilt, which solved one tiny problem while introducing various others.

Her first priority from the moment the shadow of Virgil’s Land Rover had darkened the basement walls had been to get her girls tucked safely into bed at this cabin. But she hadn’t expected anyone to be there, certainly not Eric, the friend she’d long ago wished would be more than a friend, whose presence complicated everything. She felt a stab of guilt as she avoided looking him in the eye, instead focusing her attention on tucking the quilt securely around her daughters on the double-size lower bunk.

“Good night, Mommy.” Abby and Emma effectively dismissed her, snuggling in under the blanket as though they were on one of the countless innocent visits she and her sister had made to the cabin a generation before. She’d prayed for something like this for them—but not this way, not going through what they’d been through, or what yet lay ahead.

“Good night.” There was nothing more to do or say. She couldn’t put off facing Eric any longer.

She closed the door behind her and stepped toward the living room, deciding as she did so to ask questions first, to play offense instead of defense and maybe put off answering too many questions until she knew a bit more about what was going on.

Eric stood in the middle of the cabin’s great room, near the table that separated the open kitchen from the sofa and television on the other side.

She glanced at him only briefly, saw confusion and maybe even anger on his face, and quickly looked away, taking in all that had changed and all that had stayed the same in the cabin. Her grandmother’s knitted afghan still topped the sofa, but it was a newer sofa. Some of the pictures on the walls were the same. Some had changed. The familiarity of it all made her want to sob with relief, but she held herself together. She had to. For the kids.

“So, you—” Eric started.

Vanessa remembered her plan and cut off his question quickly. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my place.”

“No, it’s not. It’s mine.”

“Alyssa sold it to me.”

“So my grandfather—”

“He died. Six years ago.”

She’d told herself that much was likely. Her grandfather was old, and his health had been declining rapidly, but the words still hit her like one of Jeff’s controlling blows.

And just like in the early days when Jeff hit her, Vanessa fought back. “So Alyssa sold you her half? Half the cabin was supposed to go to me.”

“Your sister sold me both halves.”

“She can’t sell my half—”

“She can. You were declared legally dead.” Eric took a step toward her. “What’s going on, Vanessa? Or should I call you Madison?”

Vanessa pinched her eyes shut at the words, which struck her like another blow. “How do you know—”

“It was on the news.”

“What was?”