To Santa With Love Read online

  Jacquie ran a hand over the gift from Robbie, unable even to take a guess as to what it was. But she remembered Choya saying that Robbie was making something for her—tomorrow morning, all would be revealed. Glancing toward the kitchen, where Sam still was, she held the bandanna-wrapped present and guessed gloves. Feeling a little childish, she put it back and added hers.

  She backed out and stood up, brushing pine needles from her knees.

  “How’d you make out?” a deep voice asked.

  Jacquie turned to see Choya standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He surveyed her with lazy amusement. She looked and listened for Robbie, heard nothing, and went to him, slipping her arms around his waist. “Looks interesting,” she said pertly. “I got you something very nice.”

  “Well, thank you. I haven’t wrapped yours yet.”

  “There’s extra paper in my room.”

  “I thought I was supposed to stay out of there,” he teased her.

  Jacquie was enjoying being so close to him, stretching up on tiptoe to rub her cheek against his. “That’s right,” she whispered in his ear. “But we can always improvise.”

  “Hmm. That won’t do.” He pulled her tightly to him. “Things are going to change, Jacquie.”

  “When?” she asked, daring him with her eyes.

  “Soon. Very soon.”

  She stayed in his embrace for several more minutes and they made the most of the time they had to be alone.

  Then Sam called from the kitchen, discreet enough to stay there until someone answered. Jacquie broke away from the sensual heat of Choya’s body, but still held his hand. “What is it?”

  “I need someone to heave this ham up and out of the oven,” he answered when they both came into the kitchen. “I think the glaze might be turning black. I want to add some water to the pan and—”

  “And put out the fire?” Jacquie asked sweetly.

  “It ain’t that bad,” Sam said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  Choya took over and she watched, waving away the faint haze in the air and trying not to cough. “Smells good,” she said diplomatically.

  “Robbie oughta come down here and taste this,” Choya said. “Some of it is already well-done. He loves ham.”

  “Is his stomach ache better?” Jacquie asked Sam.

  “I don’t rightly know. Haven’t seen him since I told him to go lie down.”

  “I’ll get him. Probably no worse than that case of sniffles.” Choya straightened and tossed the pot holders onto the kitchen table. They landed on Jacquie’s open laptop and skidded across the keys. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jacquie said.

  The screen flickered to life as Choya left the kitchen. Jacquie frowned, annoyed at her carelessness at leaving it on the table in the first place. “That shouldn’t be there.” She went over to it just as Choya came down the stairs, more quickly than he’d gone up.

  “He isn’t in his room.”

  The other two turned to him, picking up on the worry in his voice. “He must be around here somewhere,” Sam said. “It’s freezing out. He wouldn’t just run off.”

  Jacquie looked down at her laptop screen and saw the e-mail she’d left pulled up. She’d forgotten all about it. With a sinking heart, she reread the information she’d given to Tammy’s friend. It was to the point with no explanations. A move-to-Tucson date. The amount of rent she could afford. Even her thank-you for the unexpected help.

  He wouldn’t have deliberately snooped, not after the brief confrontation they’d had over the downloaded game. Robbie was fundamentally a good kid who was afraid of doing wrong. He must have touched a key or bumped against the laptop’s shell when he’d reached for a cookie. He had to have seen the e-mail—and misinterpreted it to mean that she was leaving again. For good.

  “Oh my God,” she said, her voice breaking with fear. “He might have done just that. And it’s my fault.”

  Choya’s intent gaze narrowed on her stricken face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Chapter 17

  He cut her explanation short, racing out to check the barn, the stalls and even Robbie’s hiding place for treasures. Jacquie concentrated on the house, checking every corner and closet where a boy could hide. They found no trace of Robbie. Choya came back at a run to where Sam stood in the open doorway, waiting for him with Jacquie clattering down the stairs. “He’s not inside,” she called to Choya.

  “His jacket ain’t here,” the old man said grimly. “At least he’s got that. It’s damn cold and it’s only gonna get colder.”

  Choya brushed past him to grab his own jacket. “I’m calling the sheriff. We need help.” He flipped open his cell and placed the call, talking rapidly. “Gil—Choya here. Listen, we have an emergency. Robbie got upset about something and took off. No, I don’t know how long he’s been gone or which way he went. Can you—” He stopped talking to listen as Sam and Jacquie watched him intently.

  She slid on her jacket too, finding the car keys in one pocket, watching his face anxiously.

  “Okay. Will do,” Choya said abruptly. He turned to her and his waiting father. “They’re sending a couple of cars but they’re twenty miles away. He suggested you and I stick to the same road and start searching but in opposite directions. Slowly. Use your high beams. Look hard. There’s a lot of ground to cover and it’s getting dark.”

  Sam nodded, tension in his gaunt frame. The knuckles around the head of his cane tightened as he thumped it on the floor, heading for the old landline in the study. “I’ll stay by this phone. Either of you see anything or find him, call in,” he said.

  Choya jabbed at the keypad on his phone and Jacquie was startled when hers rang in her other pocket. “Why are you—” she began.

  “I’m forwarding you the sheriff ’s personal number. I know you don’t have it,” he snapped. “Gil Levi is county, not local. We need that kind of reach.”

  They scrambled out the door, running toward their respective vehicles. Choya paused for only a second to look at the sky. The heavy clouds had moved closer. He swore at the sky, a vicious oath that shocked her.

  “If it rains”—he broke off and she stared at him mutely—“we could get a flash flood. No telling where it would happen.”

  “But the clouds aren’t that close,” she pointed out in a small voice.

  “Didn’t I explain this to you?” The question was laced with anger. “It could be pouring miles away and not rain here at all. But dry land like this doesn’t soak up floodwater. It channels it.”

  Choya reached into the back of the jeep and found a flashlight, tossing it at her. Jacquie barely caught it, wincing when it hit her hand.

  “Get going.” He started the jeep and roared away, turning left and north in less than a minute. She went south only seconds after that.

  The road was empty. That was nothing new but now it seemed haunted. The heavy clouds really were closer, edged with drifting mist that stole over the desert and trapped the bright light of her high beams, bouncing it back toward her. Alarmed by the low visibility, Jacquie crept along, her gaze sweeping from one side of the road to the other, looking for the smallest possible clue.

  A broken branch. An overturned rock. Anything. The sameness and spareness of the desert landscape ought to make it somewhat easier to spot things like that, but the mist didn’t help.

  She saw nothing. How far could he have gone on foot? Guilt racked her and she forced her mind to ignore it. She needed to stay calm.

  The slowly moving car went over a low, almost imperceptible rise in the road that barely registered with her until she had gone another half mile. Then she remembered what it was. The rise covered a culvert. Choya had gone over it at top speed on one of their drives to town, just to give her a bump.

  She drove onto the shoulder, turning the car around, hearing the rocks crunch under her tires. Then she headed back the way she’d come at the same agonizingly slow pace, s
till looking carefully to each side before she felt the subtle rise in the road and pulled over.

  Jacquie grabbed the flashlight and put her cell phone into a front pocket where she could grab it easily. Before she got out, she switched on the flashlight and opened the window to follow its powerful beam with her eyes, letting it sweep over the area directly in front of her.

  Another pair of eyes, wild ones, gleamed back from a few feet away and disappeared just as suddenly. She sucked in a breath, fighting an uncanny feeling that the mist would swallow her voice if she called Robbie’s name, just as it swallowed her high beams, but she did it anyway.

  “Robbie! Robbie, answer me! Are you here? Robbie!”

  Her voice died away but not before she heard a faint, very faint scuffle. Where it was coming from, she didn’t know. She strained to listen. The surrounding darkness hid critters that hunted at night. But what she’d heard wasn’t an animal noise. Newly awakened instinct told her that much.

  She left the engine running and the lights on, pushing the emergency blinker. Its steady tick was not reassuring. She got out and closed the door quietly.

  Jacquie stepped carefully to the edge, realizing that the culvert was directly beneath her. She would need to move to the side and scramble down from there to see into it. The faint scuffling sound came again. “Robbie, please answer me if you’re there,” she said softly.

  Then she cursed her own stupidity. He could be hurt, unable to answer. She moved quickly, stooping and twisting her body to get down to ground level, praying she wouldn’t get hurt herself. Jacquie jumped the last several inches, landing in the dust of a dry wash, choking as the fine particles rose around her. She coughed and moved toward the culvert, not seeing footprints. But then, he could have gone in from the other side.

  She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, intending to call Choya to let him know that she’d stopped on the road. But it slipped from her fingers when she fumbled to flip it open and disappeared. Her flashlight beam didn’t pick up the gleam of metal or a glowing screen. She swore. The phone was as good as gone, and she wasn’t going to look for it.

  She pointed the beam into the concrete cavern—it was longer and wider than she’d thought, with a jumble of dry pebbles and white sticks down its center. She realized those were bones. Animals brought their kills here and gnawed the flesh in solitude. She pointed the flashlight right down the middle and toward the walls—and then she saw him.

  Robbie cowered at the far end, pressing himself against the curved wall of the culvert. Jacquie realized that he couldn’t see her behind the flashlight beam. In the echoing culvert, perhaps he hadn’t recognized her voice either.

  “Oh my God—it’s you.” She bent to go toward him, not able to stand up. “Come with me, honey. No one’s mad at you. We just want to get you home. The car’s waiting.”

  His face was grimy and she knew he’d been crying here in the dark. “Let’s go,” she insisted gently, reaching out. He slipped his hand into hers, and she felt the grit on his palm. He must have crawled in here for shelter when dark fell, going on hands and knees over the rocks and small bones, not realizing at first that he could stand up in the confined space.

  She stayed bent, leading him back to where she’d come in. A sound began—at first she thought it was their footsteps, nothing more. Then she realized the rocks were rattling, swept forward by water that seeped into her shoes. Robbie didn’t seem to notice it—the soles of his sneakers were thick and there was less than an inch of water by her frightened guess.

  In seconds it got higher. Two inches. Then three.

  Jacquie scooped him up under her arm and sloshed on at a run, going as fast as she could, toward the other end of the culvert. A light blazed over the round walls. Not hers. Someone was waiting there. The rocks rattled and she stumbled in water over her ankles that rushed on.

  They were out—she didn’t have time to straighten before she was half-shoved and half-dragged out of danger. Choya had them both in his strong grip and pulled them to safety.

  Jacquie broke away, taking heaving breaths that made her throat raw. Disoriented, she stared at the nearly silent flood that gushed from the culvert. In seconds it had risen to just under the top of the concrete and spread far and wide out over the wash. She turned her face to the sky, expecting pelting rain and finding only the chilly mist. Feeling sick to her stomach, she used the fender of her SUV to pull herself up and stand unsteadily. Choya’s jeep was on the other side of the road, parked with the engine running and the lights on. He held his son, cradling the boy’s head in one large hand, soothing him.

  “You’re okay. Shh. You’re okay,” he repeated in a whisper.

  Robbie hid his face in his dad’s jacket for a moment. Then he lifted it and looked around, peering into the misty darkness. “Where’s Jacquie? She found me.”

  “I figured that.” Choya nodded to her to come closer. “I tried to call her. When I didn’t get an answer, I drove the way she’d gone. And here you both were, safe and sound.”

  Robbie clung to his father with one arm but reached out a hand to her. “I was scared—that you were going to leave again.”

  “I’m not,” Jacquie assured. “I think I know what happened”—she broke off at Choya’s warning look—“maybe I don’t. But I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Never mind that,” Choya said quietly. “There’s a lot to talk about, but we’re not going to do it here. Let’s get home,” he said to Robbie when the boy murmured in protest. He turned to cross the road to his jeep but Robbie shook his head.

  “I want to ride with Jacquie,” he insisted.

  Choya almost said something, but then bit back the words. She was shaking, suddenly feeling the effects of her narrow escape. The torrent of water had slowed, as if a faucet had been turned on full blast and then shut off little by little. She peered out into the mist, then noticed bright lights in a row, haloed by the mist, coming closer. The deputies had found them.

  It turned out to be one deputy. The car ground over the rocky shoulder to a full stop, and a young officer scrambled out. “You all okay? I just radioed in that I thought I found you—do we need an ambulance out here?”

  Choya looked at Jacquie and lifted Robbie up to hand him to her. “I don’t think so. He didn’t break anything. But I’m not so sure she’s ready to drive.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, rallying. The little boy in her arms nestled against her. She bit her lip to keep from crying. “Just give me another minute or two.” Exhausted, she leaned against her car, still holding him.

  The deputy turned his head and looked out at the wash. Pebbles still rattled in the mud, but the floodwater had spread out over an area too vast to see in the headlights. He gave a low whistle. “Look at that. We got reports of others tonight, but nothing that big.”

  Jacquie shook her head at him and put a hand over Robbie’s ear—the one that wasn’t pressed against her.

  “Tell you what,” the young officer said. “I’ll follow you all home, make sure you get there okay. Just let me radio in that I found you in good shape and we’ll go.” He walked over to Jacquie to look her over and patted Robbie on the back. “Glad you’re all right, pal. You’re awful young to be out on your own at night.”

  “I went for a walk,” Robbie mumbled. “Then I forgot to go home.”

  The deputy nodded as though he’d heard similar stories from other lost kids. “Well,” he said kindly, “your mom and dad can talk to you about that later.”

  “I’m not his—” She didn’t finish the sentence, because the deputy turned to respond to a sudden squawk on the police radio, going back to his car. Jacquie became aware of the way Choya was looking at her. Jacquie didn’t quite know what to make of the expression in his eyes but one thing was for sure, he’d never looked at her like that before. Respect and admiration mixed with love—she blew out a breath and turned her head to the side, overwhelmed.

  Robbie buried his face in her neck. “I love you, Jacquie
,” he whispered.

  “I love you too, sweetie,” she answered with a catch in her voice. “And everything’s going to be all right. Let’s go home. Your gramps is waiting. Choya, did you call him?”

  He nodded impassively, standing there and still looking at them in the same way. She told herself to get a grip on her emotions and even managed to give him a small smile.

  Robbie gave a huge sigh. “Did I ruin Christmas?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “The tree’s right there and so are the presents under it and we can set out cookies for Santa before you go to bed.”

  “I don’t want to be alone. I didn’t like being way out here.” He heaved a wrenching sigh and added, “I’m sorry I ran away. I’m really sorry.”

  “We know you are,” Choya said.

  She struggled to get him into a more comfortable position. “You don’t have to be alone tonight. We’ll figure something out. And don’t worry. We’re closer to home than you think.”

  Choya came over to lift his son from her arms and get him settled in the front seat of her SUV. Jacquie went around to her side and got in, rolling down the window. She let Choya swing out and lead the way. The deputy followed her.

  The mist didn’t lift. They drove just as slowly. The young officer honked as they turned off on the track that led to the ranch house, and headed north on another call.

  Jacquie saw a welcoming red glow ahead in a window of the house. Sam’s lamp. A beacon in the darkness. As they pulled into the ranch yard, she saw him standing in the open doorway, silhouetted by the light from inside, patiently waiting.

  The next hours passed by in a blur. No one went to bed. The sofa was where Jacquie wanted to be—she and Robbie snuggled up together, watching Choya build a fire. He’d explained to Robbie in a serious voice that Santa would see the smoke rising from the chimney and know to come in another way. They’d leave the front door unlocked.