An Angel for Christmas (15 page)

It was something like the scent of…brimstone!

“Boy, where's the Hippocratic oath now?” DeFeo said. “Well, Mr. Moralist, you'll have to figure out something here, won't you? Your brother or your ex-wife, the precious mother of your precocious little brats!”

“I'll get you the snowmobile!” Shayne said.

“Oh, I don't know,” DeFeo said. “Maybe I'll just take her with me all the way…”

His hold on Cindy must have eased a fraction.

She cried out, “Shayne, don't let him hurt Bobby, don't—”

The sound strangled as he clenched his arm more tightly around her.

Dear God,
Bobby prayed.
What do we do, what can I say, how—

He was suddenly aware of a rush of sound. And suddenly, Cindy was almost flying toward him in the snow.

DeFeo cried out in surprise.

And Bobby realized that someone had come up behind DeFeo; they had all been so intent on the interaction between them that none of them had heard a thing.

They hadn't seen a thing…

But someone had come.

Gabe Lange.

 

Morwenna ran as fast behind Gabe as she could. Following him, she had first gone dead still in horror. The snowmobile was on its side…on top of someone!

And then, of course, she had seen DeFeo's back. And she had realized that he was holding someone in a death grip. And she hadn't even had time to think.

Gabe had taken off.

And then he was on DeFeo's back.

She heard a scream, and it came from Cindy, who had been thrust forward, falling into a massive drift. While Gabe attacked DeFeo from behind, DeFeo reached around, shouting out in rage, grabbing at Gabe.

Morwenna raced toward the trees, finding a stick. She ran around in front of the grappling men and began thrashing hard at DeFeo with her haphazard weapon. He lashed out with a fist, and he struck her in the chest. She was stunned at the blow; it sent her flying back hard into the trees. She was aware of Shayne rushing by her, ready to join the attack, and then she was aware of Shayne again, flying by her as if he weighed no more than an Easter bunny.

She heard Bobby, roaring in frustration, unable to help. She saw that Cindy was up, crawling over
toward Bobby, and that Shayne was trying to rise, shaking his head, as if he could clear it.

She scrambled to her feet and looked around for a weapon. There was a huge tree branch by her feet and she went for it, and then charged in again, whacking at DeFeo—trying to make sure that she missed Gabe.

Except that she didn't miss him; she caught him in the arm. He bellowed, but he didn't even seem to notice her, so intent was he on DeFeo.

“Give it up! Give it up!” Gabe raged to DeFeo. “I've won. You're done here, you're done here! Give it up!”

Shayne charged in again, going for DeFeo's legs. He toppled the man, but Gabe went down, too. Morwenna grabbed her branch, trying again to get a good crack in on DeFeo's head.

She aimed well, and this time, she hit him.

She
knew
that she hit him.

But he didn't even notice. Even though the sound seemed like a shot in the cold air,
it didn't even faze him.

She went to strike again, but to her amazement, both men were up.

“You've lost!” Gabe shouted again. “You've lost!”

But DeFeo didn't want to give up the fight. His face was contorted in a hideous mask of rage, and he stared at Gabe, as if he
knew
somewhere he had been defeated, but he just couldn't accept that it might be so. He was going to lunge at Gabe again, but then another sound seemed to rip apart the crisp air and the icy mountaintop.

A roll of thunder. There was no lightning, there was no sign of a coming storm…

But the sky suddenly lit up as if the earth had spun crazily toward the sun for one bizarre moment; then the sound of thunder roared again.

The night returned to darkness.

DeFeo turned, and started to run. Gabe tore after him.

“No, Gabe!” Morwenna shouted. “Let him go!”

Gabe looked at her briefly. “I can't,” he said quietly.

He turned and ran after DeFeo. She saw Gabe catch hold of DeFeo again.

“Stay still—give in and stay still, please!” Gabe begged the other man.

It wasn't to be. DeFeo let out with a punch that landed hard on Gabe's jaw.

“No,” DeFeo cried. “You have to win, and you know it. And I just have to escape you.”

The man sounded almost gleeful.

Gabe twisted to secure the other man's arms, but DeFeo wasn't willing to give in. In the struggle, they began to roll. They rolled hard and fast, and she shrieked again in horror; they were rolling toward the ledge. She could barely see in the darkness of the night, but she could still hear the two and they kept rolling…

“Gabe!” she cried.

But she couldn't see the two men any longer; she couldn't hear them. There was no crunch of snow. There was no grunting, no sound of blows falling…nothing.

She felt Shayne behind her, setting his hands on her shoulders.

“Oh, my God!” she breathed. “We've got to find him.”

“We'll go after him,” Shayne promised. “We'll go after him. But we've got to work here first. And fast.”

“Shayne—”

“Bobby is caught,” Shayne said, and he looked into her eyes. “And…I'm sorry, Morwenna, so sorry, but if Gabe does lose…DeFeo could come back.”

“Just get me out!” Bobby cried.

“Come on. Cindy—” Shayne began, spinning around.

Cindy was already waiting at the tree. “I don't even know what just happened. But we've got to get Bobby out from under there. And we're going to be all right. Come on!”

Morwenna looked at Shayne, and together they hurried to the tree. Shayne took the front position. Morwenna strained. Her muscles ached to the core. They strained and pulled, and slowly, with Shayne shouting instructions, they brought the snowmobile back to rest on its tracks.

She fell back in the snow, exhausted and amazed that Shayne's system had worked. Her brother walked to the snowmobile, hunkering down to help Bobby up. Bobby winced, trying to stand.

“Nothing broken,” he said.

“The tavern is just up ahead. Take Cindy. Get her back to the tavern,” Shayne said.

Bobby nodded, realizing that he couldn't help.

“Can you make it without the snowmobile?” he asked Bobby and Cindy.

“We will make it without the snowmobile,” Bobby assured them. “You two need it.”

Cindy nodded, hurrying to Bobby to lend support to help him limp along.

But, as Morwenna watched, Cindy paused, staring at Shayne with anguish in her eyes. She rushed to him, caught hold of his jacket, rose to her toes and kissed his lips.

And, if only quickly, Shayne kissed her back.

“We've all got to move!” he commanded.

Cindy nodded and ran back to Bobby.

Shayne mounted the snowmobile. The headlight
was still on; he turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened. He turned it again.

And the motor sprang back to life. Shayne carefully eased it into Reverse, and the mangled machinery moved.

“Go!” he said to Bobby and Cindy. He looked at Morwenna. “Climb on!” he told her.

She did so quickly, and they moved on into the darkness of the night.

Bobby's leg was killing him. He was sure that he hadn't broken any bones, but he had done some mean damage to himself.

He leaned hard on Cindy for support, and they moved through the night. He could hear the strain of his breathing; even in the dim light of the moon that shone down upon them, he could see the massive mist of each breath he took.

Cindy labored at his side.

“I'm sorry!” he said.

“Oh, Bobby,” she returned. “I'm all right, really. I'm tougher than I look, and I was never really hurt badly. I was frozen…blacked out a bit, but I'm all right. You can lean on me.”

“Maybe you should run ahead,” he suggested.

“Never,” she told him. “Bobby, I don't understand anything about tonight.”

“I'm not sure
we
even know what happened,” he said.

“That light…” she murmured.

“Strange, huh?”

“Very!” she said. Then she stopped in her tracks. “Bobby!”

“What?”

“I can see it!”

“See what?”

“A star!”

“What?”

She laughed. “I see a star, and it's actually the tavern! The electricity must have just gone back on. Look! It's all lit up, and it seems like a zillion colors are shining out—oh, it's the lights on the tree, Bobby. I can see the tree with the star on top!
Look through the pines, and you can see the tree right through the window!”

He paused, and he peered through the trees.

And he smiled, unaware of the pain in his leg.

The star at the top of Mac's tavern tree seemed brilliant. It was a guide, and it was a sign.

They were almost there.

“Cindy, come on. Hot chocolate is so close I can almost taste it!”

 

They took the beat-up snowmobile around bend after bend.

And there was no sign of either Gabe Lange or Luke DeFeo.

Shayne drew to a stop, revving the motor as he tried to look around.

“Morwenna,” he murmured. “We're not going to find them.”

“No, no, no!” she said. “They've gone over the ledge. Oh, Shayne…”

“Maybe not, Morwenna. Gabe is a resourceful fellow.”

“We can't give up! We can't give up.”

“Morwenna, you can't go over the ledge. It's a far drop down.”

“We can't give up.”

“We have to. It's dark—the light isn't showing us much. They might be down over the ledge, but safe on some kind of outcrop. They might have wound up taking the fight up one of the slopes. They could have wound up in the trees anywhere.”

He was right; she felt ill.

“Oh, Shayne!”

He turned and touched her cheek. “We could be heading for frostbite now, Morwenna. We have to go back. We need a helicopter, and we need light. We'll get Dad and Mac, we'll see if anyone has been able to get hold of someone who can really help,” he said gently.

She nodded and leaned her head against his back. “Shayne, we tied him up!”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“Genevieve never stopped believing in him.”

“No,” Shayne agreed. He cleared his throat.
“DeFeo arrived in a cop's uniform, Morwenna. We had no choice.”

“But he saved Genevieve's life. And then…he might have saved all of us.”

“He did save all of us,” Shayne said.

She nodded against his back. Her heart ached.
This
hurt. This hurt in a way that was far worse than anything she had ever felt. It seemed silly and irrelevant that she had cared at all that Alex had been on a beach—chasing Double-D Debbie.

Shayne revved the motor and carefully turned the snowmobile.

When they finally reached the place where the fight had begun, Morwenna begged him to stop for a minute.

She crawled off the snowmobile and carefully moved toward the ledge.

“Wait! Be careful. I'll get a light.”

She heard her brother swearing softly as he struggled to open the bent-up storage compartment on the side of the snowmobile that had hit the ground. She heard a wrenching sound as it gave, and then she was aware that Shayne followed
her to where she stood with a high-powered flashlight.

Silently, they searched the terrain below them. The moon was casting a decent glow, and they looked and looked.

“Anything?” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

“Try farther down, Shayne. Cast the light down.”

He did.

But no one was there.

Shayne set his arm around her shoulders and led her back to the snowmobile. “It's good that we didn't find them, you know that, right?” Shayne asked her.

She imagined Gabe at the bottom of the mountain, crushed, mangled and bleeding.

“Yes,” she said huskily. Silently, she crawled on the snowmobile behind him.

“Hey!” he said.

“Yeah?”

“The lights are back on at the tavern,” he said.

“So they are.”

 

Bobby wasn't sure he'd ever seen anything as beautiful as his mother's look of joy when he and Cindy stumbled into the tavern.

Ah, but maybe there was. It was Genevieve's face as she saw her mother.

“Mommy!” she cried. Delight in her voice. “Oh, Mommy!”

Genevieve threw herself against Cindy, who nearly fell over.

“Careful!” Connor cried. And then he was sobbing, too.

“I knew that Daddy would find you,” Genevieve said. “I knew that he would!”

“I don't know how he even knew that I was out there!” Cindy said, accepting hugs from all around.

Bobby found himself crushed in a ferocious bear hug by his mother, and then his father. And he wondered if the way that his father looked at him with such pride and love wasn't one of the best gifts he'd ever received at Christmas.

Then his mother cried out, “Bobby, you're hurt!”

“Just a sore leg. My brother will fix it.”

Stacy drew back, concern in her eyes again. “They're not here. Shayne and Morwenna. Where are they?”

Then he and Cindy tried to explain, each interrupting one another to add a detail.

“But—but they went to try to help Gabe. Against DeFeo!” his mother said, fear in her voice.

“They're on the snowmobile. They're fine. It's still working. And, Mom, honestly, I think that Gabe is going to rearrest DeFeo. I don't think there's any question,” Bobby said.

Brian Williamson came over to them. “Bobby, get that wet coat off. Come on, everybody. These two need to be warmed up.”

Mary jumped to at her husband's words, smiling as she hurried for her coat to put on Cindy until she could warm up. Bobby felt himself divested of his wet snow gear and bundled into an oversize coat.

“My God,” Stacy said, hurrying to the window. “Where are they? Where are they?”

Cindy walked over to Stacy, touching her gently
on the shoulder. “Mom…I mean, Stacy, I'm so sorry. Shayne should never have been out. I don't know how he knew to come looking. I just can't believe that he did…”

Stacy turned to look at her. She reached out and drew her into a big hug.

“It's not your fault! It's not your fault at all for wanting to be with your family at Christmas. And you call me Mom forever, no matter what you two do in the future, do you hear me?” Stacy demanded.

Cindy nodded, tears in her eyes.

Mike walked up behind her, pulling her from his wife and into his arms.

“We are always happy to see you, Cindy,” he told her. “Listen to your old dad.”

Cindy started to cry.

Bobby felt tears welling in his own eyes.

“Now is the time for Irish coffee!” Mac boomed out. “Stacy MacDougal, come back here and help me. Those children need something warm in their bodies!”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Stacy said. “And we'll need
to make two extra, because Shayne and Morwenna will be back any minute.”

She walked around the bar to busy herself helping Mac.

The Williamson family stood near the window, watching, offering silent support.

Genevieve and Connor clung to their mother.

Bobby sat back in a booth, his leg up. His mother brought him the first steaming Irish coffee. He smiled at her. He sipped it. “They'll be here,” he said firmly. He pointed at the star at the top of the Christmas tree. “It will lead them home, you'll see. The electricity miraculously came back on at the right time to see to it that the star leads them back. It brought Cindy and me in.”

Stacy nodded. “Yes, yes, it did.”

Bobby perked up suddenly. “Listen! Listen, I can hear the motor,” he said.

“They're coming!” Adam Williamson said from the window. “They're coming!”

Stacy stood by Bobby, closing her eyes in gratitude. She looked at Bobby. “It's a beautiful sound right now.”

 

Shayne slipped his arm around Morwenna as she crawled off the back of the snowmobile. She hadn't realized it, but her cheeks frozen on her face—and her “cheeks” were frozen elsewhere, as well. Without Shayne's arm around her, she might have stumbled.

The door to the tavern burst open.

Her mother and father came running out, heedless of the cold, hugging them both and urging them into the warmth.

Morwenna felt like a star, friends and family everywhere, helping her off with the wet and on with dry, a sweater and a scarf someone had once left behind, and held in the tavern's back room in hopes the owner would return for it. Her mother held her hands in her own, rubbing them and warming them. Hot, stiff coffee was set before her, and her father listened while Shayne explained where they had searched, and that they hadn't found anything.

She tried not to cry.

She couldn't believe that Gabe Lange had been
in their lives so briefly, and that she felt as bereft as she did. She wanted to pray that he was alive and was so afraid he couldn't possibly be.

She was vaguely aware of everyone talking as she sipped her laced coffee.

“DeFeo could still be out there,” Mike said.

“You enjoy your family,” Brian Williamson told him. “I've got the shotgun, and I'll be watching the front.”

“And no one is coming in the back,” Mac assured him. “Windows and doors are bolted.”

“He's not coming back,” Morwenna said. “Not unless…not unless Gabe is dead,” she whispered.

“Gabe isn't dead!” Genevieve announced fiercely.

“Of course not,” Morwenna said. She tried to smile at her niece. But Genevieve wasn't worried.

She was trying to reassure her aunt.

“Gabe isn't dead,” she repeated. “He's going to find us all again.” She pointed at the star. “He'll see it, too!”

“You're absolutely right,” she told Genevieve.

She wished she believed it.

She leaned back again, taking a long swallow of the coffee brew. It was good. The alcohol warmed her to the core. It seemed impossible, but she was warm again. She closed her eyes, and she listened to those around her.

She could hear Bobby and her father talking.

“I'm hoping for Juilliard, Dad,” Bobby said. “I'm really hoping. And I will work my way through it. I wouldn't drop out, I swear.”

“Son, not that I don't have faith in you—I do,” Mike said. “But—here's the thing. If it isn't Juilliard, we'll search. We'll search until we find the right school. There's Ball State University of Music. There's Harvard. And, son, you will get into one of them,” he said firmly.

“Thanks, Dad,” Bobby said softly.

She opened one eye, and was glad to see them at the next booth, heads together, close.

She turned her head around a little, and there was Shayne.

With his family.

He was seated next to Cindy. They were close. The kids were on top of both of them; Shayne held
his son in his lap while Cindy held her daughter. It was such a perfect picture.

She didn't know if they actually would get back together. But whether they did or not, they would always share a very special bond now, she thought. And the fighting would all be over.

She closed her eyes again. She smiled. It was good. And yet…

Her heart ached.

Morwenna looked at the TV to distract herself. The television was still snowy, but a picture was starting to show.

A newscaster stood on a roadway. Morwenna could see the buildings around her and she recognized the little town just at the base of the mountain. The reporter was standing just outside the police station.

“Police have recaptured escaped white-collar criminal Luke DeFeo,” she said, her voice cheerful. “DeFeo managed to escape during a prisoner transfer yesterday, midday. It's Christmas for the cops, too! The con walked right into the police station, half-delirious, and gave himself up. One
of the state's finest, Detective Gabriel Lange, had been in hot pursuit—we have no information as to Lange's whereabouts, but rescue crews are out now, searching for him. In other news, despite the snowstorm, electricity is being restored to about five thousand homes, and in all, it looks like a white and merry Christmas. Over to you, now, Walter!”

“How the heck did the man get down the mountain so fast?” Mac asked incredulously.

“Really, that's just about impossible,” Mike said.

“You think they got the right man?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, they flashed his picture up there in the corner, didn't you see it?” Mac asked.

“Maybe he fell down half of it,” Stacy suggested.

“Well, they have him, and that's that,” Bobby said. He limped over to Morwenna and slid into the booth next to her. “Gabe is going to be all right, too, then.”

“Sounds odd, doesn't it, Bobby?” she asked.

“What's that?”

“DeFeo handed himself in,” Morwenna said.

“He
handed himself in.
That really doesn't sound like the guy who was fighting Gabe on the mountain.”