Kristine Kathryn Rusch Christmas Eve at the Exit

From Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine


“Will Santa know how to find us?” Anne-Marie asked as she hopped out of the van.

“Of course he will, honey,” Rachel said, just like she’d said every time they’d stopped.

Anne-Marie didn’t answer. She slammed the door hard enough to shake the entire vehicle, and hurried across the empty ice-covered parking lot. Somehow she kept her balance and didn’t fall, despite the pink tennis shoes she wore. Her red mittens hung off a string threaded through her pink coat. She’d lost three pairs so far, which Rachel figured had to be some kind of quiet rebellion.

Eight hundred, maybe nine hundred, miles to go, she thought to herself. She hadn’t been willing to check the GPS. She wasn’t sure if it transmitted the van’s location.

Even though she had never even seen the van before she removed it from a storage unit in Winnemucca, Nevada. Even though the van, its license plates, and that storage unit weren’t in her name. Even though she had taken a taxi to the units from that weird hotel and casino.

She’d left a trail. It was impossible not to. If someone had followed her, they would have figured it out. She’d had to leave Anne-Marie with the casino-provided babysitting service, which frightened Rachel more than anything. Then the taxi driver kept talking about how unusual it was to have a woman take a cab to a storage unit. He pressed his card into her hand, told her to call him if her ride didn’t show up.

I know you’re in trouble, little lady, he’d said through teeth broken so long ago the cracks had turned yellow from the cigars he smoked. So you just call me and I’ll make sure you get back to the hotel, no problem.

She’d thanked him, trying not to cry. She hadn’t wanted him to notice her. She hadn’t wanted anyone to notice her. She wanted to be invisible, even though she didn’t look like she belonged.

She belonged in Boise, with her trendy blue ski parka and $500 athletic shoes, not in small-town Nevada, where she was so obviously a tourist that everyone asked her if she needed directions.

In the end she hadn’t needed the cabdriver. She used the key she’d been mailed to open the storage unit, then followed the instructions pasted to the van. Three different identities inside, each with a different credit card, an entire wad of cash, birth certificates for her and Anne-Marie, and directions to their new place.

Plus seven different preprogrammed cell phones, one for each state. They were numbered. Every time Rachel crossed a state border, she was supposed to toss out the phone she had been using and take the next one. She’d thrown the first away near the Bonneville Salt Flats, heart pounding, and somehow that — not the abandonment of her own car, the use of a new identity, the loss of all her possessions — had finally convinced her there was no turning back.

She still had the feeling she was being followed. She liked to attribute that to the fact that all modern cars looked alike, so the dark-blue SUV she saw in Salt Lake might have had nothing to do with the dark-blue SUV that cut her off in Rock Springs. Or the beige sedan that seemed to dog her trip from North Platte to Kearney.

She ran a hand through her wedge-cut dark hair. She’d bought and paid for that wedge cut, as per instructions, at a beauty shop in Cheyenne, where the kind sad-eyed woman there also gave her a pencil for her eyebrows — to thicken and darken them — and taught her how to alter the shape of her face with blush, foundation, and the right kind of lipstick.

The wind blew hard here in Omaha, carrying with it a chill she hadn’t felt in a decade. Her brand-new ski parka felt too thin despite its state-of-the-art promises. Of course, the radio had been telling her that she was driving into a holiday “polar vortex” that filled the air with cold that could kill in less than an hour.

She was glad for the van, glad for the clothes she wore, glad for the interstate with its protective traffic, but she hoped to be off the road soon. She was afraid for Anne-Marie and afraid for herself, and the weather didn’t help matters.

She shrugged on her gloves and carefully followed her daughter inside. The ice was so thick that it added another layer to the parking lot. The lot had been well tended; the snow from a massive storm two days ago — one that had been ahead of her all the way — was piled alongside the edges of the lot, taking up at least one row of spaces.

Anne-Marie watched her from inside. Her blond hair wisped out of her blue-and-pink cap, her round cheeks were bright red with cold, and her blue eyes twinkled in the Christmas lights framing the glass door. She looked like a child waiting for Santa Claus instead of a little girl who had no idea how much her life had already changed.

Rachel pushed the door open, heard the bing-bong of electronic notification, and saw a twenty-something dark-skinned man behind the desk. His appearance momentarily startled her. She’d lived in Idaho so long that she had forgotten how diverse the rest of the country was.

He looked at her and grinned. The expression softened his face and made the red-and-green silk scarf around his neck seem appropriate. “I assume this little one belongs to you?”

“She does,” Rachel said with a smile that she had to force. She put her hand on Anne-Marie’s shoulder and guided her daughter toward the tall front desk, festooned in garlands.

A real Christmas tree took over a corner of the lobby, filling the air with the scent of pine.

“She and I have been discussing Santa,” the young man said. His nametag identified him as Luke.

“She and I have as well,” Rachel said. “She thinks he won’t find her because we’re very far from home. I told her that Santa is magic, and can find everyone.”

“Yes, he can,” Luke said, leaning over a little so that he could see Anne-Marie on the other side of the desk. “And people like me, we help Santa when he needs it.”

Rachel’s stomach clenched. She tried not to look frightened by that admission, but it was hard. She wanted to ask Luke who else he would help if need be, but she didn’t.

She wanted to seem as normal as she could for a woman who brought her daughter to a chain hotel off I-80 on Christmas Eve.

“What’s the largest room you have?” She really couldn’t afford it, but it was Christmas, and she wanted the room to be festive somehow.

“We have a choice of everything,” Luke said. “We’re empty at the moment, although I expect the usual travelers and truckers after ten.”

She smiled. His good mood, surprising for a man working on the holiday, was infectious. He smiled back and tapped at the computer keyboard. As he did so, the Christmas lights woven into the garland above him winked off the tiny sparkly red-and-white candy canes in his pierced ears.

“When do you get to go home and celebrate?” she asked as she pulled out her wallet. She was pleased that her hands weren’t shaking.

“I’m here all night, ma’am,” Luke said, sounding distracted. He was still staring at the screen in front of him.

“Will Santa find you?” Anne-Marie asked, her voice a little shaky.

Rachel braced herself for him to say something disparaging like, Santa hasn’t found me for years, honey.

Instead Luke reached to one side of the computer and grabbed a real candy cane. He kept it under the lip of the desk, then looked up at Rachel, a question on his face. She nodded her approval.

His smile became real then and he leaned over the desk again, offering the candy cane to Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie took it like it was the most precious thing she’d ever received.

“Santa doesn’t have to find me,” he said. “I’m one of Santa’s helpers.”

Anne-Marie clutched it to her pink coat. “Really?” she asked breathlessly.

“Really,” he said.

She backed away a little. “Can I put this on the tree?” she asked Rachel softly.

But Luke heard. “It’s okay, hon,” he said as he tapped the keyboard some more. “The tree has enough candy canes on it. That one’s for you.”

Anne-Marie frowned. Rachel smiled at her, encouragingly. The last thing she wanted was for her daughter to be this wary. Had she taught Anne-Marie that? Or had Anne-Marie learned it through observation?

“You can put it on our tree when we get upstairs if you want,” Rachel said.

Anne-Marie nodded seriously and clutched the candy cane to her chest. Luke was looking at Rachel over the computer.

His questioning gaze startled her.

“We’ve been setting up a small tree at nights in the hotel rooms,” she said, feeling as if she were giving him the secrets of her soul.

He grinned. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Great thinking.”

She braced herself again for more questions, like she’d had at the other hotels. When will you get to your destination? Are you spending Christmas with your family? Where’s your husband, sweet thing?

But he didn’t ask them, and she didn’t volunteer. Her heart was beating hard, the wallet in her hand feeling like an accusation. She had to remember which identification she was using. It was hard, because she looked at them all every night.

The instructions told her to change identification only if she felt she needed to, and she wasn’t sure what that meant, especially since she felt like she needed to change identification every minute of every day.

“We have a suite,” Luke said. “No one’s booked it. I think it’s late enough that I can give it to you at a lower rate.”

The price he quoted to her made her heart pound harder, but, she reasoned, she’d planned to pay that much anyway, the moment she walked in the door.

All she could feel was the money going out. She wondered how much of it she would owe later.

But she couldn’t think about that. Not yet.

“Credit card?” he asked, extending one hand while the other still tapped on the keyboard in front of him.

Her fingers twitched, and she swallowed hard. Then she pulled out the card on top, checked the name, made sure it matched the driver’s license in the front of this wallet, and set the card in Luke’s hand. He shifted the card so that it fell between his thumb and index finger — clearly a maneuver of long standing — and then slid it through the card reader.

He had to be able to hear her heart. Everyone had to. Even Anne-Marie, who had moved to the Christmas tree as if it held the secrets of the world.

She hadn’t asked after her father. She hadn’t even asked where they were going.

That wasn’t natural, was it?

Rachel didn’t know. She’d never done anything like this before.

All Anne-Marie had asked was about Santa Claus, over and over again. That, Rachel believed, was normal.

“Your card,” Luke said, still without looking up. He was holding it out.

Rachel’s breath caught. She expected him to finish that sentence: Your card... didn’t run. Do you have another?

But he didn’t. He was just handing it back to her. He hadn’t even asked to see ID.

“Your key,” Luke said, holding a little folder with a black credit-card-sized square and a room number handwritten inside. “You’re on the third floor. Just take the elevator up. Would you like help with your luggage?”

Rachel didn’t see anyone who could help besides Luke himself. She was about to say no when she glanced at Anne-Marie, still staring at the tree.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Yes, please.”


The van had a compartment in the back built for the spare tire and for some repair equipment. When Rachel found the vehicle inside the storage unit, she had taken the tire out and placed it flat on the van’s carpet, then added the repair equipment on top of it. Later, at the hotel, she had taken out the bag of Santa presents she had bought before leaving Boise and placed them inside that little compartment.

Then she’d added the suitcases she’d bought just that afternoon at the local Walmart, plus the new overnight bags. And stepped back to look at her handiwork.

So much new stuff, such a lack of familiarity. Only Anne-Marie’s favorite toys remained, mostly because Rachel hadn’t had the heart to toss them out.

She’d bought a little tree too, with the lights already attached.

Even though the two of them were running away, she had vowed that her daughter would have Christmas.

Luke had come out with her, leaving a woman Rachel hadn’t seen when she checked in to watch the front desk. And Anne-Marie. The woman was watching Anne-Marie too. The woman looked tired and stressed, and something in her disheveled blouse and wrinkled skirt screamed shift’s end, a fact confirmed by Luke just before he left the lobby.

“It’s just a minute, Sherrie,” he had said to the woman. “I promise. Then you can go home.”

“Always just one more minute,” Sherrie had said. “I gotta get to the stores before they close.”

“Kmart’s open until ten,” Luke had said, and in his voice was just a bit of contempt. Because he thought Sherrie should shop at Kmart or because she did shop at Kmart?

Rachel couldn’t tell, and truly didn’t care. She just didn’t want the woman to see her — at least not much.

Luke, well, Rachel was taking a chance with him. This was the first time since she left Winnemucca that anyone other than herself and Anne-Marie had seen inside the van.

Anne-Marie was still inside the lobby, holding the candy cane and staring at the tree. She wouldn’t even sit down. She had asked Sherrie if she believed Santa would find them.

“You’d be surprised what Santa can find,” Sherrie had said.

Rachel pulled the Santa bag out of the hidden compartment. “Is there any way to put this behind the desk for a few minutes without Anne-Marie seeing it?”

Luke grinned at her. “No wonder you weren’t worried about Saint Nick. He’s already been here. Anything good in there?”

“If you’re seven, like pink, and have always longed for at least one more Barbie,” Rachel said, rather surprised she could banter. She had thought the ability to banter had left her years ago.

He smiled at her. “She’ll remember this trip forever,” he said, as if that were a good thing.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I suppose she will.”

She grabbed the overnight bags and slung them over her shoulders. Then she double-checked to make sure she had the key fob. She grabbed the small tabletop tree before slamming the lift gate shut.

“I’ll be down for the bag after my daughter falls asleep. You’ll still be here?”

“Of course,” Luke said. “You’ve already had dinner?”

For a moment she thought he was asking if he could join her. Her stomach clenched. Then she remembered that he had said he was working all night. He was just asking for information.

“No, we haven’t yet.” Her breath fogged the air as she spoke. “I suppose no one’s doing delivery tonight.”

“Not tonight.” Luke sounded apologetic, as if it were his fault that no one else was working. “But most of the restaurants around here are staying open. And there’s a church about three blocks away if you’re so inclined.”

“I think we’re too tired,” she said. She hoped. She didn’t want to leave the room after they’d eaten something. It was just too cold.

As if hearing her thoughts, Luke shivered. “I’m taking this in the back, then I’ll meet you.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he picked his way across the parking lot, slipping more than she liked.

The wind seemed even colder. Cars still whizzed by on the interstate behind her. The lights from the chain hotels and the chain restaurants that hugged this exit should have seemed festive, but they didn’t. They seemed like beacons of a past life.

She didn’t look at them, instead making certain she got across the slippery parking lot with her burden.

Luke went in a side door, then came back outside without the bag. He truly was Santa’s helper. He grinned, took the tree from her, and opened the main lobby doors.

Anne-Marie turned, eyes wide, as if she were expecting someone else, someone she didn’t want to see.

Rachel hated how jumpy her daughter had become.

“You brought the tree!” Anne-Marie said to Luke.

“I did indeed,” he said, then looked at Rachel. “Will you need help setting it up?”

Rachel was tempted, but she couldn’t quite face having a stranger take her to her room.

“Do you have a bellman’s cart?” she asked. “That’s all we need.”

He nodded as if he understood, then disappeared in the back, tree in hand. Anne-Marie watched it go as if he were never going to bring it back.

“Tough traveling on Christmas, isn’t it?” Sherrie said to Rachel.

“People are friendlier,” Rachel said, and it was true. People were friendlier, particularly when they saw her daughter. They assumed that Rachel was on her way to see relatives, that maybe she got behind or needed an extra bit of help.

She never dissuaded them.

“That friendly will end tonight,” Sherrie said. “The folks who show up after nine are generally upset because they can’t get to Grandma’s house or because they got no one to celebrate with.”

Rachel gave her a hard look, hoping she’d quit being negative.

Sherrie didn’t seem to notice. “Thank the good Lord for Luke, though. Ever since he came here, I haven’t had to work a Christmas Day. He calls it his gift to all of us.”

“He doesn’t have family?” Rachel asked, despite herself.

This time Sherrie did look at Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie was leaning toward one of the ornaments as if she’d never seen anything like it.

Sherrie shook her head. Anne-Marie turned around, as if she expected to hear Sherrie’s answer. So Sherrie put on a bright smile.

“He loves New Year’s. He takes the days around New Year’s off. One year he flew to New York to watch the ball drop. Said he damn near froze his ball—”

“Crudeness on Christmas is not allowed,” Luke said, interrupting her. He was dragging a gold bellman’s cart, with the tree set on one side of it.

“Where are you going this year?” Sherrie asked, as if she couldn’t be dissuaded from anything.

“Miami,” Luke said. “Party central. And it’s warm.

At that word, Rachel shivered. She would give anything to live somewhere warm now, but that wasn’t in the cards. She had made her choices, and they were good ones.

Or they would be. Once she got to Detroit.

She set the overnight bags on the cart, careful not to knock the tree off it. Her shoulders ached from carrying the bags, and from the stress of driving.

Hours to go, she reminded herself, hearing her fourth-grade teacher intone Robert Frost’s most famous poem, just like she always did when she realized she couldn’t sleep no matter how exhausted she was.

“There’s an in-room Jacuzzi,” Luke said softly, loud enough that only she could hear him. “Perfect after a long day. Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said. She had done nothing to deserve this man’s kindness, and yet he had given it to her.

The one thing she did not regret about traveling at Christmas was exactly what she had said to Sherrie: people were friendlier. It was as if a bit of the season had infected them and gave them just a little bit of joy.

“Come on, Anne-Marie,” she said, and Anne-Marie scurried to follow her.

Rachel wheeled the cart to the elevators behind the stairs. Anne-Marie didn’t even ask if she could ride it. She had in Cheyenne.

“Is Santa really going to find us?” Anne-Marie asked.

“If you fall asleep,” Rachel said as the elevator doors opened. “Just like last year.”

She regretted the words the moment she spoke them. Anne-Marie had a look of horror on her face.

Without Daddy, Rachel wanted to add. You don’t have to worry about Daddy.

But she didn’t. She’d mentioned last year, and she couldn’t take it back.

“I don’t like Christmas,” Anne-Marie said as she stepped inside, head down.

Rachel’s heart twisted. Little kids weren’t supposed to say that. Little kids were supposed to plan all year for Christmas, do special things to get in good with Santa, and be so excited that they couldn’t sleep the night before.

They weren’t supposed to turn off the Christmas specials and keep their faces averted during the commercials. Christmas wasn’t supposed to make them sad.

That emotion was for grownups, especially the ones for whom nostalgia was not enough.

Rachel put her hand on her daughter’s fuzzy little cap and didn’t say a single word.


Rachel put the little tree on the round table in the suite’s kitchenette. The suite was bigger than anything they had stayed in so far. It seemed like luxury, even though they hadn’t been traveling very long. Part of her had already forgotten the wealth in her past life.

She took small presents out of the overnight bag and scattered them under the tree, the first time she had done that. It made Anne-Marie frown.

“I got nothing for you, Mommy,” she said.

“It’s okay, baby,” Rachel said. “This trip is for me.”

Anne-Marie’s lower lip trembled, and Rachel wanted to curse Gil. He’d thrown a fit last year when he realized he hadn’t gotten as many presents as Rachel had. Anne-Marie had thought he was blaming her, when he wasn’t blaming anyone. He was just being an asshole, his specialty.

“I didn’t buy the trip,” Anne-Marie said softly.

“I know, sweetie,” Rachel said, making sure she sounded cheerful. “But you came with me.”

Anne-Marie let out a little sigh, then went to her toy bag and pulled out the stuffed dog that had become her lifeline. She set it on the bed nearest the kitchen, claiming that bed for her own.

“You hungry?” Rachel asked.

Anne-Marie nodded.

“Then bundle back up,” Rachel said. “We have to go outside again.”

They couldn’t really walk to the nearby restaurants, as much as Rachel wanted to. They had to drive, just because of the severe cold. They waved at Luke on the way out and got into the chilly van.

He had been right; most of the chain restaurants were open. Normally Rachel would have stopped at a super-large truck stop with six restaurants inside it, as well as shops and showers. No one noticed the people who came and went from those places.

But she decided not to because Anne-Marie had mentioned gifts. Rachel didn’t want her daughter to attempt to buy something for her.

Instead they stopped at the closest family restaurant chain. They all had a disagreeable sameness to her. They smelled of coffee and grease, even in the evenings. They served pancakes at all hours, and usually had pies that looked a little tired in a glass case near the cash register.

This restaurant had an open floor plan, a busboy wearing an elf hat, a manager wearing a tie covered with reindeer, and a waitress whose brown uniform had no holiday decoration at all.

She waved them to a table, then brought waters and menus before Rachel and Anne-Marie could even get settled. They ordered, got halfway decent food, and some free cookies courtesy of the manager.

Rachel was trying to decide whether she wanted to pay with cash or a credit card when she heard Anne-Marie gasp. Anne-Marie’s face had gone a kind of white that Rachel hadn’t seen since they left Boise. A look that usually meant Anne-Marie had been doing something she thought her father would disapprove of.

Rachel followed Anne-Marie’s gaze and saw a Santa accepting a menu from the waitress. He wasn’t wearing any padding under the suit, so it hung loosely, and his beard hung around his chin, as if he’d loosened it. He looked as tired as Rachel felt.

His appearance must have shocked Anne-Marie, who had only seen fat Santas so far. There had been a lot of them. She’d seen Santas everywhere, from the men manning the Salvation Army buckets by every public building to the men standing outside malls, smoking before they went back to work.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Anne-Marie.

Anne-Marie shook her head and then scrunched down, as if she didn’t want Santa to see her.

Someday, when Rachel got back on her feet, she’d get her revenge on Gil. She wasn’t sure what that revenge would be, but her husband had put the fear of God into their child.

And into her.

Or she wouldn’t be running now.

The food she had eaten rolled over in her stomach. It had taken a village to get her out of Boise. Her husband was so rich that she’d never thought she could escape him. But a forbidden phone call to her sister had changed her mind.

Helen had begged her to find a pay phone and call back. Helen had asked that before, and Rachel had refused. But this time she would listen to anything. Helen had hated Gil from the beginning and warned Rachel not to marry him. Rachel had resented that once. Later, she wondered what Helen had seen.

Still, Helen’s pushing had made her uncomfortable. It had also embarrassed Rachel. She felt so stupid. But that day she had gone past her embarrassment, past her inferiority. She was nearly dead inside. And Anne-Marie’s eyes were dying too.

So Rachel had found a pay phone near the ladies’ room in the back of a very large, very old grocery store. Rachel had felt naked making that call, standing to one side and watching the employees go by, hoping no one recognized her. She had barely been able to concentrate on her sister’s words.

Helen had told her that she knew a group of women who could help her and Anne-Marie, if she only followed instructions.

Rachel needed the help. A shelter couldn’t take her in, and she had no money of her own. Plus, Gil had more resources than any women’s organization.

But Helen had reassured her: the organization — SYT — had an incredible amount of money, and Rachel was exactly the kind of woman they could help.

The cost to Rachel? One year’s work at the organization, helping women just like her escape from whatever bad circumstance they were in. It would mean donating time and energy to a rehab project in Detroit, using old design skills that had led Rachel astray in the first place.

Once upon a time in a land faraway, she had been the best interior designer in Idaho. She had helped with projects from Boise to Sun Valley, and that was when she had met the multimillionaire charmer who would become her husband.

She should have known what a control freak he was right from the beginning. He’d had his fingers in every part of her work on that project. But she had agreed with him — his suggestions were good ones — and she hadn’t thought anything was amiss until six months after Anne-Marie’s birth, when he’d grabbed Rachel’s arm so hard during a disagreement that she’d had bruises for weeks.

She’d always thought women who stayed with men like him were doormats, so she tried to escape on her own. That’s when she discovered he had his own private army. He called them security, but they tracked every move she made and everything she did.

They had even asked her why she had used that pay phone on the way to the ladies’ room, and she had told them it was pretty simple: her cell had died.

They hadn’t double-checked. Nor did they check her purchases the next time she went shopping. She’d bought what her sister called a “burner phone” every time she shopped, and she hid them in the purses she had stacked in her closet like extra shoes.

“Mommy, can we go?” Anne-Marie asked.

Rachel nodded. She decided to stop waiting for the waitress to come back with their bill. Instead she went to the cash register and paid with cash.

The Santa was the only other person in the restaurant. He looked out the window. Then his gaze met hers through the glass. Rachel gave him an uncertain smile, mostly for Anne-Marie’s sake, and he nodded at her.

Anne-Marie grabbed her hand and held tightly.

“Let’s make sure you’re buttoned up,” Rachel said. She hated this kind of cold. It required preparation just to walk from a restaurant to the van.

But she had to get used to it. At least a year in Detroit, rehabbing, and getting her credentials back — under one of her new names.

They stepped outside and she sighed. The cold air burned her lungs. Anne-Marie nearly pulled her to the van, making her slide on the ice.

Everyone was nice here. Maybe she would stay one extra day. She wasn’t looking forward to a drive on Christmas. Most places were closed, and this arctic blast made travel so treacherous.

She would call Helen after Anne-Marie fell asleep.

They got into the van and drove the short distance back to the hotel. Luke was still at the front desk. He was watching some religious ceremony on television; it took Rachel a minute to realize it was the service from the Vatican.

She waved at him and mouthed, “I’ll be back soon,” as she and Anne-Marie headed toward the elevator.

They barely made it to the room before Anne-Marie decided she needed to get some sleep.


Rachel wished she could sleep. Ever since she’d fled Boise, she’d dozed, but never slept deeply. Every time a hotel-room heater clicked on, she bolted awake, thinking the sound was someone racking a shotgun.

Gil had threatened to kill her if she ever took Anne-Marie away from him, and she hadn’t doubted he could make good on the threat.

But Helen was convinced they could build her a new identity, and that no one would ever find her, if she did the right things. Helen had always worked with women’s groups, and this one, SYT (short for Sweet Young Things), seemed more organized and wealthier than anything Rachel had ever imagined.

They had had quite a plan for her, and she’d executed 99.9 percent of it. The hardest was leaving her Lexus SUV in the parking lot of that hotel-casino in Winnemucca and pretending that she actually had a drinking problem.

She had hidden whiskey all over her house before she left, disguised to look like tea or juice or a whole variety of things, as if she had been a secret drunk all along.

Helen had promised her that someone would take the SUV and leave it in the snow on a spur road between Winnemucca and Boise. Tracks would lead away from the SUV, and rescuers would believe that she and Anne-Marie had walked away from the car. There would be a high-profile search, and then nothing until spring, when someone might find a bit of their clothing and Rachel’s purse out in the wilderness.

Rachel thought it all a long shot, but she’d lived in the West long enough to know that families went missing there all the time. They took the wrong road, got stranded, and had no cell service. Rather than wait for rescue, like they were supposed to, they’d try to hike out, and generally die of exposure.

Everyone would believe the story, particularly after all that alcohol got found in the house.

Everyone, she suspected, except Gil.

But Rachel had to trust Helen. It was her only shot. Anne-Marie’s only shot. Because Gil terrorized his daughter. Mostly he wasn’t home, but when he was, just a twitch of his lips could make her turn that horrid shade of white that Rachel had seen in the restaurant.

Anne-Marie was terrified of him. As far as Rachel could tell, only because Rachel was frightened of him. To Rachel’s knowledge, he hadn’t physically hurt their daughter... yet.

But Rachel had known it was only a matter of time.

She sat near the television, turned so low she could barely hear it, and wished she smoked. Or actually did drink. Just to give herself something to do, something that would relax her.

She was on her own until she got to Detroit. Well, sort of on her own. The woman who had cut her hair in Cheyenne told her it got better. When Rachel asked if she was trading services, the woman had gotten very serious and nodded, finger to her lips.

There are women like us everywhere, she’d said. We’re setting up a network. I know it’s hard to trust, but you’ll be okay, if you just do what they told you.

And she had. Everything except the toys. And those she had searched over and over. She’d even stopped in a spy shop in Laramie and asked if they had one of those electronic bug-finders.

They did, and she asked if she could see how it worked. She brought in the bag of toys and the man demonstrated, finding nothing. He showed her that it did work with some demo they had, and told her that the toys were tracking-free.

She believed him. And she had seen him before Cheyenne, before her hair and appearance changed, before she dumped yet another coat, before she had done anything to make herself look like someone new.

Helen hadn’t said she had to avoid stores and things. Just warned her to be careful, and to leave her old life behind. No friends, no phone calls, no gloating e-mails to Gil.

Not that Rachel would have done any of that. She had no real friends, not ones she had contacted since her marriage, and she wasn’t about to contact her husband. Her cell was gone, left in the Lexus with her purse and her old identification.

Since she got on the road, she was a different woman, although she still felt the same inside.

A knock on the door made her jump out of her skin. She glanced at Anne-Marie, to see if her daughter had heard it.

She hadn’t.

Rachel got up and almost went to the door, thinking it was probably Luke from the desk. Then she wondered if he would just come up with the Santa bag. Wouldn’t he wait for her call?

She swallowed hard, heart pounding.

If something feels wrong, Helen had told her, then it probably is wrong. Your subconscious sees something you don’t. Get out of that situation.

Only there was no way out of here. Except the window, which was probably blocked against opening, not to mention the jump from the third floor into the damn polar express or whatever the hell that cold was called.

Rachel got up and moved silently away from the kitchen area, finding the house phone. She hit 0 and Luke answered.

“You ready for the presents now?” he asked cheerfully.

“You didn’t just knock on my door?” she asked very quietly, and even though she tried to control it, she could hear the fear in her voice.

“No, ma’am — damn. I didn’t see him go up there. There’s a Santa on security camera. He’s outside your door. You expecting someone?”

“No,” she said.

“Didn’t hire a Santa?”

“No.” And now she was chilled. She glanced at her daughter. What had Anne-Marie been trying to tell her?

“Okay.” Luke no longer sounded cheerful. He sounded businesslike. “He doesn’t belong here. I’ll kick him out.”

“No,” Rachel said. “He might be dangerous.”

“A Santa?

“How did he get past you?” she asked. “And how did he know we were here, in this room?”

Luke cursed. “Good point. We don’t have security tonight either. I’m going to have to call the cops. You hang tight and don’t open that door.”

And he hung up before she could tell him no cops. The last thing she wanted was cops.

She reached into the purse she was carrying tonight and took out the stun gun that SYT had left in the van with mace and a few other protective things. Her hand was shaking terribly.

“Open the door, Rachel,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize. “I’m sure we can find a way to convince your husband that this was all a misunderstanding.”

Tears threatened. They’d found her. Gil’s army, just like she knew they would.

She didn’t go near the door. She turned up the television a little more, so that Anne-Marie wouldn’t hear, then crept toward the bathroom, keeping the bathroom wall between her and the little corridor that led to the door.

“I’m thinking we fly back to somewhere near Winnemucca and I bring you and the little one out of the wilderness, saving your lives. It might mean you need to lick your fingers and stand outside in this cold for fifteen minutes, because frostbite would really help the story, but if we do that, Gil won’t know a damn thing.”

Rachel wanted to ask why he would do that, this mystery Santa, but she didn’t. She knew better than to engage. If she engaged, she had already lost.

She held the stun gun like it was a real gun. Helen had told her not to get a real gun, not with Anne-Marie in the van. Because Rachel didn’t know how to use it and, Helen said, too many bad things happened around children and guns.

“You’re not saying anything,” the man continued. “I know you want to.”

She peered around the wall. The safety chain was on, and she’d deadbolted the door, plus pushed in that so-called security lock. The only way in was for him to knock the door down, right? Or she had to let him in.

That’s why he was talking. He wanted her to let him in.

“Mommy?” Anne-Marie asked.

Rachel put a finger to her lips, and then she covered her ears so that Anne-Marie would too. They used to do that when Gil got home from a long day, angry and wanting someone to take it out on. Rachel would mime instructions to her daughter: remain quiet and don’t listen.

“Is Daddy here?” Anne-Marie whispered, and Rachel heard the fear in her voice.

Rachel shook her head. She then indicated that Anne-Marie should join her, because there was protection against this wall, particularly if the man outside wanted to shoot them.

She didn’t know if he did. She wasn’t sure what the point of that was. But she knew that sometimes Gil could be irrational, and she had no idea who worked for him, or why they felt it necessary to carry so many weapons.

“We can make this work,” the man outside the room said.

Anne-Marie grabbed her dog and her slippers, then tucked in behind her mother. Her daughter’s warmth made Rachel feel stronger.

“I bet you’re wondering why I’m willing to help you,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for the last three days as I watched you drive. It’s pretty simple, really: you have a big allowance from that husband of yours. You just give me part of it, under the table, and you’ll be free and clear. Back in the arms of your family, safe and sound. You don’t want to be on the road like this forever, do you?”

She closed her eyes. Maybe a few years ago she would have done that. Maybe. But she’d seen Gil get mad at Anne-Marie too many times. She’d seen him clench his fists and unclench them like he meant to hit her.

And Anne-Marie cringed a lot, even now.

“Open the door, Rachel,” the man outside the door said.

God, what would he tell the police? That she had faked her death in Nevada? There were no restraining orders against her husband, no calls to 911, nothing to prove her claims of abuse. There was nothing that would prevent him from flying out here and getting her and Anne-Marie.

Rachel was back where she started, no matter what.

She stood slowly, putting her finger to her lips. She wasn’t sure she could shut him up, but she had to try. The stun gun, as Helen had told her, could knock down a man five times her size. And then she could — what? Stab him with a butter knife? Use his gun if he carried one?

This hotel clearly had security video, and if she killed him, it would be recorded.

She shouldn’t have listened to Helen. Rachel should have known that this plan would all go to hell.

She was never going to escape Gil, never, no matter who made the promises or how big the network was or how much money they threw at the problem.

It had been a dream all along, and she had let herself believe it.

“Honey,” Rachel said to Anne-Marie, knowing that she would be damning her daughter too. “I’m going to—”

Sirens. They got louder and then they cut off. But red and blue lights reflected in the windows.

At least the police had arrived before she could do something stupid. Before she even tried to hurt this unknown man. Not that it would have helped.

Now he was going to the police station, and he’d give them her identity, and—

“I thought you said someone was in the hall,” a new male voice said outside her room.

“I did.” That voice belonged to Luke. “I’ll show you on the security feed. Send your guys out looking. He couldn’t have gone far. Some weirdo in a Santa suit. He was menacing my guests.”

And then they walked off, still talking.

Rachel’s heart kept pounding. Slowly she sank back down, keeping a death grip on the stun gun. After a few more minutes of silence, she put her fingers to her lips again, then quietly, in a crouch, made her way to her purse.

She took out Nebraska’s phone and hit the preprogrammed number.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “I’m Rachel—”

“I know who you are,” said an unfamiliar female voice on the other end of the line. “What’s happened?”

Rachel told her, in a low voice, then turned away, adding, “He’s seen the van. He knows who we are. He knows where we are. I just wanted to say thanks, but I’m going to have to go home now. Because there’s nothing anyone can do—”

“You stay put,” the woman said. “I’ll have someone meet you in fifteen minutes. We’ll have a new vehicle for you and a safe place to stay.”

“But how can you get here so fast?”

“Omaha, right?” the woman asked. “Thank God you listened and didn’t stop in a small town. Then it might’ve taken hours for us to reach you. But you’re okay there. It might take twenty minutes, seeing it’s Christmas Eve, but no more than that. You stay on the line with me while you wait, okay?”

“Okay,” Rachel said.

She heard the tapping of a keyboard, some voices, and someone say, “We got it.”

Then she glanced at Anne-Marie.

“It was Santa,” Anne-Marie said like an accusation.

Not like an accusation. It was an accusation.

Rachel nodded.

“He was everywhere,” Anne-Marie said.

Rachel closed her eyes for just a minute. Like that stupid song. He sees you...

And she had seen him. In truck stops and cafés, smoking outside a gas station in Rawlins. She’d thought him a different Santa every time.

Santa was everywhere this season.

It was the perfect disguise.

The house phone rang and she almost tossed the stun gun into the air. She made herself set it down.

“What’s that?” the woman on the other end of the burner cell asked.

“The hotel phone,” Rachel said.

It stopped ringing.

“Have you talked to anyone?” the woman asked.

“I called the guy at the desk,” Rachel said. “When someone knocked on my door. I wanted to see if it was housekeeping or something.”

“Then call the desk,” the woman said. “Tell him you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you?”

If she didn’t think about her elevated blood pressure, then maybe she was. “Yes,” Rachel said.

She picked up the hotel phone and hit 0 again. “Sorry, I—”

“It’s all right,” Luke said. “The police scared him off. I’m the one who should apologize. They couldn’t find him, but at least he’s not outside the door. They’ll talk to you if you want.”

“No,” she said. “It’s okay.”

He hadn’t been caught. She didn’t know if that was good news or bad.

“Tell him that Candy Mills is coming for you,” the woman’s voice said on the burner cell. “Tell him it’s okay to let Candy come see you.”

Rachel told Luke that, even though it felt odd.

“I think I see her pulling in,” he said. “I’ll send her right up.”

Then he hung up.

“I don’t know anyone named Candy Mills,” Rachel said, and she would remember. The name was weird.

“I’m texting a photo and the pass phrase now,” the woman said. “She’ll give you the pass phrase. You’ll recognize her from the photo.”

“Okay,” Rachel said.

“And I’ll be on the phone to hear everything.”

The cell vibrated in her hand. Rachel looked at it. A middle-aged woman with a weathered face smiled tentatively at the camera.

There was a knock on the door. “Rachel?”

This time it was a woman’s voice.

She said, “There’s an awful lot of Sweet Young Things on the road.”

The pass phrase.

And the moment of truth.

Rachel walked to the door, then peered through the peephole. A woman wearing a heavy jacket let down the hood, revealing a version of that weathered face from the photo.

Rachel crossed her fingers, regretting the fact that she’d left the stun gun behind. She opened the door slowly, keeping the security chain on.

“Candy Mills,” the woman said.

“Rachel,” Rachel said, because for the life of her she couldn’t remember her fake name. “And this is Anne-Marie.”

She turned to point out her daughter, and her breath caught.

Anne-Marie was standing behind them, pointing the stun gun at the woman. She looked fierce. Her hands didn’t tremble at all.

But Rachel’s did. She nearly dropped the cell. The woman on the line was asking what was going on.

“Give me the gun, Anne-Marie,” Rachel said quietly.

“We don’t know her,” Anne-Marie said.

“I know, honey, but it’s okay,” Rachel said.

“Do you know Santa?” Anne-Marie asked the woman.

The woman looked confused. She glanced at Rachel, who drew in her breath slowly. She couldn’t help. She didn’t dare help. But she tried to convey that the usual answer was the wrong answer.

“I’ve never met him,” the woman said after a moment.

Anne-Marie considered that. Then she set the gun down. Rachel hurried toward it.

The woman closed the door. Rachel picked up the stun gun and put it in her purse. Then she wrapped her arms around Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie clung to her.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” the woman said. “You’ll spend the holiday at my house. It’s not much, but it’ll do. Christmas put a kink in our plans. But by the twenty-sixth we should have a new van for you, and new stuff. You’ll have to leave everything behind.”

“Except Anne-Marie’s toys,” Rachel said. “I checked them. They don’t have a tracker.”

She thought about the Santa bag at the front desk. Maybe they could pick those up on the way out, and she could thank Luke.

The woman — Candy Mills, if that was her real name — frowned. “I’ll double-check. I have some equipment.”

She didn’t seem too concerned.

“Will he find us again?” Rachel figured it was okay to ask. Anne-Marie had been asking for the entire trip.

“No,” Candy Mills said. “We think if there was a tracker, it was on the van. We’ll know for sure tomorrow. You said he followed from Winnemucca, right?”

“He had a whole plan,” Rachel said.

“Well, we’ll take care of that now. He shouldn’t be hard to find.” She glanced at the tree, gave it a once-over that looked a bit sad.

“You sure you can protect us?” Rachel asked.

Candy Mills smiled, which made her seem younger and friendlier. “Yes,” she said. “We’ve helped a lot of women escape situations worse than yours.”

“What if he called Gil and told him where we were?”

“That’s why we’re going somewhere else. He had no idea where you were headed, right? You never told anyone, right?” Candy Mills sounded a bit intent, as if she wanted to make sure.

“I never said a word,” Rachel said. Not even to Anne-Marie.

“I’m signing off now,” said the voice on the cell. “You’re in good hands.”

And before Rachel could say thank you, the woman on the other end of the line hung up.

Rachel swallowed. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was happy to have help, even for a day or two.

She felt less alone.

Candy Mills looked at Anne-Marie. “Get your stuff. We’re going to go.”

Anne-Marie hugged her dog to her chest. She didn’t move. “Will Santa know how to find us?”

Candy Mills looked at Rachel, smart enough to realize these questions weren’t what they seemed.

“No, honey,” Rachel said. “Santa will never find us again.”

The sentence made her heart hurt. Somehow she was going to have to give her daughter Christmas magic again. But not this year.

This year she was giving her daughter freedom. A real life. A life away from Gil.

“Good,” Anne-Marie said, and reached for her clothes. “I hope I never see him again.”

“Oh, honey,” Rachel said, knowing that wish was impossible. “I hope so too.”

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