Lisa Phillips - Yuletide Suspect

The words weren’t directed at her, but the man didn’t answer. Didn’t say anything. His face was deadpan, with no expression. No movement whatsoever.

“Guess we’re walking back to town,” Tate said. “We can turn him over to the sheriff, and Dane can get some answers.”

That got a reaction.

Liberty saw the slightest movement. “Tate—”

But the man was already in motion. He launched himself at Tate.

Liberty hardly had time to react, but she was a Secret Service agent.

A shot went off.

Liberty fired as well, her aim true, and the bullet hit the gunman square in the chest. Tate fell back and the man landed on top of him. He rolled the man so their attacker lay in the snow. Two choppy breaths later, he was dead.

“Lib.”

She stepped back, even though he hadn’t moved.

Tate got to his feet. He stepped toward her, and she held out a hand, palm up. “We’re okay, Lib.”

She shook her head. “The snowmobile is trashed and we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“We don’t have to walk back to town now. The mine isn’t far from here. Come on,” he coaxed. “It isn’t far, Lib.”

“Don’t call me that.” She lifted her gaze and looked him square in the face. “Don’t ever call me that.”

They weren’t a team. They would never be a team again, as good as it felt working together. Protecting each other. Taking down their assailant. Liberty had to let go of all her memories with him. Again. As much as it hurt, she had to walk away from Tate and let him live his life. Because one of them should have a future.

And it wasn’t going to be her.

FOUR

Tate wanted to hold her hand. He also wanted to yell at her and get her to tell him why she’d jumped off the snowmobile. He’d nearly had a heart attack when he realized what she’d done. Yes, she was a Secret Service agent. He’d been one as well, and that stuff didn’t just disappear. He was wired to protect, and that meant Liberty along with everyone else. Feelings didn’t matter. Even after she’d torn his life apart. Maybe especially. They didn’t get to pick and choose who they protected.

Thank You for keeping us safe. God had protected them. That man had tried to kill them, and in the end had chosen to end his life by forcing her hand. He’d known what it meant to attack Tate one last time. It couldn’t have ended another way.

Now there was a dead man in the woods. Liberty had taken a million pictures of the body while he checked for ID and found nothing, then noted as many details as he could in a text to the sheriff that would send just as soon as he got a signal. Liberty had said she would email the photos to Dane later after she downloaded them to her laptop.

Aside from that, there wasn’t much they could do about a dead body in the woods. Tate needed to find the plane so he could prove to the Secret Service—and anyone else—that he hadn’t been involved in its disappearance.

Then there were the two men at his house. One had tried to kill him, and the other had planted evidence by leaving the plane’s black box by his front door. The first had come back and tried again. It couldn’t be a coincidence; there was no such thing in their line of work, he had learned. So it wasn’t just the Secret Service pointing a finger at him. Someone else wanted to make sure he was implicated in this. But who? And what did they have to gain, getting him arrested and thrown in prison?

Liberty was silent beside him, and Tate didn’t try to draw her out of it. He had no idea what was going on in her head, but when she was ready to talk to him she would. That had always been their way. What would be the point of making her talk?

Even though it had been more than a year since he’d seen her, a lot of who they had been together still seemed to fit. Despite that, he couldn’t imagine them working as a couple after everything. But then, Tate couldn’t imagine it working with anyone now. Clearly he wasn’t the kind of guy any woman kept around.

Soon enough they were at the old mine, the place Tate had thought of immediately when she’d mentioned a missing plane in this area.

Assuming it hadn’t crashed and there wasn’t debris splayed across the terrain somewhere around here just waiting to be found.

If this was indeed a case of foul play, the plane had to have landed somewhere close to here. After all, the black box had been removed and was intact. It hadn’t been destroyed or crashed with the plane and buried in the debris.

If the people who were doing this truly wanted the plane to remain undiscovered, it meant they had to be hiding it somewhere. The front part of this system of caves and tunnels making up the entirety of the mine was an opening big enough to taxi a plane into. It would not be completely closed in, but it would at least hide the aircraft for a while.

Tate couldn’t think of a better place to put it.

Liberty stopped and looked across the clearing, at least eight acres of snowfall. “This is it?”

“It’s where I would hide a plane.” When she shot him a look, Tate added, “If I was the one who was behind this. Which I am not, and you know that. Or at least you should.”

Maybe she’d never had total faith in him, and their relationship had been shakier than he’d known. But he’d thought they were good. Preparing for the future, making plans together for when they were no longer Secret Service agents. They’d been busy all the time, out on the road campaigning every few years. On overseas details, protecting the secretary of state and other dignitaries.

They had lived in some amazing places and seen some amazing things, but the strain of that life weighed a person down until they felt old beyond their years. He knew he felt it, but Liberty didn’t look it. Her mom didn’t look her age either, so he figured it was probably inherited.

“How are your parents?” Tate set off toward the mine.

Liberty strode through the snow beside him. “They’re good. My dad won a golf tournament last weekend, beat all of his friends and everything. He was seriously proud. They even got him a little trophy.” She grinned, and her teeth flashed white in the moonlight. “Have you seen your brother at all?”

He’d told her the story about his parents’ car crash when he was in college. It was the first time he remembered being really, truly angry. Tate’s younger brother had been sixteen at the time and had spiraled on a downward descent since then. Braden had hit rock bottom so many times Tate had lost count.

“He doesn’t return my calls. I invited him to Christmas, but I figure he’ll probably just ignore the holidays.” Tate paused, unsure whether or not to add this next part. In the end, he decided to brave the potential heartbreak. “The house I’m living in right now is actually our family’s vacation cabin. I fixed it up so I could live there.”

“But you told me it’s for sale.”

“I tried. I really did. I just can’t face it by myself, Lib. I can’t live with all those happy family memories and be by myself.”

Liberty stared at him with some kind of wonder he didn’t understand. “Tate, why haven’t you found someone?” Her voice was full of so much pain it almost hurt to hear it. Like she couldn’t believe he didn’t meet eligible women every day.

It wasn’t like they just showed up on his mountain.

She cleared her throat, and he let her change the subject. “Your Christmas tree is very nice. And the place looks great.” She spoke tentatively, like she wasn’t sure how the words would be received. “I haven’t even had time to get mine up yet. And I was planning on going down to Florida anyway, but that isn’t going to happen now.”

“I’m sorry this has ruined your Christmas plans.”