Author's note: My apologies for the despicable ethnic slurs in this chapter. No, I would never say those things myself, but since Reggie would, they're here.
Chapter 14:
As Noah and Cat came down the library steps, they saw one squad car after another driving slowly along the street. Noah had always loved watching police, but he pulled his scarf a little higher and Cat's hat a little lower, and made himself turn away so his face wouldn't show.
"Think they're looking for you?" Cat asked.
"Nah."
But Noah wasn't feeling as confident as he sounded. If they were looking for him, it meant his absence from home had been noticed. If that were the case, he was in big trouble. Actually, he was starting to realize that he was going to be in big trouble anyway. Even if his absence hadn't been noticed yet, and even if Cat's mother did give him a ride home, how would he get past the agents at the gate? They'd never let the car in; they didn't know Cat was his friend.
Nobody knew she was his friend. Oh, his mother had seen them playing together on the beach plenty of times, of course, but she didn'tknow Cat-didn't know where she lived, didn't know what she was like or what he liked about her, didn't know how important a friend she was. He didn't know why, exactly, but he liked it that way. Cat was his secret. That was why he'd gone to all this trouble to see her without anyone knowing, instead of just asking his mother if she could come over to play.
His secretiveness about her had nothing whatever to do with the kind of reasons people like the Maxwells, if they had known about it, would have assumed. Some of his parents' closest friends were working people in the village; it would never have crossed Noah's mind that there was any reason not to be friends with the child of a nanny or a maid.
Noah just liked secrets. Even when he was much younger, he had liked making his own plans to meet Cat without any input from his mother. He liked not having to answer questions about what they were going to do-not that they ever did anything she would have disapproved of, but their imaginary games of camping and sailing and exploring and piracy felt more real to him when he didn't have to describe them to anyone afterwards. And he liked the feeling that Cat belonged to him alone, that he didn't have to share her with anyone else, not even his mother or his sister.
Especially not his sister. He'd made it very clear to Sally that she wasn't to come trailing after him when he was with Cat. The size of the rocks they scrambled up on the beach had made it easy to keep away from her, though Sally was in fact sufficiently devoted to him that she accepted her exclusion without much resentment. Noah was her god; whatever he wanted was what she wanted to do.
Without that devotion, Noah would never have been able to slip away unnoticed. He'd been very pleased with himself about that plan and the way he'd brought it off. But now he was in a fix, and he had no idea how he was going to get out of it.
Still, he had gotten out of plenty of other fixes before. If he just kept his head down so the police in those cars didn't recognize him, and if he just thought hard enough, he was sure he could come up with some way to make this adventure turn out right.
In the back of his mind he could hear a voice that was very like his father's saying, "Your mother was worried, Noah! You shouldn't have left in the first place. And once you guessed she'd found out and the police were looking for you, you should have called home so she'd know you were all right." But Noah didn't want to listen to that voice. He wanted to figure out a way to save his plan.
Getting Sally's list to Santa seemed like a good way to allow himself a little more time to think. Of course the man in the red suit in the bandstand wasn't really Santa Claus, because there wasn't any Santa Claus, and his seeing Sally's list wouldn't make the slightest difference to what Sally got in her stocking tomorrow morning, so it didn't really matter whether Noah got it to him or not. But Noah needed the time, and he had promised Sally he'd do it. He was really very fond of his little sister, even if he didn't want her in the way when he was with Cat; he didn't want to break a promise to her, or to have to pretend he'd kept one when he hadn't.
So he kept his head down, and walked briskly with Cat toward the park.
When they got there, they joined the line of families who were still waiting to see Santa. It was starting to get dark. The sun had already slipped behind the big hill to the west, but there was light in the sky still, and the park lamps hadn't come on yet. A few snowflakes fluttered by. Cat shivered. The wind was picking up, and it was already ten degrees colder than it had been when they'd gone into the library.
Suddenly the shriek of a siren split the air. Cat and Noah jumped, then watched with fascination as a long line of cruisers turned on their flashers and sped along Main Street and out of town.
"Wonder what that was all about?" Noah said, when the street was quiet again.
"Do-don't-know." Cat was shivering convulsively. Noah looked at her with concern.
"Do you want to go wait someplace warm while I do this?" She shook her head.
"I'm-fine."
"Take this back"-Noah pulled her hat off and handed it to her-"And this," and he started to unwrap his scarf so she could have that as well.
"No, Noah," she hissed. "You need them."
"No, I don't," he whispered back. "The cops are all gone, and it's getting dark."
"What about all these people here?"
"What about them? They're too busy with their kids to notice us. Nobody's even looking."
It was true; nobody was. The parents in the line were much too busy trying to quiet their screaming babies and keep their over-excited toddlers from running completely out of control to think about anything else. None of them so much as glanced at the boy and girl waiting together with no adult beside them.
"Anyway," Noah said firmly, "you're too cold. Put these on now."
He wasn't Josh's son or Donna's for nothing. Pirate though she was, Cat gave in and put on the hat and scarf.
They helped, but not enough. Five minutes later she was shivering again. Noah, remembering what his father always did when his mother felt cold, put his arm around her and pulled her close against him.
"Th-thanks," she whispered.
"You sure you don't want to go to the bakery to warm up?"
She shook her head. "We're almost there."
And then the park lights came on.
000000
Up in his look-out on the hill behind the town, Reggie Morton was about to call it quits. The light was almost gone. He was cold and angry. He'd come all this way, waited all this time freezing his balls off in this god-damned frigid place, and his target had never shown up. He was going to have to pack it in and go home without his trophy. He hadn't saved Christmas after all.
He was just about to put his binoculars away and pack up his things, when down in the park he'd been watching all afternoon the lights came on.
And right there, right in his view, he saw a face that looked so familiar he thought for a moment his target had come at last. He was so excited he almost stopped breathing. Then he realized it was just a kid, and the disappointment hit him so hard his eyes teared up. He put the binoculars down to wipe them, and reached for his flask. If ever a guy deserved a bellyful of good whiskey, it was him and it was now.
But the flask had only just touched his lips when it hit him who the kid must be. He'd seen pictures, lots of them. If he hadn't been so cold his brain was half-froze, he'd have known who it was right away.
He hadn't meant to go after a child. But this was his child, that guy who'd got those heathen candle-sticks stuck up in the White House alongside the good Christian Christmas trees, the guy who didn't think "Merry Christmas" was good enough for the White House cards anymore, but had "Happy Holidays" on them instead. That was what all those pretty gals on TV had been saying. And that guy wasn't even white; he was a Jew, which wasn't the same thing at all, even if it looked it. He'd lied and cheated his way to the White House, and now he was making a war on Christmas. Sean Hannity had said so. And Rush Limbaugh, and all the rest of 'em. And here was his kid, right here in front of Reggie, looking so much like his daddy anyone could see he'd be just the same kind of trash when he grew up.
What's more, this kid had his arm around a girl with awfully dark skin. She didn't look like she was just a nice white gal with a tan. A nigger? No, a spic. Prob'ly an illegal at that, a tunnel rat. Any boy who would touch her was a rat himself. And he was half a Jew. Varmints, both of 'em. . . .
Reggie could feel that righteous anger boiling up in him. No, he hadn't come to take a kid. But he'd been waiting too long to leave with nothing.
He dropped down beside the Barrett. Its long sniper's snout peered out from the bushes, sinister and deadly. He got the little varmints in his scope. He didn't have a silencer, but at this distance he could take 'em both and still make his getaway.
Which one first-the spic, or the Jew?
He made his choice, and pulled the trigger.
To be cont'd. . . .