Red Hot Santa Read online

  He grabbed her around the neck from behind. She bucked and jerked, leaning her weight to counter his, hoping to slow him down. Keeping her completely off balance, Treadwell dragged her through frozen quicksand toward the tree line. Every time she tried to pull away he found another place to cut her. Her bright yellow coat was trailing ribbons of fabric, many of them now tinged red. She kicked and bit, screaming hoarsely as he took her deeper and deeper into the isolated landscape farther and farther from the house.

  She saw the snowmobile up ahead between the dark skeletons of the trees, black against the brilliance of the snow.

  No! Nonononono!

  “This has been fun, Kendall.” He spun around, grabbing her by the throat, squeezing hard enough for brilliant stars to explode before her eyes. “But you’re boring me now. Time to say b’bye.” Her weight was balanced against his chest and he used his knee as a wedge between her legs, freeing his hand to grab her hair at the scalp as he brought the knife to her throat.

  Paralyzed, Kendall stared at the knife inches from her face. “Not again. Damn you, not again.” Despite the pain in her scalp where he’d fisted her long hair, she wrenched her arm up, the small gun clutched in her bloody hand. She had no idea how many bullets were left. Or God, if any bullets were left.

  She pointed the barrel over her left shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Nine

  JOE PUSHED THROUGH THE SNOW, FOLLOWING THE blood trail deeper across the south paddock. KendallKendallKendall. An insistent mantra in his brain. Fear was a new experience for him. But it was real and physical. He’d heard her cries on the way back from the disabled chopper. Heard them, and known immediately that Treadwell had her. And if Treadwell had her, the men he’d assigned to protect her were dead. Ah, Jesus.

  Every breath was an effort in the icy air. His heart pounded with helpless frustration at his slow progress in the fresh, calf-deep snow.

  Uncharacteristically bloodthirsty images kept flipping through his mind as he ran, weapon drawn in his gloveless hand. He’d learned some interesting techniques with a knife himself over the years. So far those lessons had been purely academic. He relished the idea of demonstrating his skill on Treadwell. Let the son of a bitch feel the terror of finding himself on the other end of a knife wielded by a madman. A madman who’d been trained in the art of knife fighting and wasn’t afraid to use those skills to fight dirty.

  The wind whipped Joe’s hair about his face and batwinged his coat about his body as he ran. Kendall’s cries, echoing in the isolation of the remote area, pierced him to the heart. She was alive. At least he had that to hold on to. He doubled his effort to reach her as fast as humanly possible as powder skipped and danced across the surface of the drifting snow, trying to obliterate Treadwell’s footsteps.

  He felt the beat of chopper blades overhead before he heard them. Three coming in fast, spotlights strafing the snow-covered landscape. The cavalry after all. Snow whipped up, blinding him. Damn it to hell!—he pointed in the direction of the tree line. Not that they would be able to land here. The terrain was hilly, and there were just too many damn trees. The three beams of light rose; the choppers moved off, taking their lights with them.

  Kendall cried out again.

  “I’m coming, sweetheart, hold on. I’m coming.” Correcting slightly to the west, he battled across the snow drifts, chest heaving.

  He was close. Two hundred yards and closing.

  Go. Go. Go.

  They were twined as closely as lovers, two indistinguishable silhouettes against the stark whiteness of the snow.

  Faster. Faster.

  A gunshot cracked through the predawn quiet. Joe’s heart jerked in response. Kendall . . .

  A hundred and fifty . . . forty . . . thirty . . . twenty . . . He saw the fiery blaze of her hair, the brilliant yellow of her coat, as she and Treadwell fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs and started rolling about. Joe saw the glint of a knife.

  Run, faster, damn it, run. Ninety feet . . . eighty . . . He took aim. Treadwell and Kendall rolled just as he was about to squeeze off the shot. Shit. She was blocking. They rolled again; this time Treadwell was on top. Joe fired. The other man jerked with the impact. He tilted.

  Sixty feet . . . forty . . .

  Kendall took the window of opportunity and shoved and pushed Treadwell off her. God Almighty! Instead of running, she surprised the hell out of Joe by jumping on top of Treadwell with a banshee scream of rage. Straddling the man’s waist, she started beating the hell out of his head and shoulders with her fists.

  Twenty feet . . . ten . . . Kendall— Joe grabbed her arm, flinging her aside just as Treadwell’s knife arced toward her chest. He grabbed the killer’s wrist, placed his weight on the knee he applied to the man’s chest, then dug the muzzle of the H&K hard to the underside of the guy’s chin. “Play with me, dick,” Joe said, his voice low and feral as he applied pressure to a tendon in Treadwell’s knife hand. The grip should have caused the person’s fingers to release whatever he was holding. But Treadwell’s fingers, slick with blood, remained fisted around the hilt of the cheap ten-inch kitchen knife. Joe dug his knee into the man’s chest and exerted more pressure on his wrist.

  “Talk to me, Kendall,” he yelled, keeping his eyes fixed on the killer. “Talk to me, sweetheart!”

  “I-I’m okay,” she replied, out of his line of sight.

  “I won’t go back there,” Dwight Treadwell told Joe vehemently, eyes wild. His brown coat was splotched with blood. It sure as hell better not contain one drop belonging to Kendall. “You can’t make me.” He attempted to jerk his hand free. Not going to happen. “I won’t go back.”

  Joe kept up the pressure of his thumb on the man’s wrist, but the knife remained firmly in Treadwell’s bloody but bloodless hand. In one lithe move Joe surged to his feet, dragging Treadwell up with him. The fingers he had around the knife hand remained there like a vise, his weapon stayed put under the weak jaw.

  “Oh, you don’t have to go back if you don’t want to,” Joe assured him with silky menace. “In fact I insist that you d—”

  “Oh, God! Joe, watch out!”

  He felt the sharp jab of pain in his side a second before Kendall’s warning. Damn it to hell! Treadwell surprised the hell out of him by producing a second knife—smaller and considerably more effective—and stabbing him right through the hide of his coat. Ah, crap. The other man was also left-handed.

  Twisting to deflect the depth of the strike, Joe lifted the H&K. Pop. Pop.

  Pop.

  Treadwell’s eyes widened in surprise as he crumpled to his knees, then slowly toppled to his side. His sightless eyes stared at the dawn-flooded sky as bright arterial blood drenched the snow at Joe’s feet a satisfying crimson.

  Joe plucked both knives from Treadwell’s limp fingers. He’d only fired two shots.

  Kneeling, he felt for a pulse beneath the other man’s jaw. Dead. Perfect. He turned his head to see Kendall, eyes narrowed, still standing in the classic firing stance.

  She looked like an avenging angel with her red hair blowing in the breeze, the golden glow of a new day backlighting her. “Is he dead?”

  “As the proverbial doornail.” Joe assured her as he rose. He kept his gaze on her face as he tossed aside both knives and walked toward her.

  “I’m not sure exactly what that is,” Kendall said with only a small tremor in her voice. “But if it’s very dead I’m all for it.”

  “Very,” Joe assured her, touching the blood on her face. Her coat was slashed. He wanted to strip her and check every inch of her skin. “Did he cut you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. How bad?”

  “Bet I won’t need one stitch,” she assured him, clutching the front of his coat in both hands as she stood in the circle of his arms. Her casual tone was hard won, the terror was still clear in her expressive eyes.

  An unfamiliar aching tenderness gathered inside him. He had to clear the thickness from hi
s throat before he could speak. “You won’t mind if I play doctor later, and check that out for myself.”

  “No playing. If you want to be my doctor you have to take the job seriously.” Kendall’s lips curved. “I insist on a complete and thorough physical.”

  “I concur. Top to bottom and everything in between. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge before then. Come on.” He wrapped his arm around her, and they started walking across the paddock. In the distance he saw the posse arriving. Dozens of local cops, Feebs, and federal marshals racing across the tinged snow toward them. There’d be questions and more questions—

  He veered off and headed in the opposite direction. “How do you like the great outdoors so far?” he asked conversationally.

  She pulled a comical face. “Not very.”

  “Yeah, I can see how the situation would require some rehabilitation.” Joe sighed. “The kids would like it out here, though.”

  She shot him an amused glance as they walked. “Whose?”

  “Ours.” He rubbed her arm. He was going to have to buy her a new coat. That would take time. “Four, do you think?” he asked.

  Her steps, in those sexy blue knee-high boots, faltered, but she laughed. “Don’t you think we should go on a couple of dates before we start naming our children?”

  They came to the snowmobile Treadwell had left under the trees. “Hop aboard,” Joe said, helping her maneuver onto the machine. “Aren’t we a couple of stages beyond dating?” he asked politely, starting the engine. The Christophs had a nice, secluded little summer place just over the ridge—

  “No,” Kendall told him, wrapping her arms about his waist and resting her chin on his back. “We are not several stages past dating. I want movies, and dinners, and flowers. You can start by calling me.”

  The snowmobile picked up speed. Anticipation made Joe’s heart pick up speed, too. Four miles to a bed. “I don’t have your phone number,” he shouted as the wind carried them forward.

  “I programmed it into your cell phone last night.” Kendall laughed, her breath warm against his cheek.

  They burst through the trees. Ahead was a pristine expanse of white, pure and fresh and untouched. It held only a few small shadows and was tinged with the promise of sunshine.

  Kendall tightened her arms about his waist as he shut off the engine. He turned to take her in his arms. “This looks good, doesn’t it?” she said softly.

  “Yeah,” Joe cupped her face between his hands. “This looks incredibly good.”

  And it was.

  SANTA SLAVE

  Leanne Banks

  Chapter One

  SHE’D DONE HER RESEARCH AND SHE’D LEARNED THEY liked them pretty, stupid, and submissive.

  Hilary Winfree had never taken much time with her appearance; she’d been too busy with her studies. So she got a cosmetics counter makeover and dyed her hair blond. Studies indicated people immediately deducted IQ points from a woman who was blond. She mimicked the southern drawl she often heard around campus because people also deducted mental points from those with a southern accent.

  Both were erroneous assumptions and irritated the devil out of her, but this once, she used the information to help her. The submissive part was going to bite big time. Her father had always said she’d been a rebel since the day she was born, and he would skin her alive when he found out she’d gone against his recommendation of letting the law handle the task of finding Christine, if the college underclassman even wanted to be found.

  Hilary knew better, though. All her instincts told her something wasn’t right about the so-called job Christine had been so determined to accept.

  Hilary had warned Christine but that hadn’t been enough. She should have done more. She’d gone to the police, but they’d been useless. She had no choice except to take things into her own hands.

  She climbed the steps to the train. Her stomach twisting with dread, she hesitated on the third step. Was there another way to do this? What if she couldn’t pull it off?

  She had to pull it off, she told herself. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, but she plastered an expression of controlled enthusiasm on her face. At this point, she was supposed to still believe the story the deceptively polite man had told her at the party in Atlanta.

  She was still supposed to believe that in exchange for teaching a six-week course to foreign businessmen about American customs and manners, she would receive free travel to exciting destinations and a bonus of thousands of dollars. The proposition was a dream come true for girls like Christine, whom Hilary had been mentoring through their sorority. Christine had never traveled more than sixty miles from home and always seemed to be scraping the bottom of her bank account.

  When Christine had told Hilary about it, Hilary had sensed the position was too good to be true, but she’d been swamped with grading term papers as a function of her teaching assistant position. If only she had taken some extra time with Christine. She’d thought her verbal warning on the phone would be enough to discourage the college sophomore, but it hadn’t. When Hilary had realized Christine was gone, she’d done some research on the Internet and her suspicions about the job offer had only escalated. She hadn’t found any legitimate, legal listings for the company.

  “Miss Winfree?”

  Hilary sized up the tall man with the slight Russian accent. He looked about forty-five, but very fit. She wondered if she could outrun him when it became necessary. His gaze took in every inch of her within a few seconds. Checking out the merchandise? she wondered, feeling as if she’d been slimed. She barely resisted wrinkling her nose.

  “Yes, I’m Hilary Winfree. You must be Mr. Harris. How did you know it was me?”

  His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t. He took her hand in his and lifted it to his mouth. “Yes, I’m John Harris, pleased to make your acquaintance. I’ve seen your picture, but it doesn’t do you justice.”

  She wondered how many times he’d said that today. Again, she resisted the urge to pull her hand back and rub away his touch. “Thank you. I’m so excited about this teaching and traveling opportunity. Where are the rest of the teachers?”

  “We’ve reserved a special car for our group. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take your luggage.”

  “I don’t mind carrying it,” she said.

  “I insist,” he said with a creepy smile, and Hilary allowed him to take her luggage.

  He led the way to a car with a table filled with food and wine while Christmas music played from a boombox. Three beefy-looking men in dark suits were positioned at the door and against two walls. Three young women sipped wine and chatted around the food table.

  Christine had left two days ago with an earlier group, so Hilary knew she would be playing catch-up.

  “Go ahead and join the other candidates,” John Harris said. “Have some wine and relax. We’ll give an information presentation once the train leaves the station.”

  Her nerves kicking in again, Hilary offered a small smile and nodded. “Thanks. I’ll do that.” She walked to the table and introduced herself to the other women and quickly learned that Abigal, Eve, and Katrina lived in small college towns in Georgia. They were all pretty, bright-eyed, and eager to begin their adventure.

  “The only bad part is leaving before Christmas,” Abigal said.

  Hilary’s heart twisted when she thought of how worried her parents in California would be when they picked up her voice message. She’d tried to enlist their help, but her father had been adamant. It was none of their business, and no, he absolutely would not foot the bill for a private investigator. That had left her with no choice.

  “Not for me,” Eve said. “I would have been waitressing on Christmas just like every other day of the year. I’m ready to hit the road and see some of the world.”

  “Especially when someone else is paying,” Katrina added. “Let’s toast our new adventure,” she added, lifting her glass of wine. “Cheers.”

  Hilary reluctantly lifted her glass. She
just hoped she could get Christine and herself out safely.

  The train lurched forward and her stomach took a dip. A woman, dressed in a loose black dress with her gray hair pulled into a puffy bun, entered the room and nodded to the man at the door. He closed the door and locked it. Hilary felt the woman survey the group.

  The woman moved toward her. “Hello, I’m Giselle Smith. I’ll be serving as the chaperone until your group leaves the country.”

  Hilary shook Giselle’s hand, noticing the woman’s voice had an accent similar to John Harris’s. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Hilary Winfree. Gosh, I didn’t know we would need a chaperone.”

  The woman gave a slight smile. “An added level of protection for those who participate in our program. We pride ourselves on our security.”

  “How reassuring,” Hilary said. “How often do you sponsor the teaching programs?”

  “Oh, it depends on the demand. This year, we’ve sent almost one hundred women overseas.”

  “I’m surprised more men aren’t interested in the positions,” Hilary said.

  “We find women are better suited for teaching customs and manners.” She smiled in a conspiratorial manner. “No surprise that women see the nuances when men don’t.”

  “Where do we go next? I understand there’s some sort of class we take to prepare us for teaching.”

  “All in due time. You can relax tonight. Tomorrow we reach our destination and you’ll have a few training sessions.” Giselle crossed her fingers. “Hopefully no one will require additional training, but we have backup plans for that if necessary. We want to make sure everyone succeeds in this program.”

  “And after that?” Hilary asked.

  “After that, we have an informal meet-and-greet with the people who will receive your services. That’s when you receive your assignment,” Giselle said. “We’ll talk more later. I should meet the other candidates.”

  Hilary switched her wine for water and watched Giselle make her rounds. She gave the impression of warmth and reassuring confidence. After a few moments, she motioned the women toward her. “Welcome to the program, ladies. You can take pride in the fact that we carefully screen all of our applicants and you are absolutely the cream of the crop. As you know, you’ll soon be taking an international trip. Your safety is our very first concern. In order to make sure that none of your personal property is stolen or gets into the wrong hands, we’re going to collect your purses, passports, and cell phones and store them until you leave the country.”