 
A MacKinnon Christmas

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## by

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## Kit Frazier

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First published 2015 © Kit Frazier, Cover Design Copyright 2015 © Kit Frazier. All right reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Kit Frazier.

Learn more about the author and her books at KitFrazier.com/wordpress

Email Kit at kitfrazier@gmail.com

Formatting by Anessa Books
_For Tahoe the Wonder Dog_

~ because soulmates come in all shapes & sizes. And species...

I miss you, buddy.
_I WROTE A MacKinnon Christmas for those of us who's bright-shiny, happy holidays are tempered by the presence of an empty chair and an equally empty plate at the otherwise festive table. By the memory of the loved ones who aren't nestled in their regular spot by the fireplace -for those of us who spend the holidays with mixed blessings, and mixed feelings._

_The bright spot in my holidays are my friends and readers who seem to understand that. Friends are, after all, the families we make for ourselves. I am thankful every day for you._

_And as for Soul Mates --those who are with us, and those who wait for us in the Great Beyond--they come in all shapes and sizes. And species. They come into your life when you need them, and leave far too early._

_As I wrote this story, I laughed, sniffle-cried a little, and then outright sobbed. And then I laughed some more, because laughter through tears is often the best kind *And don't worry -nothing happens to the dog-I wouldn't do that to you._

_I usually know The End before I even have a title, but this time, I didn't. And as I neared the end, I discovered the theme of the book. Hope. As the characters ran away with the story, I discovered that small, inextinguishable ember that lights even the darkest hour --the hope that remains, even when it seems hopelessly absent from the world._

_No matter who you are with, or without this year, that is my wish for you. An ember of hope that you are able to fan into flaming promise..._

_This story is dedicated to my dad, the original Colonel, and to Tahoe, the original Marlowe, both of whom will always have a plate at my table... I love you. And I'll leave the light on for you._

_Love,_

_Kit Frazier_

## Chapter

# One

**_Cauley's Christmas To Do List:_**

_# 1. Identify the Dead Guy._

Not the usual first item on a Christmas To Do List. Unfortunately, it was not so unusual for me.

My name is Cauley MacKinnon, and I write obituaries at _The Austin Sentinel's_ satellite office, nestled in a strip mall on the west end of Austin between a high end meat market and a bank--red meat and new money--the old Texas Two-step.

Being assigned to the Dead Beat is the journalistic version of a big lump of coal in your Christmas stocking.

In addition to writing dead people, I do research for the News Boys, who work in the shiny downtown building with beautiful corner offices and computers that don't beg to be put out of their misery when you boot them up.

Of course, downtown, they probably wouldn't let my dog, Marlowe, snooze on my shoes beneath my desk, getting his fluffy white hair all over the burgundy industrial-grade carpet.

My desk is located in the first of a warren of cubicles behind a spiffed up little lobby, now manned by a security guard, on account of the big Anthrax scare a decade ago. The newspaper business is slow to change, and that stubborn resistance to change is part of why newspapers all over the world are folding like fitted motel sheets.

I was busy multi-tasking--what other people might call goofing off--with a split screen on my computer monitor, searching the Missing Persons Data Base while streaming Bogey's movie, _We're no Angels_ , and trying to swallow the lump in my throat when Bogey and his bad guy buddies pitched in to help a family in trouble.

Not _noir_ , my favorite, but the only Bogey Christmas movie I could find.

The dog under my desk snuffled in his sleep, probably thinking about the ham sandwich the guys in the graphics department gave him earlier that morning.

To be honest, Marlowe is not really my dog--I share custody of the Search and Rescue canine with a certain hot FBI agent who is often Missing in Action. When he left, he'd asked me to watch over the dog. More likely, he'd asked the dog to watch over _me_ --I've never been clear on who was watching over who.

I glanced up at my journalism degree, which my best friend and the Sentinel's crack photographer Mia Santiago had festooned with sparkly silver holiday swag.

I sighed.

This is so not how I thought my life would be.

From a nearby copy editor's desk, Bing Crosby crooned _I'll Be Home For Christmas_ , and I could hear Mia, who was busy decking the halls and fa-la-la-la-la-ing all over the office like a delightful, though somewhat deranged, Latina elf.

I felt a headache coming on.

I love Christmas. I really do. But there's something about the season that cranks my tear ducts into overdrive. Everything sets me off, from the coffee commercial about the soldier coming home to the sappy songs about being--or not being--home for the holidays.

Not to mention that my father was shot to death a week before Christmas.

When I was a little girl, Daddy always told me that Christmas was a time for miracles. Since he died, I have not seen tangible evidence of any kind of miracle, real or imagined.

Adding to my Merry Christmas melancholy, this year's seasonal To Do List was topped with identifying a dead guy.

Two days to Christmas and I had zero on my own personal list accomplished.

My mother's List however, was spilling over the edge of my desk.

I sighed.

Time to rearrange my own To Do List.

I scratched off The Dead Guy as Number One and started over.

"New Number One: Make Holiday List," which I promptly checked off and felt marginally better.

Okay, so, my list-making skills could use some work.

But I like to top my lists with something I know I can actually accomplish.

"Number Two: Look for Christmas cards I purchased for 50-percent off at last year's post holiday sale."

I sighed and scribbled, "Give up and buy new cards, vowing to get the cards out _before_ Christmas next year."

Next, I amended my To Do List with Number Three: _Avoid repeating mortally embarrassing incident with ex-boyfriend by signing newly purchased Christmas cards while drinking my body weight in Bourbon and Diet Coke_.

Of course, I should probably also list all the usual activities associated with holiday merriment. The stuff I should have already done--like acquire and trim a real tree--not the spindly little Charlie Brown tree I always seem to gravitate toward.

Oh. And finish purchasing and wrapping presents.

And I still had to prepare for the Pre-Christmas Eve Soiree, otherwise known as the Annual Christmas Eve-Eve MacKinnon Family Feast of Dysfunction.

But the real kicker on my Holiday To Do List, the little errand that would either make or break my main (and in truth, _only_ ) Christmas Wish:

_#4. Make FBI Special Agent Tom Logan fall in love with me..._

## Chapter

# Two

Talk about burying the lead--in newspaper lingo, it translated that I was starting my list with secondary information and postponing the most essential point. But I had a good reason.

The fact that I'd made Tom Logan number four on my To Do List didn't have anything to the priority I'd assigned that little project and more to do with the fact that Mama would actually _see_ my list at some point, and my mother has _zero_ boundaries.

I didn't think I could bear her meddling in my pseudo-love life with tips, tricks and pointers on how to catch a man.

Moreover, it would almost certainly cause her to revamp _her_ own To Do List to include dropping everything to drag me to Victoria's Secret for some emergency lingerie shopping. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want your mama tagging along when you're trying on peek-a-boo panties. Besides. I didn't want her to know I'd already taken care of that little errand...

Not to mention, Number Four on my list might actually be attainable, since Logan was back from shooting bad guys, interrogating perps, and whatever else it was FBI agents did in the line of duty, in some undisclosed, I-could-tell-you-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you hell hole.

And, I smiled, he was due to pick me up for lunch in less than an hour.

In preparation for Number Four, I'd worn my favorite little misdemeanor of a skirt and a pair of murder red sky high heels that'd cost a month of my salary. But what's a month of salary when true love is at stake?

I glanced over at my reflection in my boss's glass-enclosed office and shrugged at my image. Probably wouldn't send Kate Hudson into a jealous rage, but at least I'd give her a run for her money.

I was having a lovely little daydream about lunch--and the possibility of _dessert_ with Agent Logan when my desk phone rang.

"MacKinnon," I said into the phone, and it came out sounding a bit like Lauren Bacall due to the lingering effects of said daydream.

"That's not a nice way to answer the phone, Cauley," my mother scolded.

Funny. With her soft, lyrical East Texas drawl, even a scolding came out sweet as molasses. Then again, in the south, you can say any mean thing you want, so long as you preface it with a little bit of sugar and a big dose of "Bless her heart... "

For example--so long as a soul is sufficiently blessed, a "bless her heart, that woman's butt is as big as a Butterball Turkey," comes across as kind and nurturing and almost well intentioned. The equivalent of giving a girl a Bowflex for her birthday.

I considered giving my mother a blessing or two.

But, reason prevailed, and I kept my mouth shut.

Without seeming to notice my silence, Mama said, "I need you to add some things to our list for the soiree."

Funny how _our_ list always began as _my_ list, but with Mama's additions, notations and numerous postscripts, the list was eligible for the Library of Congress.

Not to mention that _our_ list was primarily executed by _me_.

Which was fine, because that meant that I'd gotten at least the majority of my Christmas shopping done early for a change.

"I need a nutmeg," Mama said. "And it has to be a nut. That pre-processed powdered crap doesn't do the nog justice."

"Right," I muttered, scribbling nutmeg in the margin of her list. "One more nut for the party."

"Don't be smart, Cauley," she said, and I said, "I wouldn't dare."

"And don't forget the bourbon!" Clairee, Mama's best friend caroled in the background. "We can't have eggnog without the bourbon!"

A streak of alarm skittered up my spine.

Mama's famous Knock You Naked Egg Nog is banned in 48 states and half of eastern Mexico.

"Mama," I said, "do you have eggs for the nog?"

Through the phone I heard the familiar groan of Mama's refrigerator door, followed by the crinkling and shuffling of ingredients.

"Well, no," she said over the sound of the door snicking shut, "but that's okay. We'll just have nog."

"We are not having just nog," I said firmly, scribbling _eggs_ onto my mounting list of chores.

And while I was at it, I jotted _a case of half-n-half and appetizers_ to delay the effects of Mama's lethal nog.

And, in the interest of self-preservation, I added, _aspirin and a half a pound of Prozac._

Experience has taught me that if Mama and Clairee partook only of nog, before the evening was over somebody would be shouting, "Whiskey for the women and water for the horses!" and someone was going to wind up naked in the rose bushes.

The dead last way to get Logan to fall in love with me was to have him see one of the ladies from the Charity League naked in the rose bushes.

"And don't forget we need a turkey leg for Marlowe," Mama said.

"Turkey leg," I repeated, which earned me a jostle by the sixty-pound husky-mutt that, until that moment, had been snoozing peacefully beneath my desk.

"Calm down," I told the dog. "There's no turkey today."

The dog eyed me with contempt and resumed his position under my desk, getting his fluffy white fur all over a really great pair of red Ferragamos.

I sighed.

I'm an obituary writer. I was getting used to contempt.

The second light on my phone console blinked, and I glanced up through the warren of cubicles to see Remie, our big-haired receptionist, one hand on her hip, the other waving a pink phone slip. "Cantu," she mouthed.

"Mama, I gotta go. I'll call you before I head over there."

I switched lines just as she was saying something about inviting Agent Logan.

Right. I'd get right on that. And yes, I wanted to spend time with Logan, but if I was going to accomplish Number Four on My To Do List, Logan didn't need to see the MacKinnon brand of fully costumed, carefully choreographed Christmas crazy.

I switched over to Cantu. "Hey, bud," I said by way of greeting into the phone.

"Hey yourself, Blondie" Austin Police Detective Jim Cantu said, and I could practically see him, hip leaned on his desk like an Hispanic Marlboro Man. "You got anything on your John Doe?"

"You mean other than his name is probably not John Doe?" I said.

He snorted. "Medical Examiner's going to open him up in an hour. Wanna come?"

Oh, gee.

Let's see. Lunch--and possibly dessert--with Logan, or watch the ME slice open a dead guy.

I glanced up at the clock.

I barely had enough time to finish my personal To Do List, along with all Mama's additions, but I was determined to identify my John Doe before Christmas.

Nobody, not even a dead guy, should be alone at Christmas.

Not to mention that Logan would be by to pick me up any minute.

Well, damn.

Always stuck between duty, a dead guy, and sheer wanton desire.

"Is there any way we can do it later this afternoon?" I hedged.

Cantu was silent for a long moment, and I swear I heard his left eye twitch. "What do you think?" he finally said.

"That you're doing me a huge favor by letting me tag along and I shouldn't look a gift reindeer in the mouth."

Cantu said something, but I didn't hear him because Marlowe launched himself from beneath my desk like a smart bomb in search of a target.

Remie made a strangled "gacking" sound in the front office and my breath caught.

FBI Special Agent Tom Logan was near.

I knew he was in the vicinity, and not just because the dog took off like a guided missile.

But because all the air was suddenly sucked right out of the office.

"Hey, Partner," Logan said to the dog in that low, Fort Worth drawl, catching Marlowe as the dog leapt into his arms.

I sighed.

Lucky dog.

Logan was wearing a black t-shirt with big yellow letters that spelled out "FBI," and a pair of worn, black jeans that made him look like six-and-a-half feet of walking sin.

Lowering Marlowe to the burgundy industrial-grade carpet, Logan leveled his dark gaze on me, sending a pleasant little sizzle all through my body.

With the dog dancing circles around him, Logan grinned down at me as I sat at my desk and said, "Wow," pointedly studying my legs.

Despite the fact that I'd planned that reaction, I blushed what had to be a deep shade of chrysanthemum crimson.

Remie, her cheeks the same shade of red as her hair, slid by, rushing to the back of the office, most likely to notify Mia of an interoffice hottie alert.

Watching her, I shook my head. "I told them you were coming."

"Hey, Kid," Logan said as he approached my desk, grinning as he nodded toward the teetering pile of paper and scattering of Christmas catalogues on my desk. "Having a rough day?"

His lop-sided Harrison Ford grin sent a Force Five firestorm over every last one of my nerve endings.

I heard an " _Ahem_ ," from the phone and realized Cantu was still on the line.

"Cauley?" Cantu said. "You okay?"

"Um, yeah," I said, my gaze locked on Logan's. "Can you hold on a sec?"

I could hear Cantu grumbling as I hit the mute button and laid the handset on my desk.

Marlowe was still prancing around, making an utter fool of himself, but then, Logan had that effect on almost everybody--dogs included.

Tall, dark and bad to the bone, Logan leaned a hip against my cubicle wall and stared at me with those near-black eyes that just unstitch me.

"How you been?" he said.

"Oh. Um. Fine," I said and gave myself a mental head thump.

I hadn't seen the man in two weeks and the best I could do was _um, fine_?

"Don't tell me," he said. "Something came up and you can't go to lunch."

I sighed.

That was a real problem between us.

Either he was constantly getting called away, or I was, which made Number Four on my list all the more difficult.

Logan leaned down and tucked a stray strand of my hair behind my ear and I nearly melted to the floor.

"What's this?" he said, glancing down at one of the open Christmas catalogues, where I had dog-earred a page with a killer pair of red Nocona ladies cut cowboy boots I'd been lusting after and could never afford without knocking a big dent into my 401k.

I shrugged. "Just dreaming."

He nodded. "I arrested a hooker wearing boots like that," he said

"Really?" I said.

He chuckled. "Cauley, hookers don't wear cowboy boots. And I don't do local arrests."

I turned two more shades of red.

"You ready for lunch?" he said.

I sighed. "No. I mean... yes." I blew out a breath. "Well. I gotta go see a dead guy."

Logan looked at me and grinned.

Without missing a beat, he said, "Of course you do."

And without asking where or why, he gathered my jacket from the back of my chair. "Let's go."

Startled, I shook my head and snagged my big purse and my burgeoning To Do List.

I scooped up the phone, un-clicked mute and told Cantu, "I'll be there in a few minutes," and hurriedly hung up before he could ask me what was going on.

Then Logan ushered me toward the door, the dog prancing like a Lipizzaner stallion around us.

Hm. _Going to the morgue for a lunch date_.

Who says I don't know how to show a guy a good time?

## Chapter

# Three

I'm freezing!" I said, my teeth chattering as the pneumatic glass door swooshed shut behind us.

The sky was a cheerless, low mass of wool-gray clouds, and a northern wind blew cold, threatening a coming freeze.

"It's fifty degrees," Logan said, but he reached down and snugged my jacket more tightly around me, and tucked me close under his arm as we walked down the short walkway.

"Yes," I said, pointedly looking down the short length of my skirt. "But my legs are bare."

"I noticed," Logan said and shot me a grin that was positively evil. "Lots of ways to warm up, kid. Wanna skip the morgue?"

I shivered then, and not because I was cold.

"Much as I'd like to, I need to get this done," I sighed. "I got a John Doe I need to identify, and not a lot of time to do it. I really appreciate you coming along."

Logan beeped his remote and an enormous red Dodge 4x4 blinked its headlights.

"What happened to your old Bureau car?"

"She took one for the team."

I jolted dead in my tracks and he almost knocked me over. I turned to look up at him. "Somebody shot your car?"

"No," he said. "Somebody blew it up."

My heart slammed to a stuttering halt. "Logan!" I said on a breath, my gaze searching his body. "Were you hurt?"

"No," he said, stepping around me to open the passenger door. "But a very bad guy thinks I'm very dead. That's why I have to go back to Laredo tonight."

He'd been in Laredo, and he was going back? _Tonight_? I felt like I'd been sucker punched.

"To Laredo?" I said, and my voice sounded small in my own ears. "That's where you've been this whole time? The murder capital of Texas?"

"Austin's rising in the ranks," he said.

I stared at him.

Somebody bombed his car and somebody or some _bodies_ thought he was dead, and now he was standing in the parking lot of the Sentinel satellite office telling me about it like it was no big deal?

And he was leaving. Again.

The breath squeezed in my throat and tears stung the back of my eyes, which made me so mad I wanted to kick him in the leg.

This was so not the plan to make him fall in love with me.

"Cauley, every city has its problems, even Austin," he said, but I didn't look up at him.

"Hey," he said, tipping my chin up toward him, his gaze dark and dead serious. "I'm coming back."

"Hm," I huffed.

And then he leaned down and kissed me.

A soft brush of his lips at the corner of mine, then he covered my mouth, deepening the kiss and my head spun and my knees went weak.

He drew away from me and I blinked, unsteady as I stood between him and the truck, the cold wind swirling between us.

He grinned down at me, then looked back at the office.

"We'd better go," he said, opening the door of his big truck. "We're making a scene."

I followed his gaze back to the office, where Remie, Mia, Larry the heavy set guard and half the graphics department had their noses pressed to the plate glass window.

Heat flooded my cheeks. "Right," I said, still reeling from the kiss.

Marlowe didn't seem to notice any of it.

He leapt past me through the open truck door, hopped into the back seat, turned twice, then wedged himself between the fronts seat on top of the console. The dog looked at me expectantly.

I started to follow, then looked at the height of the truck, then down at my very short skirt and very high heels.

I turned and looked at Logan. "And how am I supposed to get in without flashing my entire office?"

Logan's eyes gleamed with dark mischief, and he said, "Hold on to me."

He scooped me up off my feet and lifted me into the truck, settling me onto the passenger seat.

And as he closed the door behind me, I heard the entire front office erupt in a fit of hooting and hollering.

_Yeah_ , I thought. _But they don't know he's leaving and they don't know some homicidal bad-ass in Laredo thinks he's dead._

Nevertheless, it was his " _Hold on to me_ " that I held on to.

## Chapter

# Four

"You're awful quiet," Logan said as he drove the big pickup, left-turning out of the parking lot and onto Ranch Road 620.

Marlowe sat between us on the console. The dog gave Logan a lap on the cheek, and then me, and then turned, facing the windshield and sat, grinning his doggie grin, happy as any mammal had a right to be.

I sighed. "Well, let's see. We're going to go see a dead guy for lunch and you just told me you're leaving. Again," I said.

I felt like The Grinch just yanked my whole Christmas right up the chimney, and it was going to take a miracle to get it back.

Logan was quiet, and the dog stared straight through the windshield.

After a long moment, Logan said, "Tell me about the dead guy."

"Right. Subject change." I said and sighed. "We're going to go see a John Doe at the morgue."

"Because you can't write an obituary about a guy until he has a name?" he said.

"Something like that," I said, feeling pissy.

Marlowe reached over and poked me under the arm, and when I turned from the window, he gave my cheek a big wet doggie kiss, then turned and lapped Logan.

A kiss by default.

Logan chuckled, scratched the dog's chin and looked at me like he was trying to get me out of my pissy mood. "You go to the morgue for every John Doe?"

I shook my head, looking out the side window. "This one's different."

Logan waited.

"Cantu called me this morning," I said, turning in my seat so I could see him past Marlowe. "This dead guy busted up a convenience store robbery."

"Cantu catch the call?"

"No. Sometimes he gives me a heads up when stuff goes down that might make a good story."

"Hm," Logan said, "he do that often?"

"He's a friend of the family," I said.

"More friendly to some in the family than others," Logan said.

"It's not like that," I said, even though it kind of was.

"And... this guy died like your dad." He left-turned into Highway 71 lunchtime traffic.

"You remembered," I said, a note of surprise in my voice.

"Guy a cop like your dad, too?" He dodged into the left lane to miss chunks of gravel bouncing from the dump truck two cars up.

I shook my head. "The beat cop that caught the call on scene said he thought the guy was a dope dealer."

"Right," Logan said straightening the wheel. "A drug dealer who busted up an armed robbery?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too," I said, staring out the window. "It doesn't make sense."

Logan maneuvered back into the right lane, avoiding last-minute Christmas shoppers, tourists and every other person in Central Texas with and--apparently _without_ --a driver's license.

The streetlights were wreathed in shining opal-lit collars that cast soft light on the dismal, December-brown grass in the right-of-ways, and banners stretched over the highway insisting that we _Have a Merry Christmas!!!_ Like three exclamation points would really drive it home. Kind of like listening to an entire Adele holiday album. A little goes a long way. And _Merry Christmas!!!_ my ass. The well-wishers who'd posted the signs obviously didn't get the memo that Logan was leaving. Again.

Logan gave me a sidelong glance. "Take an hour to get to the lab, wanna eat on the way?"

I shook my head. _Eat and ralph all over the Morgue floor? Now that would be professional._

He took that as a _no_ and headed past the glittering new Hill Country Galleria and the adjacent strip mall with the Lowes and Best Buy and other ubiquitous box stores built smack dab in the heart of where the Bohls Ranch was settled more than a hundred years ago.

Progress.

"Cauley," Logan said after a long moment. "You ever been to the morgue?"

"I have lunch with Dr. Marshall all the time," I said.

"You have lunch at the morgue?"

"In the cafeteria," I said. "And I've been back in the lab with Dr. M a bunch of times."

He looked over at me and smiled, and there was kindness in his dark eyes. "You've been in the cafeteria and in the Medical Examiner's office up front. You been in the back in the actual autopsy rooms?"

I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes, staring straight ahead.

"That's what I thought," he said.

I was about to say something clever when _The Spy Who Loved Me_ theme song from the old James Bond movie blasted from inside my purse.

Logan chuckled and my cheeks flushed as I scrambled through various purse-type flotsam in search of my phone.

"Missed me, huh?" he said.

I started to make up some big fib about Mia changing my ring tone, but decided lying to a fed was not the best way to make it to the top of Santa's Good Girl List, and certainly wouldn't get me any closer to Number 4 on my own To Do List.

I wrinkled my nose at him, but the sound of his laughter, low and deep, took the sharp edge off my embarrassment.

I juggled the phone out and flicked it _on_ , and heard Mama's voice calling, "Cauley? Cauley! Is that you? Who is that laughing? Is that your Agent Logan?"

I was about to say, "No," and "He's not _my_ agent," when Logan shouted, "Hello, Mizz MacKinnon! How can we help you?"

"Shh," I hushed him, turning my shoulder away, trying to shield him from my mother. And Marlowe, the big traitor yipped in delight at the sound of Mama's voice, no doubt from visions of holiday ham sandwiches dancing in his furry head.

"Agent Logan!" Mama cried, her voice trilled in delight.

"Merry Christmas, Miss Lily," Logan called over the dog's head toward the phone as I glared at him.

"Oh, Agent Logan!" Mama caroled, "Cauley, put me on speaker phone."

"Absolutely not," I said, and Logan said, "That's okay. I can hear you just fine from here, Mizz MacKinnon."

"Oh, good!" Mama shouted, nearly poking a hole in my eardrum. "Cauley, you need to ask your agent to come over this evening for the Soiree!"

"Mama," I growled. "He's busy and he's leaving tonight anyway."

"Not until midnight, Miss Lily, and thank you, I wouldn't miss it for the world," Logan said loudly.

Great. I had roughly eighteen hours with Logan before he left. In that time, I had to identify the Dead Guy, finish up my Christmas list, and help put the finishing touches on Mama's Soiree.

And, oh, by the way, figure out a way to make Logan fall in love with me.

I groaned. All I needed was for Logan to see the MacKinnon clan and friends in full holiday regalia. A sudden vision of Clairee hollering, naked from the rose bushes suddenly soaked into every last cell of my brain.

" _Mother!_ " I snapped. "Did you need something?"

_Other than another reason to embarrass me right into a closed casket funeral?_

"Yes," she said, and to my horror, I heard paper rattling. "I have something to add to our list."

Logan raised a brow, grinning as he listened.

Mama cleared her throat and said, "I need you to stop by the boys and pick up the rest of our costumes."

Great. Just drive a big decorative icicle through my heart and end it all.

I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I'd fall over. But I fished the To Do List out of my purse and readied my pen for jotting whatever jolliness my mother had neglected on the first twenty drafts of The List.

"The boys?" Logan said, and Mama said, "Yes! Cauley's friend Beckett did our costumes this year, and his little friend Jenks is finishing up our choreography!"

"I can't wait," Logan chuckled. He'd met my neighbors, Beckett and Jenks, who, despite the fact they'd been partners for more than a decade, each had a minor crush on Logan.

"Why can't the boys bring them?" I said.

"They're here right now, helping finish up the decorations."

"Aiding and abetting," I grumbled, scribbling the note in an ever-decreasing margin on the ever-growing list.

"Are you there, Cauley?" Mama called.

I shrugged the phone at my ear, pen ready. "Of course I'm here," I growled.

"Get the costumes, and we're also going to need two dozen pomegranates," she said.

"Pomegranates," I repeated, jotting down the exotic fruit, not even bothering to ask why.

"And don't forget the shoes--the costumes won't be complete without the shoes!" Mama said.

Logan peered over the dog to get a gander at my list.

"Costumes _and_ shoes?" Logan said, grinning even wider.

"Don't encourage her," I hissed, reaching around the dog to smack him on the leg.

"It's a big surprise," Mama sing-songed loudly to Logan. "Even better than last year!"

Great.

"I'm going now, Mama," I said, and clicked off as she shrilled something about song sheets. I threw the phone back into my purse.

Logan was still chuckling.

"Your Christmas comes with costumes?" he said, eyes sparkling.

"Yes," I grumbled. "And a chorus line from the ladies of the Charity League. My mother's Christmas Soiree has been known to cause an annual world-wide sequin shortage."

Logan burst out laughing, the sound of Fort Worth deep in his voice.

"You just wait," I warned. "You'll never be the same. You'll be scarred for life... the Charity League's chorus line has been known to cause irreparable damage to the frontal lobe."

Logan actually laughed.

Squinching my eyes, I did a low growl and Marlowe cocked his head and slurped a doggie kiss right on my mouth.

Great. I was drowning in a tinsel-trimmed bucket of my mother's Christmas cheer.

"Irreparable damage, huh?" Logan chuckled, looking at me over Marlowe's fuzzy head. Then he reached around the dog and took my hand. "For you, kid," he said, "I'll take my chances."

## Chapter

# Five

Logan parked in one of the _Cops Only_ spots in the parking lot in front of the Medical Examiner's Office and came around his big truck opened the passenger door for me. Marlowe took the opportunity to use my lap as a springboard.

The dog bolted across the parking barricade and up to the glass door of the spanking new white lime stone three-story Morgue-a-torium, lit merrily in multicolor blinking lights. Even in death, apparently, Santa Claus is coming to town...

I looked down at the drop from the truck to the parking lot and was stumped by how to make a graceful dismount.

Jump? Slide?

Hopping out of the truck in a skirt this short could mean getting arrested in some jurisdictions.

Logan stepped inside the truck door so that he was close, and he was so tall that his lips were even with mine and for a moment, I stopped breathing.

His gaze caught mine and held. Then he circled his large hands around my waist sending a pleasant sizzle through my blood and causing every latent hormone in my body to drunk dial my brain.

He lifted me effortlessly, and as my feet touched the ground, his hands slid down over my hips and lingered before he stepped back.

I tugged my skirt down and looked up at him from under my lashes.

"Did you just grab my ass?" I asked.

"It was an accident," he said and I grinned.

"Liar," I said, still shivering at his touch. His palms had been warm and strong and sent a heat wave rushing up my spine.

_Maybe we should just skip the morgue..._

I looked over at the building housing dead bodies and reality came slamming back.

This was so not how I'd planned to wow Logan with my feminine wiles.

Already at the front of the building, Marlowe capered and woofed as Logan and I headed up the short sidewalk.

Logan opened the glass door for me, and the dog shot off like a bullet aimed at the chest of Detective Jim Cantu, who, at that moment had been talking on his cell phone, taking notes in a small black notebook.

"Marlowe, no!" I hollered, but I was too late.

Had Cantu not been a tallish, wiry, Latino Man of Steel, he might have fallen over backward under the weight and velocity of the dog. He was on his cell, and held the phone out of reach of the ensuing dog slobber.

"I'm sorry," I grumbled, rushing through the large entryway to pull the yippety dog off him.

Wiping dog spit from his face, Cantu grinned at me, and said into his phone, "I gotta go, Babe--I just got attacked by Hurricane Cauley."

"Hurricane _Marlowe_ ," I corrected, "and tell Arlene I said hello."

But he'd already disconnected, and grinned down at me and the dog.

I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his cheek, and then leaned back a little to brush the dog hair off his shirt.

To his left, an enormous artificial Christmas tree twinkled with equally artificial lights, but the jumble of gifts surrounding the tree were very real and they held the charm of inexpert volunteer gift wrapping.

It was festive, in a municipal-building sort of way, if you didn't know there were a couple dozen dead bodies in various states of decomposition and dissection, stacked in refrigerated drawers at the back of the building.

To my left, a thick-necked uniformed sergeant was scooping gifts into several humongous burlap bags, and to my right, a young, freckle-faced cop manned the front desk.

"How's Arlene?" I asked Cantu.

The detective grimaced. "She's making tamales."

"Ouch," I said. "I'm sorry."

He shrugged. "It's the thought that counts."

"Depends on the thought," I said, and Cantu grinned.

His grin dissolved and his eyes hardened, and I followed his gaze.

He'd caught sight of Logan, who had come in behind me.

Cantu boosted his chin an inch and squared his shoulders, looping his thumbs in his webbed gun holster.

I took a step back as some powerful, man-thing bounced between them.

Behind me, I felt Logan stiffen, and I briefly thought I should hit the deck in case they started shooting just for the hell of it.

Marlowe seemed oblivious, and pranced a circle around us around like a deranged reindeer.

Cantu nodded at Logan. "Thought you were dead," he said.

"Keeping tabs on me?" Logan said.

Every nerve in my body went on red alert.

Cantu's black eyes narrowed on Logan. "We have a common interest."

_Common interest?_ I ground my back molars. _I'm a common interest?_

Tension strangled the air like the Grinch stealing Cindy-Lou Who's Christmas tree, and my breath caught.

The gangly cop-kid behind the desk swallowed so hard his over-large Adam's apple bounced.

"Oh for heaven's sake," I grumbled, and stepped forward, grabbed Marlowe by the collar, dragging him away as he danced around Cantu. "We're here to see the dead guy."

The words came out fast and forced.

"Errr, ummm," the kid at the desk cleared his throat. "Yeah, got an appointment for you right here... Obituary Babe to see the Queen of the Dead."

We all turned and looked at him.

Cantu's brow cocked. "Dr. M know you call her that?"

The kid moved his mouth but no words came out.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Cantu said. "She ready for us?"

"Uh-umm, yeah," the kid stuttered. "She already started."

"Take the dog to the cafeteria," Cantu told the cop who'd been loading gifts. "Arlene made empanadas. There's a big one in the fridge with the dog's name on it."

## Chapter

# Six

"You know you don't have to do this," Cantu said as he badged me and Logan through the security door, past the maze of offices where retired detectives, forensic geeks and the rest of the brain-bank of assorted experts who searched for the "how" of death, leaving the "why" and "who" to other assorted experts still on the squad. "I can send you the report."

"I worked at a vet clinic in college," I said, trying to steady my voice and my nerves. "I assisted on a whole bunch of surgeries. Even did some of the castrations myself."

Logan flinched and Cantu chuckled. "You used to castrate animals?"

"Mostly animals," I said. "And who says I've stopped?"

Through the large viewing window, I could see Dr. Elizabeth Marshall, small in a sea of blue paper smock, her dark hair cut in a shiny, shoulder length black bob. With her slightly slanted olive-green eyes, she had a faint Egyptian aura.

Queen of the Dead indeed.

She stood at the center of the small, stark room at a stainless steel table, elbow deep in John Doe's abdomen.

Cantu hit a buzzer beside the door, and Dr. M looked up and saw him through the glass bank of windows and smiled. She nodded for us to suit up in identical blue surgical scrubs, caps and masks before having her assistant let us in.

He was a tall man with no chin and deep-set eyes, and as I followed Cantu into the room, I jarred to a dead stop. The smell of rubbing alcohol and death was laced with the faint, skunky smell of pot. It was a strange combination, and it hit me like a punch in the gut.

"Thank you, Malcolm," Dr. M said to her assistant.

She nodded hello to me as Cantu rounded the table to stand by her as she snipped something inside the dead guy.

I shivered.

"The Vicks is over by the sink," she said without looking up from her work.

Logan went for the jar of mentholatum and scooped up a dollop. He leaned down and gently dabbed it under my mask for me.

I noticed Logan didn't apply any Vicks to his own nose, which made me wonder just how many dead bodies he'd encountered.

Dr. M's hands stilled as she watched the agent dabbing me down, and a smile sparked in her green eyes. "So, you must be the infamous Special Agent Tom Logan," she said, her lips quirking, visible because her mask down around her neck so she could _read_ the odors of the body. Her eyes narrowed. "I've heard about you."

"I deny all charges," Logan said, a smile in his voice.

"Well that's a shame," she said Malcolm silently picked up his camcorder and continued recording the autopsy where he'd left off. "I had such high hopes for our Cauley."

They chatted like they were standing around an office water cooler, like there wasn't a dead guy on a table between them, a blue surgical towel draped over his face, his ribcage cranked open to reveal his internal organs.

A slick wave of nausea surged through my stomach, but I couldn't stop staring.

"You okay?" Logan said and I shook my head, physically feeling the color drain from my face.

He took my elbow and guided me gently toward the table, wedging me in between his body and Cantu's--probably so one of them could catch me if I keeled over. Despite the mentholatum, I could actually feel the scent of death clinging to the insides of my lungs.

Steadying myself, I stood at the leg-end of the table near a waist-high stainless steel tray that held scissors, clamps, scalpels and a small digital scale, with Dr. M on the other side.

As Dr. M continued her examination, I stared at the body, wondering who he was, about his family, and what kind of hole he'd left in their lives. I wondered what string of extraordinary events had led to him winding up naked and cut into tidy little pieces on an autopsy table. Suddenly, my Christmas To Do List seemed trivial.

Trying to get out of my own head and ignore the overwhelming smell, I tried to imagine what Dr. M was seeing. I noted the man's skin was waxy and pale in death, but what remained of his body showed signs of good definition, well-muscled, but not like a body builder. I stood between Logan and Cantu, surveying his long, lean, straight legs. His calves and thighs were chiseled, the muscles almost angular, like he got in a lot of legwork at the gym. Slender and not bulky.

Huh. A drug dealer who stepped in on a robbery, with a body like that? Frowning, My gaze followed the lines of his legs, down to his feet, and noticed heavy calluses on the balls of his feet. His toenails appeared to be blackened.

I recoiled a little and pointed at his toes. "Is that _blood_ beneath his toenails?"

Dr. M nodded. "Subungual hematoma," she said. "That's a collection of blood, or hematoma, underneath the finger or toenail. In this case, toes. Our John Doe was a runner--pretty common for endurance athletes."

She snipped something inside the middle of his chest cavity and withdrew the dark, reddish brown muscle of the heart. Holding the organ up to demonstrate, she said, "See this? Enlarged heart. The normal weight of an adult male heart is between three to four hundred grams, give or take."

I blinked. I was no expert on internal organs and I am clueless when it comes to distance, weight and _time_ (which makes me an annoying friend but a pretty good date), but the man's heart did seem large compared to his lean body.

"A runner..." I repeated. "I'm guessing you're not using law enforcement lingo?"

Shaking her head, she said, "I mean he was quite athletic and serious about running."

She carefully placed the man's heart in the tray of the small, stainless steel scale on the table to her left and nodded. "Good color, nice conical shape... and weighs in at... four hundred and twenty-seven grams."

"And that's enlarged?" I said.

"Enlarged is usually more than four hundred in a healthy adult male."

With the man's large, bloody heart gently in her right hand, she reached for John Doe's left hand, rolling his fingers into a ball. "Ordinarily, your heart is supposed to be about the size of your fist."

She held the organ next to the man's loosely rolled fist and it was indeed larger than his curled hand. "See? Enlarged."

I glanced down at my own hand, realizing I'd unconsciously curled my own fingers into a fist. "Is that bad?"

She shrugged, placing the heart in a tray to continue the autopsy. "Not unusual for an athlete."

Dr. M placed the heart in a tray reserved for that purpose.

She moved her attention back to the cavity and busied herself inspecting the remaining organs.

Swallowing, I noticed the man's face had been obscured with a surgical towel. He had a number of tattoos, not unusual in Austin, but on his left arm was some sort of tribal tattoo circling his bicep. I frowned, studying on the tattoo.

In the middle of the tribal tattoo, like the buckle of a belt, was a strange looking shield with two lightning strikes running horizontally parallel. A sword with a snake making an "S" around it was inked into the middle of the shield.

"I've seen that tattoo, or something like it," I said, looking more closely and trying not to gag at the smell of dead flesh filtered by the dollop of Vap-o-Rub.

The ink in the middle of the tattoo was much darker, like it was fairly recent. The inside was faded with a small series of numbers, and the outer edges were sharp and dark. I frowned. "Is that a tattoo over a tattoo?"

Logan leaned in to look.

"Good eye," Dr. M said. "We ran an ultraviolet but couldn't make it out. I sent a shot of it up to the lab folks to take a look. You a tattoo expert now?"

I shook my head. "I know a girl who's having some ink removed and redone," I said, thinking of Faith Puckett, the songstress who'd been through hell and back and was trying to reclaim her overly-tattooed skin, along with her shattered life.

Logan smiled down at me. "How's Faith doing?"

"You'll find out, she's coming to the Soiree," I said.

Cantu was still studying the tattoo. "It's got some Syndicate characteristics, but the shield--the lightning bolts--that's new to the area. Can you send a shot of this over to Soliz in the gang unit? See what he has say."

Dr. M shrugged. "Sure."

Still scrutinizing the ink, he said, "We got an ID yet?"

Dr. M shook her head. "Running his prints through DPS as we speak. We can't find him there, we'll go federal."

"We got a partial on the license plate the shooter was driving," Cantu said. "We're running that down, too."

Dr. M sighed. "He's just a kid. Can't be more than late twenties."

I swallowed. About my age.

_And about the age my dad died._

## Chapter

# Seven

A fresh rush of nausea and nostalgia nearly buckled my knees.

Logan must have noticed the small sway, because he moved more closely to me, placed his hand at the small of my back to steady my faltering body.

"Tox screen?" Cantu asked.

"Preliminary says clean--we won't get the details on synthetic drugs for a couple of hours," she said. "The guys down in Trace Evidence is working on his clothes in the lab."

"What about the clerk," I said. "Did she know anything about our guy's identity?"

"She's MIA," Cantu said. "My guess is she either here illegally from across the border. Or she's scared, or both."

I watched as Dr. M lifted the dead guy's liver from just below where his right lung had been. "Healthy, pink liver," she said, placing it in on the small scale. "Nice and normal."

She put the bloody organ into a stainless steel bowl. "Such a shame. He'd have made an excellent donor."

She picked up his left hand again, examined his nails. "We already scraped under the nails, no skin or trace evidence there."

Turning his hand so that his left forearm was exposed, she studied the circumference. "No defensive wounds, but there's a slight contusion here at his knuckles."

"Thoughts?" Cantu asked the doctor as I took out my phone and took a discreet shot of his tattoo.

Dr. M laid John Doe's arm back at his side and shook her head. "According to Detective Clark's report, the convenience store clerk said this kid walked in on a convenience store robbery near the Y at Oak Hill, took the bad guy down and hog-tied him with his belt. The report noted that the clerk said John Doe made it look easy. Like he'd done it before."

"And he didn't see the second bad guy hiding in the beer cooler," Cantu said, finishing her thought.

My head went light, like I'd got a good whiff of helium as a similar scene replayed in my mind. _The day my father was murdered..._

Little black dots danced in front of my eyes and my stomach twisted as I saw myself, watching from the car window while my dad busted a kid robbing a clerk and screamed when a second guy appeared. Daddy hadn't heard me.

After that--after his death--the wheels fell off the MacKinnon family wagon. If it hadn't been for Cantu, the Ladies of the Charity League and later, the Colonel, there was no telling what would have happened.

I felt Logan's body press in against my back, and I let myself lean into him a little.

"Was he on the job?" I said, "Was he a cop?" Even to my own ears, my voice sounded small.

"I checked the rosters," Cantu said. "None of our guys are unaccounted for."

I nodded. "And where's the guy he tied up?" I said.

"Already opened him up and put him back together," Dr. M said. "Billy Wayne Turner--a three strike felon. His prints popped up on the DPS database almost immediately."

"You did an autopsy on him? But, I thought you said John Doe tied him up--you didn't say he killed him..."

"Our John Doe _didn't_ kill him," Cantu said. "The second suspect did."

"Sheesh," I said, my stomach turning. "My daddy used to say friends are like roses, you have to watch out for the pricks."

Engrossed in her work. Dr. M shook her head, reaching for a second, smaller stainless steel bowl. "Looks like the same kind of bullets."

With a pair of forceps, she pulled a metal slug and held it out for me to look at. The end had opened like a daisy bloom on impact.

My eyes went wide. "Are those cop killer bullets?"

"Ballistics said Hydro Shok--.38 caliber," she said. "Makes a nice tidy hole on entry."

She placed the exploded bullet into the tray, then rolled the victim slightly to his left side, pointing to perfect round bullet holes made in the back of his skull.

"See?" she said, pointing to the two, small entry wounds at the back of his head. "Nice and clean."

I nearly gagged at the puckered wounds visible in the dark, shaved area on the back of his skull.

With Malcolm's help, she rolled the body back to its original position to could continue her examination.

"Tidy entrance wound," she said, sighing heavily. "But it makes a big bloody mess on exit."

As she and her assistant tilted the body back to its prone position, the blue protective fabric over John Doe's head shifted, and the surgical towel that was tented over the man's head slid away.

And so did what was left of John Doe's face.

## Chapter

# Eight

"You okay?" Logan asked as we headed down the steep, winding Ranch Road 2222 through the rugged edge of the Hill Country, taking the long way back to the office.

Some secret Santa had decorated the stubby cedar trees with tinsel and bright Christmas balls, a stark contrast to the gray sky and the crunchy, dry December-brown grass.

I leaned my face against the cool glass of the passenger side window. "Kind of overwhelmed," I said.

He was quiet as he drove and I turned so that I could lean my head against Marlowe, who was warm as he perched on the console. The dog snuffled the top of my head and I smiled a little.

There was so much to say to Logan, so much I wanted to tell him, and I had so much to do between now and the time he turned into holiday pumpkin and headed back to Laredo that I didn't know what to say. So I didn't say anything.

"So what are you going to do about your John Doe?" Logan said.

"I emailed the shot of the tattoo and the surveillance video that Cantu gave me to Ethan Singer," I said. "If anyone can unravel them he can--he can do things with Sentinel software that God never intended."

"He going to be there tonight?"

"Are you kidding?" I said. "He and Faith are inseparable. He moved out of his so-called Command Center in his mom's basement and got an apartment so Faith has a place to stay. He even took those little Velcro-ed Star Wars action figures off of the back dash of his car."

"Wow," Logan said. "Must be serious."

I shrugged. "He left the Star Fleet Academy bumper sticker on, so we'll see."

"Priorities," Logan said with a grin, and shook his handsome head.

"So hey," I said, frowning, thinking about the chain of events. "How come Cantu knew your car blew up--which by the way, I'm going to yell at him for not telling me--and he didn't know you were still alive?"

"He shouldn't have even known about the car," Logan said. "Undercover means _under cover_."

I frowned. "You mean _nobody_ knows when you go undercover?"

"Most of the time, the other agents working the case will know. Usually I have a "handler", another agent who is responsible for my part. But this one is special. Only my SAC knows," Logan said.

"Your Special Agent in Charge is the only one who knows you're alive? Isn't that dangerous?"

"Can be," he said.

"But what if you accidentally get shot by one of your own guys?" I said.

"We try not to shoot _anyone_ accidentally."

"You know what I mean," I said.

"I know. Just trying to make you feel better."

I crossed my arms. "Well it's not working."

"The bigger issue is getting shot by another agency. I was undercover at a Klan rally once and ran into an ATF agent who was also undercover. Once we figured out we were on the same team, he told me an assistant district attorney was on-scene, too. Could have gotten dicey if it'd gone south had everybody started shooting. It's called a 'blue on blue' situation."

"They actually have a term for it?" I shook my head. "Boy. That makes me feel better. I hate it that your job is so dangerous."

"Your job isn't exactly a skip down Candy Cane Lane," he said, grinning at me over Marlowe. "At least I've never been stabbed in the ass."

He had a point. Which pissed me off.

Marlowe shifted from paw to paw and I knew we were getting close to the office--that dog can smell the Skittles stash in the graphics department from twenty miles away.

Logan pulled into the Sentinel lot and parked in front of the building.

I opened the door and the dog bolted out of the truck as Logan came around the passenger side gently lifted me down from the seat, his hands lingering over my backside, sending a flurry of inappropriate thoughts to my front side.

"What are you going to do now?" he said.

"I'm going to see what progress E has on the tatt and the video, then I'm going to call Dan Soliz in the gang unit and see if he can help me track down that clerk."

"What about your To Do List?"

" _Shit_!" I swore, fishing the paper out of my purse. "I almost forgot." I sighed. "My mother's going to kill me."

"We'll see about that," Logan said, and he took the list from me and tore it in half, handing me the top half, and keeping the bottom.

"Take care of the dead guy and the costumes," he said. "I'll get the rest."

"It says a nutmeg," I cautioned him. "She means no powdered stuff--she wants the _real_ nut kind."

He laughed then, and the lingering malaise I'd been feeling lessened.

_I could listen to that laugh the rest of my life..._

"Yeah, I know," I said. "My mother is _anything_ but short on nuts."

"Yeah," he said. "I kind of figured that out. What I'm trying to figure out now is how far the nut fell from the tree."

I was about to object, and then he leaned down and he kissed me and my breath went away.

"I'll see you tonight," he said. "Come on Marlowe."

The dog warbled at the opportunity for another ride in the truck.

Then the two got back in the truck, and were gone.

I stood there on the sidewalk, open-mouthed.

Here's the thing. I'd about rather have my hair set on fire than run errands--especially errands for somebody else. And now the man of my dreams was about to run all over God's creation to run my mama's errands and perform half of my To Do List?

A slow smile curled the edge of my lips and suddenly, my throat went tight.

Maybe Number Four wasn't as far off as I thought.

I sighed. With the weirdest bundle of mixed feelings I'd ever had, I turned back toward my office.

Latent lusting over Logan would have to wait.

For now, I had a date with a dead guy.

## Chapter

# Nine

"Look at this," Ethan Singer said. He was jittering so hard I thought I thought he'd fray his retro Levis from the inside out. He'd commandeered my computer and was sitting at my desk, wearing a black tee shirt that read "PEBKAC" _Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair_.

He leaned back so Mia and I could get a look at my monitor, his left leg jiggling against me from exuberance and a barrel-sized go-cup of Hoth Cocoa, the caffeine vortex of the sweet-toothed Jedi.

Ordinarily, I'd have asked him for a sip, but the smell of the chocolate mixed with the lingering scent of Dead Guy, and my stomach turned.

"You okay?" he said, looking up at me as Mia and I leaned in on either side of him to take a look at what he'd found, the glitter on Mia's neon-red, light-up Christmas sweater getting all over my desk.

I shook my head, afraid if I opened my mouth I'd toss the half a Pop Tart I'd had for breakfast.

Shrugging, Ethan continued the upload of the security video he'd enhanced from the convenience store off the server and smacked his hands together. "Ta da!" he said.

I blinked. Ta da was right.

"Here. Wait," he said, reversing the video feed to show us a bit of the footage's "before" version, which was blurry and static-filled, so we could better appreciate the "after."

The difference was remarkable, and Mia and I made sure we tittered about how awesome he was, so that he knew we were appropriately impressed, so he'd move on with the damn video without explaining how he'd restored it.

Men are men, even when they're geeks.

"Here's where the first rat bastard comes in," Ethan said.

"You mean suspect," I said and he shook his head.

"Suspects don't shoot people pointblank. Rat bastards do. Watch this."

The time stamp in the upper right corner read 12:45 a.m. The video had no audio, and was positioned high behind the counter so that the door, the cashier and the cash register were in clear view.

Ethan toggled fast forward, and we watched as a young, very pregnant dark-haired, woman manned the counter, checking out periodic customers who bought beer, condoms, beer, candy canes, and more beer. _Ah, holiday shopping in Austin_.

As the recording progressed, the clerk shifted from foot to foot, rubbing her lower back and looking miserable.

Ethan continued to fast forward, and at a little after 1:30 in the morning, a tall, loose-limbed guy who appeared to be bald under a Rangers baseball cap pulled down over his eyes ambled in. His head was down as he glanced at the clerk. He hesitated toward her, then glanced around the store, then back at the clerk.

She looked up at him, and looked away, quickly.

The man wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and his hands were jammed into the front pockets.

"The shooter," I whispered, leaning closer to the monitor.

"Hang on," Ethan said impatiently. Onscreen, the suspect disappeared from the frame.

According to the rapidly moving time stamp, about ten minutes later, a second man, short and stocky with shaggy brown hair skulked nervously through the door. He was wearing an identical dark hooded sweatshirt. His hands were in the sweatshirt's front pockets.

I watched, and realized my breath was coming more quickly as the man's head onscreen jerked quickly as he looked nervously around. He went back and rattled the beer cooler, then swung around, brandishing a pistol and seemed to be shouting something at the clerk.

"Billy Wayne," I said, and Mia said, "Who?"

"I'll tell you in a minute," I said.

On the screen, the girl's mouth stretched into a scream, then she appeared to beg the man as she held her belly, crying, clearly in hysterics.

My breath caught.

Outside the window, I caught a brief glimpse of John Doe. He'd been reaching for the door, apparently saw what was going on, then disappeared from the frame, still outside the store windows. He was rakishly handsome with longish, light brown hair, he reappeared in the recording. He reached behind him and came out with a small black gun from under his untucked, faded red chino shirt.

Mia whispered, " _Dios mio_ ... "

I gasped. My hand went involuntarily to my heart.

"He's so handsome," Mia said quietly.

Onscreen, the John slammed the door open and he burst in, yelling.

"The cavalry," I whispered.

The recording spooled so quickly, I told Ethan, "Can you slow it down some?"

With a click of a button, the video went into slow motion.

On the video, John Doe quickly and expertly assessed the scene so fast I hadn't seen him do the cop-scan of the situation.

And before I could draw a decent breath, he had Billy Wayne on the floor so fast I didn't get a good look at how he'd done it, even in slower time.

"Can you replay that part?" I asked, still a little breathless.

"I'll back it up in a minute," Ethan said. "You need to see this."

Mia and I leaned in for a closer look, and watched, mouths slack-jawed as John whipped off his belt, hog-tied the thug like he was calf-roping at a rodeo, all the while talking to the cashier.

Then he leaped over the counter, saying something to the pregnant woman, smoothing her long, dark hair, checking the pulse at her wrist, then her eyes and her belly.

A lump lodged in my throat.

I didn't even know this guy, and all ready my heart was breaking for him.

We watched the last minutes of his life unfold as he whipped out a cell phone, still holding the young woman in his arms, rocking her and petting her hair as he made what I knew now was the 911 call Cantu had sent me earlier in the morning.

John had his back to the beer cooler as he consoled the woman. Sobbing, she turned into him, nearly toppling him with her wobbling weight.

And that's when the thug who'd come in first burst out of the beer cooler, pointing a snub-nosed pistol.

John Doe must have seen him in his peripheral vision, because he tucked the clerk more closely into him. And because his arms were full of the hysterical young woman, he was late to draw, swinging the sight of his weapon toward the second man. The woman yanked at him, away from the man, so that the back of his head was exposed.

Then John's body jerked. And jerked again.

I watched in horror as two small holes appeared at the back of John's head.

From the angle of the camera, I didn't see his face as it disintegrated. But I could see the blood and brains that spattered all over the clerk. And then his limp body crumbled on the floor.

The girl didn't even have time to scream.

Her eyes rolled back in her head, her knees buckled and she collapsed, toppling on top of her fallen hero.

If I didn't know she was still alive, I'd have thought the shooter had killed her too.

There was a moment on the recording when nobody one moved.

Then the shooter slithered around the counter, punched a key on the register, scooped up the money and shoved it into the front pockets of his sweatshirt. He moved to John Doe and the clerk, both on the floor.

He crouched over them, and for one breathless moment, I wondered if he knew the clerk was still alive. Obviously he thought he'd killed them both. He wouldn't have left a witness.

The shooter's gaze ricocheted around the store as he wrested the pistol curled in John's dead fingers, still glancing around the grounds, he rifled through John's clothing, nabbing his wallet.

"Watch," Ethan said, and hit the _up_ key. The shot zoomed in and went into even slower motion as the shooter slipped something out of John's front pocket.

"What is that?" I said, squinting to see.

Ethan toggled the shot even closer, revealing a small plastic baggie knotted around a white substance.

" _Dios mio_ ," Mia breathed. "It's an 8-ball. Probably meth. Or coke?"

"But..." I did a whole face frown and shook my head. "That doesn't make sense."

We watched as E toggled the screen back to real time.

On the other side of the counter, Billy Wayne struggled against the restraints John had tied, his mouth moving frantically, apparently urging his friend to cut him loose.

The shooter came back around and stood over him for a moment, listening intently to his frantic cohort.

He nodded once. Then smiled.

He stuffed John Doe's weapon into his back pocket. Then he leveled his snub nosed gun he'd held in his right hand.

And shot his friend.

Twice in the head, just as he'd done to John Doe.

Bone and brains exploded with a good chunk of the linoleum, leaving a big, bloody mess.

Still holding the weapon in his right hand, the shooter used his left hand to reach into his friend's jeans pocket and extract his wallet and what appeared to be more drugs, getting his hand covered in blood as he made sure he'd gotten whatever else there was to get.

He briefly looked down at his bloody hand, then down at his friend.

The pregnant girl raised herself on her hands, rolling off of John Doe. She screamed, probably pleading. The shooter glanced at her briefly. I saw him shout at her, and then he looked down at his gun, then at his bloody hand.

I choked at what he did next.

He leaned down, and wiped the blood from his palm on his dead friend's shirt.

With a furtive glance in both directions, he checked his surroundings, presumably making sure there weren't more witnesses.

He said something to the clerk and she appeared to scream at him, holding her belly.

He came around the counter raised his hand like he was going to hit her with the butt of his gun, then shook his head.

Then he turned and sauntered out of the store like nothing at all was odd or unusual.

He didn't look back.

The clerk continued to sob as she half-lay, slumped on the floor, scooting away from the two dead men.

Ethan hit the _stop_ key and the video went to freeze frame,

John Doe's lifeless body face down, the two bullet holes in the back of his head, largely hidden in his slightly curled hair, blood pooling heavily on the floor. The clerk had stopped scooting, and sat, crying hysterically.

_She's in shock_ , I thought.

And so was I.

Mia and I sat, staring at the monitor, speechless.

The moment lasted a long time.

Then Ethan said, "You learn anything?"

"Yeah," I said, replaying the way he'd taken down the first thug in my mind. "I don't know what that business with the 8-ball was. But our John Doe is not a drug dealer."

## Chapter

# Ten

An hour later, we were heading out of the office, and my stomach was still sliding around when Mia skipped toward my Jeep. Despite the day we'd been having, the woman was actually bouncy. I was never quite sure about Mia's New Age-y belief system, mainly because it was constantly shifting, but her faith in the circle of life and her ability to bounce back made me think I ought to look into it.

I was so not feeling the least bit bouncy. The more I learned about John Doe, the more I didn't understand. The evidence was barely trickling in, and I had so much to do and an increasingly shrinking window of time to get it done.

I thought about the clerk, pleading for her life, and wondered why the shooter had let her live.

I wondered what kind of man was cold-blooded enough to wipe his bloody hand on his buddy and let the clerk live? Maybe I should check into his belief system too...

But it bothered me. Why let the live? She'd seen his face. Hell she'd witnessed him kill two people in cold blood. They'd even exchanged words. Granted, she'd been pregnant, but why leave a witness?

I assumed he'd threatened her. But it didn't make sense.

I'm fairly certain that if _I'd_ been the kind of person who would kill two people in the course of a robbery--and wipe my friend's blood off my hand on his dead body--would I even think twice about killing a witness, whether she was pregnant or not?

Funny that no matter what else was going on across the country, Christmas doesn't come screeching to a halt. Even for a double homicide.

"I got more bad news, _chica_ ," Mia chirped in her lyrical Latina accent as she reached through the passenger doorway and leaned over the seat to hand me a big go-cup of something that smelled like the south end of a northbound skunk. Then she swung her hair back and vaulted her small body into my CJ-7. "I did your horoscope this morning and it says you are in for a big disappointment."

"I don't think I can take anymore disappointment," I said, shifting the Jeep into gear.

Mia's voice rang like Bing Crosby's tinkling silver bells, and while I love her like a sister, I was so not in the mood for tinkling bells--silver or otherwise.

Mia made a _pish_ sound. "Just drink your tea. It's to improve your love life."

"Hm. Well, let's see," I told her, left-turning onto Ranch Road 620, resisting the urge to dump whatever magical mystery Love Tea she'd made me right out the window.

I sighed and shrugged. Then I held my nose and took a sip so as not to hurt her feelings, and if I was going to be honest, if it really was some kind of a love potion, I was feeling more than a little desperate.

I swallowed and nearly choked as it scalded the back of my tongue. "And, if I'm in for a disappointment bigger than what we just witnessed, I don't need your stars for that kind of information."

I wheezed on the after-shock of swallowing the tea.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Things are bound to get better. It's Christmas!"

"Well, let's see. Logan is leaving. Mama had Beckett make us costumes and she asked me to pick up two dozen pomegranates--which happily, was on Logan's half of the list. And we're on our way to go see a detective about a pair of dead guys. How much more disappointment can one woman have?"

"Ts ts," Mia tutted. "Your aura _es desastre_. You need to come with me to see my cat's psychic, Mrs. Applewhite--she's doing laughter therapy now."

"Laughter therapy for cats?" I said.

"Of course not," she huffed. "Cats already think everything is funny."

I snorted, thinking about Muse, my Aunt's funny little calico.

I sighed. "I think this is a way bigger fix than a clown nose and a whoopee cushion," I said, dodging traffic as we headed downtown to the main cop shop on Seventh Street.

"So why can't Cantu help us?" Mia wanted to know.

"He didn't catch the call," I said. "Some Detective Clark guy filed the initial report. He's the investigating officer."

Mia frowned. "You know him?"

I shook my head. "Cantu said he was on the job in California--L.A. County," I said. "But I have a bad feeling... Cantu said there's something off about him. Besides, from the report, this detective-guy thinks John Doe was a drug dealer."

"What?" Mia's voice went up an octave, and she jammed her fist to her hip and did a head-bob, shoulder-roll thing in indignation. "Did he even see the same video we saw?"

"That's what we're going to find out," I said, eyes on the road while I tried to fish the folder I'd made on John Doe out of my enormous purse without crashing the Jeep into oncoming holiday traffic. "I called Soliz and left him a message to see if he could help with the tattoo and to find the clerk."

"The guy on the gang unit?"

"Yeah. I think he works nights--he's probably not even up yet."

I dodged into the left lane, barely missing a woman in a Hummer who had decided to take her half of the road out of the middle. "We'll stop by for a short chat with this Clark guy, then go see Soliz."

"You think that pregnant girl was in a gang?" Mia said and I shook my head.

"No, but Soliz has good street cred and connections. If she's still in Austin, he can find her."

I handed Mia the file that included Detective Clark's original arrest report and the black and white still shots Ethan had managed to extract from the video, including a close up of John Doe's face--prior to having it shot off of him.

In the file, I'd also tucked stills of the clerk, The Shooter and Billy Wayne--also before his face was obliterated.

On the off chance that I could figure out why John Doe had had it, I also had Ethan print out a close up of the 8-ball The Shooter had pulled out of John's pocket. Despite the fact that I'd seen it with my own eyes, the drug-thing bothered me. Why would a guy stopping an armed robbery have drugs on him?

"And Logan can't help us?"

"No," I said. "He's supposed to be dead and he's already put himself in danger by coming back here. And besides, he's taking care of Marlowe. And he's picking up the pomegranates."

"He's picking up pomegranates while he's dead?"

"I'm pretty sure the folks that shop at the Whole Foods won't recognize an FBI agent." I sighed. "He's pretty good at the undercover thing. Apparently."

We pulled onto Seventh Street and circled the parking lot of the Justice Complex, which was all decked out in twinkling wreaths and an enormous light sculpture of a Texas flag.

As we headed for the lobby, the December wind whipped at both of our short skirts.

"We probably should have changed clothes," I said and Mia snorted.

"You want information, don't you?"

She had a point. Cantu had told me Detective Clark was a pompous ass, or words to that effect. And while I'd worn the skirt for Logan's benefit, my brief experience at the newspaper told me that showing a little skin certainly wouldn't hurt my case when trying to weasel information out of a jerk.

In the reception/security area, JoAnne Henry, the retired cop at the front desk flashed me a perfect smile.

"You here to see Detective Clark?" she said.

I smiled. "Yup. What can you tell me about him?"

"He's from California," she said as if that explained everything.

"And Sgt. Dan Soliz?"

She glanced at her big man-style Timex watch she'd received at retirement. "Not in yet," she said.

"Yeah. I figured," I said. Then she handed me a Post It with Clark's office number and Mia and I took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

## Chapter

# Eleven

"Be nice," I said to Mia. "We want this guy to talk to us."

She widened her dark eyes. "What? I'm always nice," she said with a lot of shoulder and hip.

"Uh, huh," I said.

Mia was deceptively cute and sweet, but piss her off and she'd open up a can of Columbian whoop ass on you that would knock you into next week. And Cantu had already indicated this guy was a horse's ass.

"But you said this guy isn't gonna tell us anything useful," Mia said and I nodded.

"Based on his report, or lack of report, he probably won't tell us anything that'll get us closer to John Doe's identity or who the shooter is," I said. "But we still need to talk to him."

"Just in case?" Mia said.

I nodded. "We're going to listen for what he _doesn't_ say. And if we're right, if John Doe wasn't a drug dealer, we need to figure out all the working parts of this mess," I said. "Did this guy screw up the report, or was he deliberately vague."

We exited the elevator and headed down the hall to Clark's office where he met us at his open door, which was canopied in Pottery Barn Christmas paraphernalia.

Detective Claude Clark was leaning against the doorframe like he was posing for a GQ cover spread. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

I've known cops all my life, and most of them are genuine, white-hat good guys. But, as in most professions, there are a few butt heads. And I'd come across at least one genuinely criminal sheriff, though I hadn't proved it. Yet.

And based on Detective Clark's report--and his posturing at the door--I got the feeling Detective Clark was a genuine butt head.

He was sporting blond-streaked hair that was freeze-dried into an anchorman style helmet and a smile that showed way too many teeth. I supposed he was good looking in a Malibu Ken doll kind of way, and he was suited up in an expensive, dark pinstriped suit. I wondered if Mattel make a Wall Street Ken doll? And then I wondered if _all_ of him was as anatomically smooth as a naked Ken...

I tried not to let my gaze travel south of his belt to check. A whole new meaning to _All hat and no cattle..._

The sad thing was that the Ken doll thing probably worked for him. I'd bet he had a legion of badge bunnies clinging to him like Saran Wrap.

My distaste was immediate, and I wasn't sure if Cantu had jaded my opinion, or if it was the way this knucklehead's report looked nothing like the security video or that it indicated no follow-up. Or if it was just the fact I could tell he had sat for an hour at some hairdresser getting his hair pulled through a shower cap to have it frosted. I had to stop myself from giggling over the thought of him, sitting in a swivel chair at a beauty salon, flipping through _Chic Magazine_ , chitchatting with the female clientele getting holiday up-dos.

"You must be Cauley," he said to me, beaming as he sauntered forward and gave me a double-handshake, the kind where his right hand lingered in the shake while he gave my upper arm a squeeze with his left so that he could brush the side of my breast. "Detective Claude Clark, but my friends call me Dutch."

The old boob-brush maneuver. He'd skipped straight from butthead to dick head

"Hm," I said, and wondered if the ol' breast-brush was something dick heads inherited or if they learned it from some _Dick Head for Dummies_ manual.

And I wondered who named him Claude. Probably his mama. If his so-called friends called him Dutch, I'd bet my 401-k deduction everybody else called him Clod. As in _Dirt Clod_ ...

## Chapter

# Twelve

"And you brought a little friend," he turned to Mia, smiling even wider when he saw the big Nikon that was perpetually strapped to her small body. "I didn't realize there'd be a photo shoot."

I heard Mia growl " _Puede el pelo caerse_ ," and I stifled a chuckle, because she'd just conjured up a Columbian curse that would send Detective Clark's frosty locks circling his shower drain. Despite her small stature, Mia hated being called "little,"

He leaned in to give Mia the old boob brush and she ducked into his grasp--

_Flash_!

Mia had always wielded her camera like it was an extra appendage, and the burst of her flash was so quick and close to his face that it probably blistered the backs of his eyeballs. He blinked hard and took a step back.

I turned to look at Mia and raised an eyebrow, and she sent me a wide-eyed innocent, _Wha-a-a-t_?

She smiled wide and shrugged at him. " _No habla Ingles_ ," she said, and I shook my head.

"Well, that's okay. Great in fact," he said, clearing his throat and chuckling a forced laugh.

Then he turned to me and said, "Cantu probably told you I was the media liaison in LA."

_No, Cantu told me you were investigating a double murder_. And as far as media relations went, I bet he just liked to say _liaison_.

He was the lead officer on a double homicide and he thought we were here to do a profile on him? Seriously?

Fine. Most cops don't like to talk to media, and a bit of misleading circumstances would make my job a million percent easier.

He glanced over at his reflection in the window and tried to surreptitiously check his teeth like he was doing an interview for _The Bachelor_ , not being interviewed by a reporter who just might be able to offer a couple of clues to John Doe's identity, if not a tip that might get him closer to finding the killer who'd gotten away.

"Glad to be dealing with a pro," I said, giving him my second most charming smile--my first most charming smile I save for people I like. And people I respect.

And people for whom I don't get the overwhelming urge to kick in the leg for unnecessary fondling.

I looked at him.

Cantu was right. There was something up with this guy, and the best way to find out was to let him talk until he stepped in his own dog doodie.

"And this is Mia Santiago--she's an award-winning photographer," I said, and at that, he ramped up his media-ready smile.

"Yes, of course," he said, and motioned us to sit as he moved behind his mammoth mahogany desk. He'd most likely had it shipped in from California. No way an Austin cop would ride that kind of fancy desk.

Mia sat in the seat he'd indicated, but she continued to mutter.

I sat next to her, big purse at my feet, my file in my lap. I'd left my phone in my purse, where I'd downloaded Ethan's refined video of the robbery-homicide to my phone and my email--a little compulsion I'd started when a big earless guy broke into my house and stole my computer.

Sitting in the chair, I observed the gleaming, uncluttered surface of the detective's desk. In fact, the only thing in his office that seemed to be related to being a cop was his gun--a fancy, non-department-issued Colt revolver with a hand-carved butt which lay, un-holstered on his polished desktop.

I frowned. Here's the thing. Most cop desks look worse than mine, which is saying a lot. The Clod had the most immaculate cop desk I've ever seen. No burgeoning inbox, no teetering stack of reports. Nothing related to the shooting.

For that matter, there weren't even any family photos, which were ubiquitous on the desks of every cop I knew--kind of a reminder that the whole world wasn't as bad as their jobs might lead them to believe.

There was no holiday hoopla, except for a Muzak-style Christmas cantata playing softly from an expensive looking iPod dock. Like everything else about him, the door decorations seemed to be purely for show.

I straightened the disheveled papers inside my newly constructed John Doe file and glanced again at his clear desktop.

_Hm. Already I had more information strewn around his office than The Clod._

His walls were, however, adorned with more than a dozen shots of him glad-handing various California celebu-tants, politicians and upper management law enforcement officers with more brass than a Christmas parade. Nice to know his priorities were in order.

I've met men like him. Interviews are easy because they love to talk about their favorite subject--themselves.

The only thing I wanted to know from The Clod was if he had any leads on the shooter, had found and interviewed the shop clerk, and anything about the identity of John Doe.

"I don't know if Detective Cantu mentioned it, but I'm here about the convenience store shooting," I said.

"Oh. Yes, well, that's an ongoing investigation," he said, clearing his throat. Then he flashed me a big, sly smile. "You know," he said, leaning back in his seat. "I'm a bit of a writer myself."

I smiled and nodded like it was the first time anyone had ever told me that. In fact, everyone tells me that.

Hell. Even the guy who came out to fix my septic tank told me he sucks crap out of a hole for a living, but at heart he was really a writer. And then he proceeded to recite some of the worst iambic pentameter I have ever had the misfortune of hearing, accompanied by the equally malodorous stench of septic.

Clark's grin widened. I was getting the feeling I was going to be doing my septic guy's job--pulling crap out of a big gaping hole.

Based on the tidiness of his desk and the dearth of pertinent information in his report, I figured I already knew the answers.

But I learned a long time ago that when you're fishing for information, it's best to cast a wide net because you never know what information you'll haul in.

First rule of reporting--get him relaxed and talking. And to do that, shift the subject to something he liked. Himself.

"So, Detective Clark," I said, smiling and leaning forward. "How long have you been in Austin?"

"Dutch, please," he smarmed, and I caught him trying to look down my shirt. "Almost two months now." He leaned forward, eyebrows raised in perfect arches and far darker than his hair.

I squinted at the slick shape. _He'd had them waxed?_

He went on, "Haven't really had time to get to know the city, you know, good restaurants, a nice place to wind down. I hear there's a pretty good music scene here--I haven't been able to find much in the way of entertainment... "

He gave me what I assumed he thought was a charming, boyish grin.

Beside me I felt Mia stiffen and _Flash_!

She snapped another shot.

He blinked and frowned. "Errum," he cleared his throat and eyed the camera. Reaching for his right-hand top desk drawer, he said, "I have some publicity headshots..."

I hid a smile. Mia was jacking with him. He'd called her my "little friend," and now he was belittling both Mia and my professional credibility.

And I knew the photos she was snapping weren't going anywhere except her office dartboard. Right next to the excellent shot she'd snapped of our former governor, Rick Perry, flipping her off.

"Oh," I said. "We don't use publicity shots. Besides, Mia's great at the candid stuff--you should see the shots she got of our former governor."

Mia snorted, and if The Clod had been paying attention, he would have realized that Mia had been listening and did in fact speak English.

"So," I continued. "What did you do in LA, other than act as a liaison for media?"

He was still looking at Mia and her camera when he said, "Um, detective."

"Homicide?" I asked and he smiled wide. "Yes."

"Great," I said, and caught it when his eyes shifted. "I won't waste our limited time with background. I'll just call your public information officer in L.A and get all that."

His eyes shifted again and he cleared his throat. "I, uh, was the lead in Forensics' division," he said, still looking at Mia's lens. "Homicide was only a small part of my duties. You know, it's a long story. I'd be happy to discuss it with you over dinner?"

Mia made a quick move like she was going to lift her camera and he flinched.

She lowered the lens, and he relaxed. Sort of.

I had to chew my tongue in half to keep from giggling.

I cleared my throat and The Clod redirected his gaze to me, and I could see his breath was coming faster. Mia's game of chicken was better than the Miranda Phillips Voodoo Doll Mia made me for Christmas. I smiled a little. Miranda Phillips is Austin's Barbie-Dream House version of a reporter. And she's a seasoned husband-stealer.

And my arch rival. Maybe I should introduce her to The Clod...

"So this is a promotion?" I asked and his brows nipped down in the center.

"Lateral, for now. I needed a change of scenery," he said, and I thought, _I bet_. There was more to that story, but I'd poke that hornet's nest some other time.

I was quiet, riffling through my file, knowing that guys like him hate silence.

He watched me expectantly, and he shifted, trying not to look like he was sneaking a peek at my file.

When the silence finally got to him, he said, "Captain Sullivan brought me in." He craned his neck and loosened his collar. "You know. Captain Colin Sullivan?"

I shook my head, still pretending to riffle through my file.

He continued to watch me riffle. "He's a friend of mine. He, uh, thought I'd like it here, and I always wanted to be a Texan, so when a position came open, he gave me a call."

As he spoke, he reached for the Colt on his desk and gave it a little spin.

I wanted to tell him that no self-respecting Texan, transplanted or otherwise, would keep a gun that fancy out in the open and they certainly didn't play with their weapons like they were spinning their turn in a game of Twister. Erring on the side of discretion, I shook my head.

"Sullivan" I repeated. "Never heard of him."

I stopped my file-flipping and made a big show of studying one of the stills of the murder scene Ethan lifted from the video.

I looked up at him. "Cantu mentioned to me that you pulled the John Doe murders?"

The Clod's jaw muscles went tight and my internal radar pinged in the base of my skull.

"Yeah, I took over the case," he said, and he sounded snippy--exactly the voice you'd expect from a Talking Malibu Ken.

"Your first murder here?" I said.

His eyes narrowed. "Well. First in Austin."

"Wow. Your first homicide here," I said, noting that he hadn't corrected me that it was a _double_ homicide.

Glancing around at the many photos of himself he'd hung on the walls, I said, "You must have really built up a reputation back home."

The Clod shifted in his ergonomically correct, non-city government issued leather chair.

"Well," he said, brows drawn, gaze darting, shuffling as he regrouped. "Yes, as I said, I was the department media liaison."

I was quiet, nodding as I studied the close-up shot of John Doe--before his face exploded.

He stared down at the photo on my lap, then at the manila file, apparently trying to mentally pry open the cover to see what I really knew.

The Clod leaned further forward, and I noticed his gaze had drifted from the file, leveling at my cleavage.

He blinked when he noticed that I caught him leering and his smile got bigger. He shrugged, palms up. "It's the holidays. One of my sergeants drew the case, and I offered to take it. He's got family, you know."

I didn't know. What I _did_ know was he didn't seem like a guy who ran around toting Santa's big bag of favors.

I nodded, did a little more riffling. "Any word on Avril Rodriguez?" I asked.

He blinked, a blank look in his eyes.

"Oh," he said, like he'd just remembered who she was and why I was there. "The clerk? She doesn't speak English--she's probably illegal and I've notified the immigration guys at ICE. We've got word out, but if she's down with the bangers who started this, she won't show up. Well. She won't show up _alive_ anyway."

Beside me, I felt Mia bristle, and I put my hand on her forearm to keep her from blinding him with her flash. I needed him talking.

I nodded, all sympathy and sugar-shocked sweet tea. "So. Any progress on John Doe at all?"

The Clod's gaze got hard and he said, "You mean other than he's dead?"

I let that slide. "And no word on the shooter?"

He stood abruptly. If he'd been a dog, the hair on the back of his neck would have bristled. "Look. I know you don't know much about police work, but this is an ongoing investigation. And the dude had dope in his pocket," The Clod went on. "We ID'd the second body as a low-level dope dealer. Theory is all three of these dudes were tweakers in the middle of a robbery gone bad. Any more than that, you'll have to talk to public information."

I wanted to point out that he'd said that he himself was a former public information officer.

And he'd all but come right out and told me he'd concluded John Doe was a drug dealer who'd got what was coming to him. This guy was investigating the double homicide the way I was giving up caffeine--nothing more than a fleeting thought.

_So. John Doe was a dope dealer who took time out of his busy schedule to bust up a robbery he helped plan?_

From deep inside my purse, my cell rang and The Clod frowned when the theme from SWAT blasted through the flap. _The ringtone I'd assigned Dan Soliz_.

"The cavalry," I smiled, though I hadn't meant to say it out loud.

Mia grinned at me.

"Excuse me," I said to The Clod and stood up, blocking him from Mia's mental death ray and said, "We have to go."

"But," he said.

"I'll be in touch," I said, heading to the door, Mia hot on my heels.

"What about my interview?" he said.

"That's okay," I said, shuffling the photos back into my file and stuffing them back into my purse. I smiled sweetly. "We got what we needed."

"You didn't give me your card," he said, agitation in his voice.

I wanted to say, _That's because I didn't give it to you_ , but smiled sweetly and said, "You need me you can call my editor at the paper."

And before he could get out from behind his massive desk, I hustled Mia out the door.

## Chapter

# Thirteen

"That guy needed a good smack," Mia said as we headed back toward the elevator.

"Mia, if we smacked every man who needed smacking we'd get carpal tunnel."

Fishing my still-ringing cell out of my bag as we hurried to the elevator. "Besides. We got what we needed. Either Clark is an incompetent cop or a bad cop. One way or the other, he's not doing due diligence this case. And my guess is, we'll run into him again."

I shrugged the phone to my ear, as we exited the elevator and did a finger wave goodbye to JoAnne as we made our way back to the Jeep. "MacKinnon," I said into the phone.

"How's the dog?" Sergeant Dan Soliz's voice said and I grinned into the phone.

"Marlowe's busy getting ready for Mama's Christmas party," I said, leaving out the part about Logan being back, and not being dead. "How's Napalm?"

Soliz had been drafted into Search and Rescue Team Six when our fearless leader Olivia Johnson gave him a police dog she'd confiscated from a sheriff so crooked he had to screw on his britches. I thought of The Clod and wondered if he had a dog. I hoped not.

"He ate the telephone and had the answering machine for dessert," he said. "Where are you?"

"Mia and I are just now leaving Detective Clark's office."

"Huh," Soliz said. "You gonna show him Austin's live music scene?"

"I'd like to show him the business end of my red stiletto heel," I said and Soliz chuckled.

"Hey," he said. "You asked me to find Avril Rodriguez. I found her, but you need to be real careful with her."

I let out an indignant huff. "Who do you think you're talking to? Miranda 'Bleeds-n-Leads' Phillips?"

He laughed. "Sometimes I forget. Avril's scared, so tread lightly."

"I just want to talk to her--I need to get John Doe ID'd so I can get my obituary done before Mama's Soiree. This guy's got to have a family worrying about him somewhere," I said.

That was the truth, but not the whole truth. I did want to get the obituary done, but I also wanted to get to the bottom of my suspicion that there was more to John Doe than Clark's report indicated. And at some point, Detective Clark and I were going to have a Come to Jesus Meeting.

"She's with an aunt--name's Isabel Santos--over off East Eleventh," he said, and gave me the address.

"Thanks," I said. "I owe you."

"About a million," he said and I grinned and said, "Well, now it's a million and one."

He snorted.

"Hey," I said. "Can I send you a shot of a tattoo that might be Texas Syndicate?" and Soliz said, "Sure. We'll just make it a million and two. Where'd you get the tatt?"

"Off John Doe," I said.

"Cantu already sent it."

"Oh," I said, though I shouldn't have been surprised. "Anything you can tell me?"

"No," he said, and I wasn't sure if it was because he didn't know or if he couldn't tell me. I sighed, but didn't press it. Cops typically hate media, and part of getting them to two-step is knowing when to let it go and come back to it later.

"Hey," I said, switching gears. "You know anything about a Captain Colin Sullivan?"

There was a long silence. "Who wants to know?"

"Clark said Sullivan recommended him for the Austin transfer," I said.

Another long silence.

And then he said, "Cauley. Stay away from Sullivan."

And then I was talking to a dial tone.

"What was that all about?" Mia wanted to know and I shrugged.

"I'm not sure. Yet."

Mia frowned as we left-exited the interstate onto East Eleventh. "That's not like Soliz--warning you off like that."

"I know," I said. And I had a feeling that Soliz would be having his own Come to Jesus Meeting with a certain Captain Sullivan and his Californ-ucating protégé, Detective Clark in the very near future.

## Chapter

# Fourteen

Avril Rodriguez did a crappy job of disappearing herself.

Sergeant Dan Soliz had tipped us off that the very pregnant Avril was alive, if not well, and hiding out at her aunt's house on the dodgy end off East Eleventh Street. He'd also said he'd put a couple under-covers on the house to keep an eye out for the girl.

I pointed the Jeep down Eleventh and headed off onto a small side street, and my breath caught as Mia and I were greeted by a half a dozen _chollos_ sporting ass-crack jeans and barracuda eyes.

They were listening to a thumping beat of what I assumed was supposed to be music.

As we passed, I looked into those empty eyes and for one gut-cramping moment my heart leapt to my throat.

Their heads remained eerily still as their eyes followed us, and each of them seemed to vibrate in place.

They wore University of Texas ball caps backwards, tilted, sideways and every other way they could think of that didn't include the bill in front.

I shivered.

The Texas Syndicate had appropriated the University of Texas orange and white for their gang colors, and when they threw sign, it was the thumb and index finger "Hook 'em Horns" rally sign. And it didn't fool anybody.

I'd had a frightening run in with them before, and wound up with a stab in the ass for my trouble.

I looked around for Soliz's officers and didn't see them, which didn't mean much--they could be anywhere. Knowing they were lurking around was mildly consoling. That knowledge would have been more consoling, but they were watching over Avril Rodriguez, not me.

Dang, I missed Marlowe...

I reached over to make sure my door was locked, a largely useless gesture, since anyone with a pocketknife, a switchblade or a can opener for that matter, could slash through the canvas top of the Jeep and carjack us in less than sixty seconds.

The not-so-distant memory of a Jeep-jacking by an earless homicidal maniac sent my heart pounding.

"I wonder where the cops are," I said, glancing nervously at the _vatos_.

"Hey," Mia said. "I grew up in this neighborhood. _Abuelita_ had a house two blocks from here."

I flinched, feeling like my own kind of Dirt Clod. "I'm sorry, I just meant..."

"I know what you meant," she said and she leaned over and gave my arm a light squeeze. "You are such a _gringa_."

"If Avril Rodriguez is as frightened as Soliz says she is, I don't know why she'd hole up in Syndicate territory," I said.

Mia shook her head. "If she's down with the Syndicate, this is the safest place for her to be. What you saw back there on the corner? That was a board meeting."

"Hm," I said, unease nipping at me with sharp little teeth. "If that's the case, then Clark was right about one thing. She's down with Texas Syndicate."

But if Soliz had found her so quickly, why hadn't The Clod?

We pulled into the circle drive that led to a salmon-colored adobe wall that surrounded a casita and courtyard. Red and green jalapeno Christmas lights twinkled along the top of the wall, and a plastic, lighted Madonna and Child greeted visitors at the entryway.

A small, tasteful wreath hung on an expensive, heavy wooden Cantera gate entrance. We drove slowly up to the house, parked and went to the gate door.

Two security cameras were set at the gateposts--one scanned the driveway, the other scanned the courtyard and exterior of the house.

The massive gate door had a peephole centered in the Christmas wreath.

Now, I know you can't see squat when you look into the wrong side of a peephole, but it never stops me from trying.

"I can't see anything," I said, squinting through the wrong-way of the small peephole.

Since I was trying to appear nonthreatening, I had the folder with the arrest report and photos tucked away in my bag, and Mia left her camera tucked out of sight and under the seat in the Jeep.

" _Dios mio_ ," Mia muttered, elbowing me out of the way, lifting to her tiptoes. "Let me see."

On her toes, she craned so that her eye could press to the small hole, and we both yelped when the door swung open to reveal a small, slender, middle-aged woman dressed in expensive gray flannel pants and an equally expensive white silk shirt, open at the neck, and showing a thin gold chain with a very small crucifix.

Mia stepped forward. " _Hola, Señora Santos, mi nombre es Marina Conchita del Santiago,_ " Mia introduced herself with her whole name--something she rarely does--as a sign of respect and indicating her lineage. " _Dan Soliz nos envió."_

"I know who you are," the woman said as she yanked us both inside the gate.

I had a teacher who'd had her sense of humor surgically removed at birth yank me that way once. Judging by this woman's iron grip, I was thankful she'd yanked our arms and not our ears.

With our arms still locked in a death grip, she rushed us through the twinkle-lit, manicured courtyard and into the pink adobe house, where she slammed and locked the door behind us.

She swung around and poked me in the chest.

"If something happens to Avril..." she warned.

"We've cleared this with Sergeant Soliz," I assured her. "We just have a couple questions."

Her dark eyes seemed to peel my skin back, looking for deception, then she looked at Mia and back to me. She must have decided we were with the good guys--or good enough--because she nodded, and led us through the wide foyer.

Somewhere down the hall, a television droned, and Natalie Wood was chanting "I believe, I believe ..." as a miracle was happening on 34th Street.

And someone was softly sobbing.

It was getting late, and I was no closer to finishing my Christmas list, I still didn't know who John Doe was and odds of making Tom Logan fall in love with me were getting short.

And nothing short of a miracle on East Eleventh Street was going to help.

Isabel Santos led us across the terracotta-tiled floor and into the kitchen, where the sobbing was louder, the sound of fear and grief were at odds with the rich, comforting scent of Mexican hot chocolate and the licorice-laced smell of Christmas wedding cookies.

My stomach rumbled like Logan's big Dodge and I realized I hadn't eaten anything since I'd split a strawberry Pop Tart with Marlowe at 9 a.m.

Nothing like a double murder, tracking down a missing killer and trying to identify a John Doe to kill your appetite.

Inside the tidy kitchen, a very small, very pregnant Avril Rodriguez sat at a hacienda-style pine table, a plate of powdered sugar-dusted round cookies formed in a pyramid in front of her. There were no cookies missing, and no telltale trace of powdered sugar lining her lips.

She was dressed in faded jeans and a cowl-necked sweater, which she fidgeted with, pulling it up over her throat like she was nervous or cold or both.

Her dark eyes were wide and red rimmed, and she stared at me, unblinking.

" He-e-ey, _estás bien_?" Mia caroled in her most soothing voice. She came around the table and put her hand on the girl's shoulder. I noticed the girl wince.

" _Está bien, todo va a estar todo bien_..."

Avril didn't respond to Mia's assurances that everything would be all right, and I could see the pulse throbbing in a small vein at her temple.

Her enormous belly began to quiver and the girl's _tia_ Isabel stood erect, tapping the toe of her black Hermès high heeled pump.

Mindful of her aunt's Darth Vadar glare, I moved toward the girl. "Hey," I said, sliding a chair next to her. I put my hand on her other shoulder. "Are you okay?" My gaze dropped to her burgeoning belly. "Do you need a doctor?"

She glanced at her aunt and shook her head. "I-I saw a doctor at the hospital," she quavered in perfect, unaccented English. I noticed her upper lip was split and her front tooth had been chipped.

I'd have to replay the video, but I didn't remember her getting hit during the robbery or falling on her face...

And her English was perfect. So much for Clark's theory that Avril Rodriguez--the only living witness to a double murder--didn't speak the language.

"Have you spoken with Detective Clark?" I asked and she shook her head.

"No," she said. "Medics took me in the ambulance and they took the... bodies..." her voice trailed off and tears streamed down her cheek. Again she fidgeted with the neck of her sweater, pulling it up over her neck.

"I am so sorry," I said, and waited until she got her breathing under control.

"He, he was so nice to me," she said.

Her entire body heaved on a sob. "They--they shot him."

I nodded, remembering the video feed of John Doe charging to the rescue. There was something on that recording that bumped the back of my brain. She'd had conversations--short ones, and under extreme duress. But she'd spoken with all three of the men involved...

And then I remembered John Doe talking to the girl as he whipped off his belt and tied up Billy Wayne. Even without audio on the recording, I could tell through body language John Doe had been comforting her. And then he'd tried to calm her as he checked her vital signs and those of her baby.

"The man spoke to you," I said and she nodded, her lips quivering, and her aunt stepped closer, drawing Avril's gaze with a sharp gaze of her own.

Her sniffling turned abruptly to sobbing, her head dropped to her hands and she covered her face as she cried.

Great. I was making a bad situation worse, but I could make it a little bit better if I could figure out what happened, and more importantly, where the shooter had gone.

"When he talked," I said. "Did he speak in Spanish?"

She looked up from her hands and glanced at her aunt. Sniffling, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and then shook her head. "No," she said. "He just said I was going to be okay. That everything would be all right."

I nodded. "Did he say anything else? Like his name or where he was from?"

"No," she said, then her sobs subsided a little. "Wait," she said. "He told me his name was Calvin Hobbes and that the good guys were on their way."

I felt more than saw that her aunt's stature had stiffened.

I blinked. "He said his name was _Calvin Hobbes_? Like the Bill Watterson comic strip?"

Her teary gaze was blank as she stared at me and nodded.

I tried to hide a smile. A good Samaritan-slash-super-hero named Calvin Hobbes? The Clod was wrong about Avril Rodriguez not speaking English, and odds were that he was wrong about John Doe dealing dope, despite the video of The Shooter removing what looked like a hunk of cocaine.

Avril nodded, as though she was thinking to herself, and after a long moment, she said, "That's not his name, is it?"

"No," I said. "Probably not."

## Chapter

# Fifteen

"Where are you? What are you doing?" Logan said when I answered my cell phone.

The truth was, I was on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack. Something wasn't right. Besides the obvious problem of the escaped killer.

I was mentally and emotionally exhausted from talking to Avril, and while I hadn't learned who John Doe was, much less his killer, I did learn that Clark was completely off base.

But none of what I learned, or didn't learn, got me any closer to finishing up my Christmas list. Not only had I not learned John Doe's identity, I was no closer to getting Mama's Christmas crap done, and miles away from making Logan fall in love with me.

From the passenger seat Mia hollered, "Hey, Logan!" and then broke into a little riff of _Feliz Navidad_.

I squinched my eyes to avoid the headache coming on. When I got off the phone I had to remember to turn down the dang volume.

"Headed back to the office to drop Mia," I told him. "Mama gave her a list, too."

"How's the John Doe ID coming?" he said.

I shushed Mia and said, "We went to talk to Clark."

I left out the part about the boob brushing, the asshole arrogance and my visit with Avril Rodriguez. After all, I'd promised Avril I'd keep her whereabouts a secret. And mentioning the boob brushing would just cause problems with Logan. Because if Logan, or Cantu, for that matter, found out I'd been unwittingly fondled by the derelict detective. it'd be a rush job to see who punched him first.

"Uh huh. How'd it go with Clark?"

"Um," I hedged. "We found out what we needed to know."

"Yeah," he said. "I heard."

I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it. "What did you hear?"

"That Clark's a dick and he manhandled you and Mia."

"He didn't manhandle Mia," I said truthfully, and Mia yelled over the console, "He didn't manhandle me. He called me Cauley's _little friend_!"

I thought I heard Logan stifle a laugh.

"Hrrmh," he cleared his throat. "I talked to your mother..."

My eyes crossed so hard Mia reached over and took the wheel.

"I got it," I snapped. And to Logan I said, "Now what?"

"She had some things to add to my half of the list," he said and I nearly ground the enamel off my back molars.

"You told her I gave you my list?"

"No," he said, "I told her I took half your list. She wanted to know if I had a costume and asked if I had something I wanted to do for the Soiree."

My heart crashed down to my stomach.

Number Four on my list was dying a slow, painful death.

"What did you tell her?" my voice dripping with dread.

"I said I had to talk to you first," he said, and the breath I'd been holding flew out in a relieved _whoosh_.

"Here's the thing," I said. "She's going to want you to wear a costume--if you wait 'til the last minute, she'll just give you a Santa hat and leave it at that. I was hoping because you were new she wouldn't make you do a number."

"A number?"

"Yes," I grumbled. "If you don't come prepared, she and Clairee will assign you something."

"Like charades?"

"No, like some kind of performance," I said. "Like a Rockettes-Vaudeville-burlesque kind of thing."

There was a long silence, and Mia was practically bouncing in her seat. "Oh! You should see what Cauley's going to wear!" She shouted to Logan.

I glared at her and hissed, "You know what we're going to wear?"

She shrugged and said, "I went by Beckett's yesterday and he showed me."

I wanted to scream.

"Don't blame me," she said. "You should've come to the rehearsals."

Logan said, "So if your mother wants costumes, should I wear my Santa suit?"

I did a combination blink-frown thing. "You have a Santa suit?'

"I have three nephews and a niece in Fort Worth," he said by way of explanation.

I cringed as I right-turned into the parking lot.

"Oh, Lord. You didn't tell Mama that, did you? If you tell my mother you own an actual Santa suit she'll be mentally fitting you for a tuxedo all night."

I heard a smile in Logan's voice and he said, "And what's so wrong with that?"

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it.

"Hey. I dropped Marlowe off at your office--I okay-ed it with your boss. I've got something I need to take care of." he said, and I could barely hear him because Mia was still hooting something about Logan being a naughty Santa.

As I pulled in front of the office, she hopped out of the Jeep before I came to a full and complete stop in my parking space, whooping the news about Logan's Santa suit all the way into the reception area.

That was very nearly the last straw that would break the fine seal of the impending panic attack.

Before I could tell him I was glad to get Marlowe back, the phone beeped and I told Logan I needed to go.

"I'll pick you up in an hour," he said, and then he was gone.

## Chapter

# Sixteen

"Your John Doe's name. It's Ben Rayburn." Dr. Emily Marshall said into my cell phone. Her voice sounded tired.

"His prints were on file?" I said.

"Yeah," she said. "DPS. He was released from Huntsville six months ago."

For a moment I was speechless.

"He was in prison?" I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. The way he'd had those cop-movements down--the way he'd busted up that robbery... I swallowed around the disappointment lodged in my throat. "You've seen the report?"

"Not all of it," she said and I heard paper rattling. "Enough to get the ID."

"What was he in for?"

"Possession with intent to distribute."

My throat went tighter and a wave of nausea rolled in my stomach. Clark had been right. My mysterious good Samaritan had been a drug dealer.

"Any priors?" I said and my voice sounded small.

"Didn't see any," she said. "I'll send you what I've got. I'm about to call it a day."

"Thank you," I said. "Oh. And Merry Christmas."

"You, too," she said and paused. "And try not to take this too hard. I know you wanted this guy to be a hero."

I sighed. "I'm an obituary writer bucking for a spot on the City Desk. You'd think by now I'd be used to disappointment by now."

"Cauley," Dr. M said and her voice was kind. "You are a hopeless romantic and there are damn few of us left. I'll tell you what my daddy always told me-- _Don't let the bastards get you down._ "

Easy for her to say. She was spending Christmas with the love of her life and was heading home to her two perfect children.

Sullen, I disconnected, collected Marlowe from Tanner, gave him a brief rundown on where I was on the obituary--embellishing only a little to give him the impression I was almost done.

Then I headed home, with Marlowe sniffing me to find out what I'd been up to all day. I stroked his soft ears, and nearly burst into tears.

"I'm so far behind, I can see my own tail," I told the dog.

He didn't say anything, but poked me with his pointy nose, prompting me to give him a treat from the console.

I pulled into my gravel drive and Marlowe bounced off my lap to leap into the yard and go pee on the neighbor's rosemary bush.

I whistled at him and after he finished, we walked across the front yard to Beckett and Jenks's house, fished the key from the potted plant and picked up the enormous box marked "Soiree" that I assumed held our Christmas costumes as Marlowe nosed around my neighbor's perfectly decorated Christmas tree.

Oh well. At least I could mark two things off my list-- _Pick Up Costumes_ and _Identify John Doe._

Although there was something about John Doe, _Ben Rayburn_ , that was bugging me. Something about the security recording...

Despite the fact that he'd been in prison and that I'd seen video evidence of his drug possession. But I'd also seen evidence of his kindness and bravery. And his sense of humor--I wish I'd met the man who'd told a frightened convenience store clerk his name was Calvin Hobbes.

Juggling the big box back over to my house, and with Marlowe prancing around my bare legs, I fumbled my key in the knob.

Inside, I flipped on the lights in my little Lake Austin bungalow to stave off the dismal dark sky, and zapped on the television to stave off my dismal dark mood.

I flicked on the twinkle-lights on my spindly little Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and dumped the big box beneath the rangy lower limbs and noticed that the cat had already begun her holiday "No Ornament Left Behind" attack on the bottom of the tree.

I'd left _It's a Wonderful Life_ in the player, and it flickered on just as Jimmy Stewart was yelling at his family.

I shook my head. For more than half the movie, it should have been called _It's a Sucky Life._

From the kitchen, I heard Marlowe drinking noisily from his water bowl, and I thought about Ben Rayburn, and wondered who would be missing him tonight. Sighing, I dropped to my knees to I re-string the lights on the lower half of the tree. "Muse?" I yelled at the cat who was probably hiding in bedroom closet. "This tree is off limits!"

As I replaced the string of lights, I took a whiff to make sure she hadn't performed her ceremonial pee on it.

Satisfied she hadn't vandalized the tree past playing with the ornaments, I grabbed the big stack of half-finished Christmas cards and chunked them on the floor in front of the tree and pulled out my new iPad, courtesy of Aunt Kat, to find my address book. If I could get the envelopes addressed and in the mail tonight, they'd at least be postmarked by Christmas Eve.

I plopped down in the middle of the pile and booted up the tablet to get the addresses. I checked my email and saw one from my office account. I frowned, and remembered that when I'd downloaded the security video to my phone, I'd also sent myself a copy through email.

_Something about that video..._

Beside me, my purse erupted with _The Spy Who Loved Me_ , and my heart leaped. Then sank. Logan. Probably calling to tell me he was getting called away. Again.

I grabbed the phone, flicked it on and said, "Don't tell me you're not coming," I said, the fingers that weren't holding the phone crossed.

"I'm going to be a little late," he said.

I waited.

"A bank robbery. Federal jurisdiction."

I almost broke into tears, and my throat was so tight I couldn't speak.

"You there?" he said, and I said, "Sort of," but when I said it, I couldn't keep the coming tears out of my voice.

"Hey," he said. "I won't be long. The Agent in Charge asked me to come look at a legal issue--maybe two hours tops.

I was sad and mad and about to really lose it, and I hiccupped on an escaped sob.

"Hey," he said. "This bank-thing is pretty much already wrapped up," he said, his deep voice soft and soothing. "It was an inside job--I'm just going to go talk to the teller."

I sniffled and blinked, then frowned. "An inside job?"

"Yeah," he said. "The agent onscene thinks the teller was in on it. It happens a lot."

I blinked again, then my eyes went wide and all the blood in my body rushed to my head. " _An inside job..._ "

"Yes. An inside job. Are you okay?" he said, and I said, "Logan, I could kiss you!"

"O-o-okay," he said but I cut him off. "I gotta go," I said. "I'll see you in a little while--I gotta check on something too."

I hung up and switched the phone to video mode, accessed the Ethan's file and pulled up the security video and found the source of that vague sense of unease that kept bumping the back of my brain.

I ran it back through, focusing on Avril's face and saw it--the thing that kept bumping my brain. I hadn't seen it before because I wasn't watching the clerk. I was focused on the shooter.

I zoomed into macro and watched the video closely as Avril screamed at the shooter--both of her front teeth were intact and there were no marks on her face. And I saw something else I had missed ... there was something about the way she held herself.

Recognition.

She _knew_ the guy ...

Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed my purse, which got Marlowe's attention.

"Come on, buddy," I told the dog. "We gotta go see about something. Logan may not be the only one around here dealing with an inside job..."

## Chapter

# Seventeen

It was getting darker and colder as the weak watery sun began to sink over the Hill Country. My stomach twisted worse than the steep, winding turns of Ranch Road 2222 as I lit out for Avril Rodriguez's last known whereabouts. I knew I shouldn't go alone, but Logan was busy, not to mention the fact that he was supposed to be dead, and I didn't want to bother him. I'd called Cantu and got sent straight to voicemail, so I called Dan Soliz and I heard myself babbling as I tried to tell him what I thought was going on--that Avril may not only have _seen_ the shooter. She may have known him.

"Cauley, slow down," Soliz said over the phone. "And whatever you're thinking about doing, don't. I've got officers on her, and I'll head that direction."

"Right," I said, accelerating past the Moon Light Tower decked out in more than three thousand twinkling lights, looking like a glowing Monet in the wet darkness. I sped down the slick street, zooming past the Zilker Park speed trap on Barton Springs Road, the heading toward downtown. I'd risk the ticket--if a cop wanted to nail me for speeding, he could just follow me to Avril, and maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to hand out more than just a ticket. If I was right, he might just get credit for nailing a double-murderer.

I thought about Avril Rodriguez sitting at the kitchen table at her aunt's house with her chipped tooth and her split lip. And the way she'd kept fiddling with the collar of her shirt, and glancing at Isabel Santos. Her aunt...

I could've kicked myself. I thought about my friend Faith Puckett, the lovely little songbird who'd been horribly abused for most of her life. Because of Faith, I'd had a little experience in domestic abuse and now I'd missed the signs--the cowed behavior. The furtive glances at her aunt. The long sleeves, the covered neck.

_The chipped tooth and fat lip_.

I fished my phone out of my purse and dialed her cell.

"Avril?" I said, dodging a slowpoke in the fast lane. "It's me, Cauley. Cauley MacKinnon?"

_Think, Cauley. Don't scare her. You can't just blurt this out --how do I get her to see me_?

"Is your aunt there?" I said, and after a brief hesitation, she said, "Isabel is not my aunt. She... she's my baby-daddy's ..."

Her voice trailed off, as though she was looking over her shoulder.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to keep the Jeep in my own lane as I slid toward Lamar Boulevard. "I need to show you something important," I said. "I'm less than ten minutes from the house."

Another pause, and I forced my voice to be steady and firm, tamping down the hysteria that was mounting in my gut. I gritted my teeth and said in my most calm, reassuring voice, "Ms. Rodriguez... _Avril_. It's a matter of life and death."

More hesitation, then she whispered, "I'll meet you at the gate."

"Hang on, doggie," I said to Marlowe and stomped on the gas.

We swung onto East Eleventh and I threw my arm over the passenger seat to protect Marlowe as we went into a slide, but he was already digging his doggie claws into what was left of my passenger side upholstery.

As we skidded into the driveway, Avril was waddling out to the gate, leading with her swollen belly, and glancing nervously over her shoulder. I jarred to a stop, arm around Marlowe, who'd stiffened his forelegs to prevent impact with the dash. Before we came to a full and complete and halt, he vaulted off my lap and out the driver's side door, racing into the gate just as the girl opened it.

"You can't be here," she hissed when, heaving in breaths, I raced after the dog, up to girl.

"Avril," I gasped, holding the stitch in my side. "This is very important. Are you okay? Is somebody hurting you?"

In the Christmas lights shining along the walls of the gate, I could see tears streaming down her cheeks. "N-no... nobody was supposed to get hurt," she said on a sob.

I nodded encouragingly, and was about to dig my recorder out my purse when the door banged open behind us.

Silhouetted with the warm yellow indoor light from inside the house, Isabel's slender body cast a long, pointy shadow from the light in the doorway.

"Avril?" she shrilled. "What are you doing? Who are you talking to?"

Avril swallowed audibly, her eyes wide. She shook her head, took a stumbling step back. I reached out and steadied her on the wet front walk, and yelled over her shoulder, "It's just me, Cauley, from earlier?" I said, tucking Avril under my arm as Marlowe shifted from paw to paw, the fur on his neck bristling. "It's just, I forgot something!"

"I must go," Avril said, but as she spoke, she slid the collar of her sweater to the left, revealing an ugly bruise that stretched from her collar bone to her neck.

"We have said all we have to say," the older woman yelled, making her way out onto the front porch, and I whispered to Avril, "Go. Get in my Jeep--the keys are in the ignition. The police are on their way."

"I can't," she whispered, glancing nervously at the dog.

"You can," I said, and I bent toward Marlowe, who stood, bristling beside me, leaning into my thigh, and said, "Marlowe, seek!" and pointed at the house.

The dog took off in a silver streak, ears flat, fluffy white tail straight as he raced toward the house in his trademark _Search Mode_. Isabel's body was blocking the door, and Marlowe bolted right over her, knocking her head over high heels into the soggy rose bushes.

"Run!" I yelled at Avril, and when she didn't move, I grabbed her by the elbow, and I shouted back over my shoulder, "Marlowe! Truck!"

In my peripheral vision, I saw the dog do a 180 in midair and headed straight back for the Jeep.

Marlowe beat us to the car, and I stuffed Avril in right after him. I jumped in, pumped the gas and hit the ignition. It started first try, and I said a small prayer of thanks.

Maybe Daddy was right about Christmas being a time of miracles after all.

I glanced into the rear view mirror and my heart slammed into my ribcage when I saw a bald man bolt from inside the house. He shoved Isabel, who'd just managed to get back on her feet. He was pointing a snub nosed pistol.

_The shooter_.

I hit the gas, hard. Marlowe was wedged between the console and the sliver that remained of Avril's lap, and I reached behind them, shoving them both behind the dash and yelled, "Get down!" just as the _crack-clang_! sounds of gunfire pinged off my back fender.

Heart pounding, palms sweating against my death grip on the cold steering wheel, I yanked the wheel and skidded around the corner out of the driveway.

Through the windshield, I saw the welcome sight of red and blue lights streaked across the street as one of Soliz's uniforms u-turned on Eleventh, another pulling past us, toward the source of the shots.

I slowed and pulled to the side of the road as the officer flashed his headlights behind me to stop.

My breath was coming in heaves and my heart was pounding so hard I was sure it was visible through my sweater.

The officer was slow to get out of his vehicle, and when he did, I saw in the pool of red and blue flashing lights that he had his weapon out and was speaking into the radio attached to his epaulette, his duty flashlight trained on me from behind his driver's side door. He nodded, said something into his radio and moved forward.

"Cauley?" he said, and while I couldn't see his face, I recognized the voice. Dallas Shepard. One of Cantu's guys.

And I whispered another small prayer of thanks.

## Chapter

# Eighteen

I was dragging ass by the time I got home--physically, mentally and emotionally. The adrenaline that'd rushed through my veins seemed to drain as quickly as it had come. My head was pounding and I felt like I was going to be sick.

And Mama's Christmas extravaganza wasn't going to slow down, let alone stop, just because I'd escorted a young, abused, very pregnant woman to the downtown cop shop--she'd flipped out when I tried to transfer her to Shepard's care, so he agreed to follow us to the station.

At home, I'd splashed cold water on my face, popped a pair of aspirins and was seriously considering stronger medicinal ministrations of the bourbon-kind when Mama called. I would have crossed my eyes, but my head already hurt bad enough, so I let it go to voicemail. The dead last thing I wanted to do was explain to my mother why I was running late. And to hear her tell me my life was going down the toilet. Again.

I filled Marlowe's bowl of water and gave him a doggie snack, made myself a big glass of iced tea and trudged back into the living room, where the unaddressed Christmas cards mocked me from their scattering on the floor in front of the tree.

There was no way to get through this mess. I was going to have to let my brain go to autopilot.

Muse stalked her whiny calico butt in from the bedroom, bitching her little cat blues and made a big deal over rubbing her face against Marlowe. The dog took the uncharacteristic affection stoically.

_Good grief the dog reminded me of Logan_.

I took a long, deep breath as Muse rose on her back paws and rubbed up against my knee, turned three circles, then made a nest among my un-mailed Christmas. I dropped down beside her.

"Give me that," I said as she sharpened her claws on one of the cards. I pulled the card out from beneath her fluffy butt and nearly burst into tears.

It was the card I'd made out for Logan.

I missed Logan. I always missed him, but somehow, having him so close to home and not actually _at_ home made it worse. And he was leaving. And he wasn't even gone yet.

"Oh, cat," I said, and Muse crawled into my lap, purring until she slobbered. Marlowe took his reprieve to get a fresh drink from his bowl in the kitchen.

The message light pinged on my iPad, and I opened the message and found three photo attachments from Ethan--one of Ben Rayburn's original tattoo--the shield with the Texas Syndicate sword and snake, and two shots of layers he'd isolated from the original.

I hit the zoom and looked more closely. "It's not a shield," I said to Muse. "It's an arrowhead. With three lightning bolts."

I squinted, and realized there was some kind of mathematical something... an equation? _30.32-97.72_ ...

I stared at the lightning bolts, and realization struck.

The Colonel's friend and old military buddy Lane Butler had a tattoo like that.

My breath caught and my fingers flew over the touch screen in a Google search for military tattoos with three lightning bolts. And there it was.

"Army Airborne," I whispered to the cat, looking at my screen.

Ben Rayburn had been Army Special Forces.

Did that mean he wasn't a drug dealer? No.

But it did make it a whole lot less likely.

I Googled Ben, Benjamin and Bennie Rayburn + US Army and got the generic Facebook stuff, some fanfic about fairies and vampires, one about superheroes and about 13,000 sites for some truly disturbing porn.

I ruled out the porn and the fairies and the vampires, although, I was still pretty sure the superhero-thing wasn't that far off the mark.

Undaunted and with a fresh streak of excitement, I tapped into the Sentinel's search engine, did the same combinations and came up with one very likely subject: _Captain Benjamin Eldon Rayburn_. His last known address was at Camp Fallujah, one of the forward Army bases in Iraq.

Marlowe alerted, and then a _knock_ sounded at the front door and Muse took off like a shot.

The door swung open, and there was Logan.

Marlowe went flying across the room like he hadn't seen Logan in three weeks, let alone three hours, slipping and sliding on my unaddressed holiday cards.

"I thought we were locking the door these days," Logan said, grinning as the dog whipped into a full-blown frenzy, leaping and capering between me and Logan.

Logan stood in the doorway, and my breath caught.

He was tall and dark, and the winter wind whipped at him from behind.

And the sight of him took my breath away, and whatever false calm that had held my world together suddenly burst, like the small snowflake that starts the blizzard.

To my horror, I burst into tears.

I sat there, in the middle of the envelopes, holding the card I'd intended to give Logan, and the tears came.

"Hey," he said, closing and locking the door behind him. "What's the matter?"

"Ben Rayburn," I blurted out and couldn't stop and everything came out in a rush. "John Doe. That's his name. Ben Rayburn. And I think he was an Army veteran, and oh! Avril," I couldn't stop, and I knew I wasn't making any sense, but I kept going, "The clerk who witnessed the shooting? You were right--what you said about the bank job. It was the same. It was an inside job."

"Okay, okay," he said, sinking to his knees so he could put his arms around me. "You found his name. That's great. So why the tears?"

I sniffled against his broad, warm chest and shivered.

"It was her. The clerk at the convenience store--just like your bank robbery. Her boyfriend. The father of her baby," I snuffled, still talking but crying real tears now. "I know I'm not making any sense..."

"It's okay," he chuckled stroking my hair and lower, down my back with his large, warm palms. "I speak Cauley."

I choked on a laugh and let loose with an honest-to-God crying jag.

"I'm sorry. It's just... everything. He, Ben, he was arrested for dealing drugs, he just got out of prison, and look," I turned in Logan's embrace and scooped up the iPad screen so he could see it. "That tattoo? I knew I'd seen it before. One of the Colonel's friends has one just like it."

"Special Forces," Logan said, reading the text on the screen, still stroking my back.

I swallowed hard. "I had a gut feeling he wasn't a drug dealer..." I snuffled, and Marlowe leaned in to lick a tear where it'd fallen to my chin.

"You know," Logan said, "he may have been Special Forces, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a drug dealer."

"I know. And I saw the drugs the shooter took from Rayburn's pocket on the security video. But I just don't think he was a drug dealer."

Logan tipped my chin and looked into my eyes. "Where's Cantu?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I called but it went straight to voicemail. I gave a preliminary statement with Sergeant Dan Soliz in the gang unit. He said he'd handle the girl, and he said I could come down and give my full statement tomorrow."

Logan nodded. "You've got good friends," he said, which prompted more tears on my part.

_I do have good friends_ ...

I sniffled against his chest and then looked up into those dark, kind eyes. "It's just, I can't believe he's a drug dealer."

Logan nodded, still patting my back. "Follow your gut," he said. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I blinked and sniffled. "A literate Fed."

"Don't spread it around," he said, and moved his arm from over my mine so he could stroke his thumb over a tear from my cheek. "So what's wrong?"

"I don't know, it's just--everything," I said, and to my horror, the tears kept coming. "I just feel like such a Grinch. Yes, I found the name of the Dead Guy and that was the first thing on my list. And I found the shooter." I sniffled. "But I haven't accomplished a single other thing."

I waved my arms around at the big mess I'd made of Christmas and saw that Muse had removed the lower half of the decorations on the tree. Again.

"My Christmas cards aren't done, I'm not dressed, you're leaving," I wailed uncontrollably, looking around at the chaos. "... and I smell like a dead body."

He hugged his large arms more tightly around me and he felt strong and solid and sure. "That's in your head."

I sniffled. "What. You think I'm going crazy?"

"Olfactory hallucination," he said. "It'll go away after a little while. You do smell like Vicks, though."

Then, like he'd just noticed it, he looked around at the mess on the floor and said, "What's all this?"

I used my forearm to wipe my face. "My Christmas cards," I choked out. "I hoped to get them in the mail tonight so they'd be postmarked by Christmas Eve--"

Logan picked up one of the cards. "You've got the names on them."

I nodded, still sniffling. "They're not addressed, though."

He rose from the floor, went to the laundry room and came back with a wicker basket and began scooping up the cards.

"What are you doing?" I said through a snuffle.

He looked up from the cards he was gathering. "Aren't most of these people going to be at the party tonight?"

I blinked. Then I nodded.

"Go," he said, and kissed me on top of my head. "Get ready. We've got a party to get to."

## Chapter

# Nineteen

"Wow," Logan said as he pointed his big Dodge truck down the hair-pin bend in Hamilton Pool Road.

I started to ask him, _wow, what_? But then I saw his "wow."

My mother's three-million megawatt Christmas Spectacular unfolded on the horizon.

Coming over the hill, even I was thunderstruck--and I'd seen versions of this vista all my life.

I pictured it through Logan's eyes. It was like an MGM, Technicolor Christmas extravaganza exploded on a quarter acre of my mother's front yard.

"Well. I told you so," I said as the Lone Star-sized light show blinked in two-step time to holiday Texas music. "Mama takes Christmas very seriously."

In front of the wide front porch of the rambling white Victorian, an illuminated Mrs. Santa sat like a tipsy floozy on the porch swing, while Santa and his sled clambered about on the front lawn, pulled by a team of glittering, glowing orange longhorns.

"How many lights are there?" he said, unable to take his eyes off the house, which looked like it'd been hosed down with holiday cheer.

"Last year there were more than 50,000, but the longhorns are new this year."

Logan shook his head. "How long does something like this take?"

I shrugged. "The Colonel starts untangling cords the day after Halloween."

Logan looked over at me, and I had a feeling he was sizing me up, looking to see how far the chestnut had fallen from the tree.

"Am I going to meet the famous romance-writing Aunt Kat?" he asked.

I shook my head. "She's touring Ireland with Nana MacKinnon," I said. "Aunt Kat's working on her new romance series-- _The Rogues of Regent Street_."

"Too bad," he said. "I was looking forward to meeting her."

"Right," I scoffed. "Like my mother isn't enough?"

"I like your mother," he said. "She's cute."

I shook my head. "My mother is a lot of things, but cute is not one of them."

On the console between us, Marlowe was shifting from paw to paw, warbling his excitement--probably had visions of Mama's holiday ham sandwiches dancing in his head.

Logan pulled the truck past the twinkle-lighted, wrap-around front porch to the back of the house.

He got out and walked around the hood of his truck and opened the door for me. Marlowe leapt straight from my lap to the back porch, knocking over a dancing elf as he nosed open the screen door, screaming like the he was being chased by the Ghost of Christmas Future.

The sound of jangling sleigh bells reverberated across the lawn the moment Marlowe hit the door.

Logan raised a brow.

"Mama has The Colonel rig the door to jingle all through the house."

Logan smiled and shook his head as he reached for me.

"I'm wearing jeans," I said. "I can get down."

"I know," he said, scooping me out of the pickup anyway. "Why miss an opportunity?"

Heat flooded my cheeks as he set me down on the crunchy, brown December grass, and I went to my tiptoes and kissed him, then realized Clairee was at the door.

"Yoo hoo!" she caroled from the porch. "Come on in here you lovebirds--did you bring the pomegranates?"

"Yes ma'am. And your nutmeg nuts," Logan said while I grabbed my purse and went for the grocery bags.

"I got it," he said, piling them on top of the box of costumes, unaddressed Christmas cards and the presents he'd helped me hastily get wrapped at my house.

I trailed along behind him, bracing myself for the holiday drama that was about to explode all over us.

Clairee was wearing an apron imprinted with a Marilyn Monroe-style _Diamond's are a Girl's Best Friend_ hot pink dress. She held a pink martini in her left hand and the door with her right, and as Logan reached the threshold, she pointed up.

"Mistletoe," she sang out, and plopped a big wet kiss on Logan, right on the mouth.

"Hey," I said in a mock jealous tone and then she laughed and laid a big mouth kiss on me, too.

"Here," she said, and wrapped a red boa around my shoulders. "Your mama's in the kitchen."

Like she'd be anywhere else three hours before the Soiree.

"Let me get those," the Colonel said, taking the boxes from Logan. I smiled at his "Commander in Beef" barbecue apron. Mama had struck again.

"Good to see you, Agent Logan. I see Cauley's got you running errands."

Colonel Stephen McClain put the boxes on a chair in the corner of the mudroom and Clairee started rummaging through the grocery bags as she crooned a naughty version of _Walking through a Winter Wonderland_.

"What's a holiday without a few errands?" Logan said, as he and the Colonel exchanged a handshake like they were old friends that melted my heart into puddle on the mudroom floor.

Already the house hummed with activity--the sounds of Christmas music and happy chatter sent me tumbling back in time, and I suddenly felt a little less Grinchy.

Logan followed me into the kitchen, where the scents of cinnamon, sugar cookies and generations of Christmas sent my stomach rumbling.

"Agent _Logan_!" Mama exclaimed as she sashayed over to give him a kiss right smack on his lips. She was brandishing a wooden spoon and wearing an apron with a Grace Kelly-style strapless dress on the front, complete with pearls.

"Get out your Chapstick," I warned Logan. "Holidays in the MacKinnon household. Mistletoe is implied."

## Chapter

# Twenty

Mama leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and stopped short. "Good gawd, Cauley! You smell like Vap-o-Rub!"

Tossing the spoon in the sink, she pressed her manicured fingers to my forehead. "Are you ill? I knew it! You've come down with the Bubonic Plague! We need more Vap-o-Rub. Clairee!" she yelled, right in my ear. "Get me the Vap-o-Rub!"

"I'm not sick," I said. "I was at the morgue earlier and Dr. Marshall gave me some Vicks to stop the smell."

"Is this that dead person Mia told me about?" Mama said. "The young man who interrupted the convenience store robbery?"

"Yes," I said.

Mama rolled her eyes heavenward. "No wonder you've been so depressed. I don't know why you can't have a normal job like your sister, Suzanne."

"She doesn't have a job," I said.

"She's a senator's wife," Mama said. "And she has three children. That's plenty job enough."

I supposed that was true. Suzanne's husband Roger was trotting his little family like show ponies to all the Houston holiday fundraisers.

Mama reached across the counter and produced an apron with a replica of Ingrid Bergman's scoop-necked gown from _Notorious_.

"Where did you get these?" I said to Mama.

Logan grinned as he watched me wrestle my arms into the thing.

"Here," he said stepped behind me and helped me tie the back.

"Beckett made them," Mama said. "Aren't they just _darlin'_? Now, take this and make yourself useful." She handed me a wooden spoon after swatting my behind with it. She pointed at old, raggedy cookbook that lay open next to a big bowl of cookie dough.

"What is that? A photo album?" Logan said as I leafed through the pages, careful not to disturb the pictures, scraps of paper and pressed flowers tucked into the book.

"The MacKinnon Family Cookbook," I said, smiling at one of the pictures from last Christmas.

"Looks like a scrapbook," he said and I nodded.

"It kind of is," I told him, lifting the cookbook carefully and breathing deeply of the pages, smiling at the scent. "It smells like Christmas. Mama never made it past canapés at Miss Mona's School for Fine Young Ladies, but the woman can bake like she'd been possessed by Betty Crocker."

Clairee was spooning Parmesan on her famous Bacony-Cheesy Pencil Dicks, and I wandered over and snitched some bacon.

She smacked my hand with her spoon, then turned on Logan.

"The Colonel is in the War Room setting up the bar," Clairee said to Logan. "Why don't you go help him?"

I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his cheek and said, "They want to talk about you behind your back, which is kind of difficult when you're standing right here."

I handed him a piece of bacon.

Logan raised his eyebrows. "War Room?"

"All the weaponry he confiscated during tours of duty overseas," I explained. "It's actually pretty cool. Ask him about the headhunter's ax."

Chuckling like a good little soldier, Logan turned and headed to join the Colonel, and I went back to the cookbook, flipping pages as Clairee handed me a martini.

Marlowe lay under the table, ever alert for wayward crumbs of cookie dough or escaped bits of bacon.

I shook my head. "I haven't eaten," I said to Mama's best friend and main cohort in crime.

"Oh, piff," Clairee said. "Don't be silly. There's fruit in there."

## Chapter

# TwentyOne

I shrugged and accepted the pink concoction and turned to the recipe for Bourbon Pecan Pie. If I was going to have to wear a costume and sing in front of Logan, I was going to need all the confidence, liquid or otherwise, I could swallow.

"Now, where's that nutmeg," Clairee said, and got started on a big batch of Mama's egg nog.

"I can't believe you sent Logan all over hell's half acre running your errands," Mama said.

"Actually, they weren't my errands. They were _your_ errands," I said, "and he offered."

Clairee said, "That's all right, Cauley darlin." God invented men to step and fetch. And just remember, men are like tile--lay 'em right the first time and you can walk on them for life."

Ignoring Clairee, Mama continued to roll out her cookie dough and said, "What are you giving Logan for Christmas?"

I choked a little and my eyes watered. No way I was going to tell her what I'd _really_ intended on giving him...

I cleared my throat and shrugged/ "I got him this really great coffee mug."

Mama stopped mid-roll. "You're giving him a _coffee mug_?" she said, like I'd just told her I was giving him a pair of old gym socks.

"It's got the Bill of Rights on it," I said defensively. "When you put coffee in it, the Civil Liberties disappear."

"Ach! That's not very nice," Mama said.

"Trust me. He'll think it's funny."

What I didn't tell her was the _real_ thing I was going to give him was going to have to wait. He was leaving, after all.

"Well," Mama huffed. "What did you put in the cup?"

I shrugged, cutting shortening into the flour for pie crust. "Nothing. And I didn't have time to wrap it."

Mama's hand flew to her heart. "You can't give someone a piece of cookware with nothing in it!"

"It's a coffee cup. Not cookware," I countered.

"Same thing," she said on an elegant snort. "What? Do you want people to think you were raised by wild animals?"

"You mean I wasn't?" I said, but Mama was already directing Clairee to raid my Christmas stocking for chocolate kisses to fill the offending empty mug.

Mama was tutting about where she'd gone wrong when I moved in beside her and turned the ball of pie crust dough out onto the large, ancient, wooden cutting board.

I thought about Logan and the Colonel in the War Room--about all of the artifacts the Colonel had acquired, and how much I used to love to hear the stories.

As I'd grown older, I came to realize that each artifact came at a price--he'd confiscated the big AK-47 from an Afghani drug lord and the headhunter's ax he'd appropriated in Morocco after local insurgents tried to storm the base accusing him of several serious crimes.

"Was the Colonel really charged with murder, wife stealing and horse thieving before you met him?" I asked as she worked the cookie dough, her delicate fingers dusted with sugar.

"Don't be silly," Mama said. "The Colonel never stole a horse."

I started to laugh, then realized she wasn't kidding, and I remembered all the evenings Mama kept his place at the table set and the porch light on, knowing in her heart he'd be back.

Working beside her, I pressed the pie dough into a circle. "Logan's leaving tonight," I said, and my voice caught in my throat.

"Yes," Mama said, continuing to roll the sugar cookies into submission. "But he'll be back."

"And then he'll leave again," I said, and to my horror, a tear trickled down my cheek.

Mama turned from her sugar cookies and really looked at me then.

"Here now," Mama said in her magnolia-mouthed voice. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned and lifted my chin. "Yes, he'll leave again, but he'll always be back. And you're about to mess up your makeup!"

I looked into her eyes, and they were so clear and blue I thought I might find the words to the questions I'd been wanting to ask her.

"I just--" I started, not knowing what to say or how to say it. "How did you do it all these years, with Daddy being a police detective, and then the Colonel, even now, when he's consulting, and it's even more dangerous? Knowing that he's leaving, not knowing when he'll be back home, or even if he'll make it back home at all?"

Mama went back to her cookies and after a long moment, she said, "Remember when the Colonel and I went up to Montana?"

I nodded as she continued to work the dough. "There was a group of separatists threatening a siege on Elk Ridge City Hall."

I dropped my pie crust. "I thought you were on some kind of weird anniversary vacation."

Mama let out another elegant snort. I watched her. I had to figure out how the woman could snort and still sound like a Southern Belle.

"The Colonel was asked to go advise on a Homeland Security thing," she said. "They were expecting a rally of about fifty people."

I stopped messing with the pie crust and listened as she spoke.

"The rally started to turn violent--right there in front of the courthouse," she said, incensed at the disrespect. "And Stephen just marched right up those courthouse steps, and stood, staring out over the crowd."

She shook her head. "Fistfights had started breaking out, and the local police had just started lobbing tear gas. They had their riot shields up and were advancing on the crowd and your stepfather..."

She stopped fussing with the cookies, and she was looking out into space, as though she could see the scene unfolding, right there in the kitchen.

"What happened?" I said, breathless.

She turned to me and said, "He started belting out _God Bless America_."

I blinked at her. "And?"

"The crowd went quiet," Mama said. "He didn't even need to go into the second verse."

"What, and they went home?"

"Eventually," Mama said. "But the thing is, he diffused the situation. After that, nobody was throwing punches or lobbing tear gas."

"You were there?"

Mama chuckled. "I was at the hotel that looked out over the Town Square. The state authorities misrepresented the danger, and it was our anniversary, after all. I insisted on tagging along. Saw the whole thing from the balcony of my hotel room."

"And the Colonel just took you with him?" I said.

"Well, the local authorities weren't upfront about what was really going on," Mama said.

"Weren't you afraid for him?" I said.

"Terrified," she said.

I shook my head. "What if it had backfired?

"I asked him that, later, after everything had cooled down and we went out for dinner" she said, going back to her dough. "He said he had already identified their leader, and he would have cold-cocked him, right there in front of his followers."

"And that would have helped, how?"

"The Colonel knows what he's doing." She shrugged. "Cut off the head and it has a pretty big impact on the rest of the snake."

I stood there, speechless.

"Here's the thing, Cauley Kat. Your stepfather is a very smart man. And so is your Agent Logan. They're not going to put themselves, let alone the women they love, in any kind of situation they can't handle."

My throat went tight and I stifled a sob. For Mama, for the Colonel, and for Logan.

Mama wiped her hands, then put her arms around me and petted my hair. She smelled like sugar cookies and pomegranates and hope and miracles.

"Oh now," she clucked, running a sugary thumb over my cheek. "Your makeup's a mess!"

Then she pulled back a little and brushed a stray strand of my hair from my eyes. "Yes, they leave. And yes it's dangerous. But I know I have always slept better at night knowing the Colonel is out there making the world a safer place. For me. For you, for all of us, really."

I thought about my John Doe, Ben Rayburn, being shot trying to protect the clerk who'd been in on the robbery, about the Colonel and his War Room, about Logan leaving later in the dead of night. I shook my head. "I don't know if I can do this, Mama--I don't know if I can go there," I said.

"Darlin' girl," she smiled at me kindly, but with a bit of shared pity. "That's already a done deal. You've been _there_ since the day you met your agent Tom Logan."

I shook my head. "And now he's leaving tonight," I said. "I was kind of hoping for a miracle."

"Number Four on your list?"

I blinked. "You peeked at my list?"

"Of course I peeked at your list." Mama kissed my cheek. "Anyway--it's still early. You've got time." She reached for a Kleenex. "Here now, you're ruinin' your makeup. Go. Make yourself presentable. You've got some serious list-fixin' to do if you want to accomplish Number Four of that list," she said. And then she turned and went back to her cookies.

## Chapter

# TwentyTwo

Logan had helped the Colonel set up tables in the formal dining room and scattered them around the baby grand piano so that the area was transformed into a small cabaret complete with a cozy little dance floor.

The welcoming sleigh bells rang at the door and Faith Puckett and Ethan Singer arrived, coats on their arms, and the sight of Faith took my breath away.

Her dark, patchy hair was growing back, her dark eyes clear and sparkling, and she wore a simple white gown with feathered wings and a tilted halo. Ethan wore a black tee shirt that read "Xmas = 3 x Ho."

"Faith, my _ba-a-aby_!" Mama sang as she planted a big kiss on the girl's rosy cheek. "It's so good to see you--I hope you came prepared! We're dy-y-yin' to hear you sing!"

Faith blushed and ducked her head, and Ethan said, "Hey, what am I, leftover ham?"

Mama kissed him, too. "Well come on in, get some food--the Colonel's grilled the Free World supply of jalapeño poppers!"

Marlowe rounded the corner to greet them, and Mama said, "Here, you darlin' dog, get out from underfoot," and handed the dog a ham bone, which he promptly accepted gently. Marlowe turned, hambone in mouth, and went to go get bone juice on the parlor room carpet.

Logan took Faith and Ethan's coats, and they accepted a small plate of Mama's hors d'oeuvres and glasses of egg nog, and wandered after Marlowe into the parlor.

Then Mama wiped her hands and shucked off her apron.

She turned to me. "Go get Mia," Mama said. "Time to get dressed!"

Clairee turned to Logan. "Will you be a darlin' and bring that box to the bedroom?"

Logan raised a brow at me.

"Just go with it," I said. "Resistance is futile."

"Who's resisting?" he said. "And costumes? This I gotta see."

In Mama's bedroom, she and Clairee were fussing with their sexy Mrs. Claus outfits. I grinned, not being able to help it.

Southern women seem to age into separate genus: the sweet little old Baptist ladies who outlive their husbands, pay their own bills, eat macaroni and cheese when the money gets tight and always keep a dresser drawer clear just in case one of the progeny, or their progeny's progeny, need a place to stay.

Then there are the wilting, pale magnolias. The Blanche DuBois types who were born to be coddled, cared for and chauffeured around, and are at a total loss as to why people aren't lining up in droves to do so.

And there are the Ann Richards-Molly Ivins variety, the last of the big-haired, big-shouldered broads, who can give and take a lickin' better than any big talkin', boot-wearin' Texas boy who has the bad sense to cross them.

Then there are the women like Mama and Clairee, the mercurial, gently aging beauty queens who could arguably fit rather nicely into all of those categories, so much so that they get a category all their own.

As Mama and Clairee slid silk stockings up beneath their short, red, faux-fur lined skirts, I wondered if I would be like them one day.

Mama turned to me. "Well, don't just stand there, zip me!"

"Yes, Mama," I said, and smiling, did just as she ordered.

"Now," she said, pulling my costume from the bottom of the box. "Isn't this just lo-o-ovely!"

It was lovely.

If you called dressing like a sparkly, slutty elf _lovely_.

I looked over at Mia, who was attaching a cute little cotton-stuffed bobtail to her butt.

"Hey!" I protested. "Why does Mia get to be a reindeer?"

"Because she actually showed up for rehearsals," Mama said.

I groaned and then shrugged. "Why go to rehearsals? The choreography's the same every year, grapevine, grapevine, step-ball-change, kick."

"The costumes and songs are different," Mama huffed, tossing me a pair of green and red cheerleading panties with two reindeer white hoof prints on the behind.

"Nice," I said. "I got kicked in the rear end by a reindeer?"

Mia took a sip of eggnog and whinnied like a horse.

"I don't think reindeer whinny," I said, and Mia shot me a snarky look over her shoulder and pranced toward the full-size mirror.

I sighed while I got dressed, and visions of beauty pageants past flashed before my eyes, with Mama standing offstage saying, " _Smile, baby, smile_!"

"Hello-o-o ..." Logan called, knocking on the closed bedroom door. "Jenks said to tell you he's starting the show."

I growled, rolling up the sparkly, thigh high stockings.

"We're coming," I grumbled, partly at him, and partly at my mother.

"This is not a way to make Number Four on my list," I said to my mother.

She kissed my cheek and said, "A lot you know. Ready?"

I stood and made last minute adjustments, then called toward the door, "Avert your eyes!"

As the door swung open, I tugged my skirt down in a futile attempt to hide the reindeer paw-prints on my butt.

Logan shot me a wicked grin and said, "Yeah, right. Avert my eyes? That's gonna happen."

He'd put on a Santa hat at a rakish tilt, and he looked so damn sweet I wanted to march him right up the stairs and into my old bedroom-- _Number Four, here we come_ ...

Logan offered me his arm, a wicked grin playing at his lips.

"Well, I didn't know Santa was a letch," I said and he laughed.

"A lot of things you don't know about Santa," Logan said, and it was my turn to laugh.

In the parlor, Beckett and Jenks were doing a pretty good rendition of "Blue Christmas," Beckett was dressed as Young Elvis, while Jenks wailed away on the piano dressed in a Fat Elvis white, rhinestone jumpsuit.

Marlowe, ever the music lover, lay at Jenks' feet, tail swishing, gnawing on the ham bone Mama had given him.

Logan had set up a small card table by the fireplace for us, Mama, the Colonel, Mia and Paul Shiner the-News-Boy, who'd donned a Grinch hat.

The Colonel stood and nodded at Logan, who turned to me and said, "If you'll excuse me."

And then Logan joined the Colonel at the piano.

My mouth fell open.

"I thought Mama would let him off the hook since this is his first Soiree," I said to Mia, who scooched her chair closer to me.

"Hell-oo-o-o-o," Mia said. "How long have you known your mother?"

Jenks ran his fingers up the scales of the keyboard, then transitioned into a rousing rendition of _Good King Wenceslas_.

I sat, slack-jawed, as Logan and the Colonel boomed out the song about the benevolent king.

"Did you know he could sing?" Mia said and I shook my head.

"No," I said. "But I'm not sure why I'm surprised."

The two came back to the table and the Colonel said, "Let me freshen this up," taking Mama's martini.

"I'll help," I said, scooting my chair back while nabbing my phone from my bag.

In the kitchen, the Colonel pulled an ice bucket from the freezer, and I sidled in beside him.

"Can I talk to you a sec?" I said.

His sharp blue eyes narrowed.

And he put the ice back in the freezer.

## Chapter

# TwentyThree

"That was pretty great, you and Logan," I said and the Colonel smiled down at me and said. "Uh huh. What's up, Cauley Kat?"

"What? I was just saying y'all were really good."

His ice-blue eyes narrowed.

"Okay," I said. "I was wondering if you could take a look at something."

I clicked on my cell phone and scrolled to the picture of the Ben Rayburn's tattoo.

"This is like Lane's tattoo, right?" I asked and he put on his reading glasses to get a better look at the arrowhead with three lightning bolts, and the numerical equation at the bottom.

"Army Airborne," he said, nodding. "Where'd you get that?"

"The dead guy who busted up the convenience store robbery," I said. "His name is Ben Rayburn. His last known address was in Fallujah."

"An Iraqi vet," he said and I nodded. "Third Combat Brigade. Paratroopers called the Panthers.."

"Except, we ID'd him from prison records," I said.

The Colonel frowned. "A convict who busted up a convenience store robbery?"

"Yeah, I don't get it either," I said.

He looked more closely at the numbers inscribed inside the tattoo.

"You run the numbers?" he asked and I nodded.

"I can't figure them out and I've tried everything--telephone numbers, birthdates, Bible verses, addresses..."

"Not everything," The Colonel said. He took my phone and tapped the display. "Did you try GPS coordinates?"

"GPS?"

"Special Forces deploying behind enemy lines sometimes get tattoos that refer to their home base."

He pulled up Google and entered the numbers. I blinked as he showed me the address and description on the Google map.

My jaw nearly unhinged my jaw dropped so far down. "The headquarters for the Texas Rangers?" I gasped.

The Colonel slowly shook his head, but he said, "Probably. Be careful with this Cauley. By now the Rangers'll be circling their wagons, and if this guy was undercover, they aren't gonna take kindly to a reporter nosing around."

I bit my lip, thinking of Detective Clark. "I'm just doing my job. Besides. They're going to have their hands full with a certain police detective who's somehow involved in this mess."

The Colonel frowned. "You talk to Agent Logan about this?" he said.

I nodded. "And Cantu."

I swiped the face of the phone and called the detective and went straight to voice mail. Again.

He looked at me for a long moment and said, "I know you have a lot of friends on the force, but don't underestimate how cops react when one of their own is murdered. They'll hold the blue line."

For the first time since I'd starting trying to identify Ben Rayburn, a streak of fear skittered up my spine--not just about the Shooter who'd killed Ben Rayburn, but also because of the mysterious Detective Clark.

Here I was, about to try to weasel myself behind a very thick, very blue line--the Texas Rangers didn't get any bluer.

I swallowed. I was about to bang my head against a blue wall without a helmet. Again.

"What are y'all doin' in here--havin' a powwow?" Mama said, poking her platinum head into the kitchen. "Come on, Cauley. We're up next."

When it came to holiday festivities, Mama was like a friendly bulldozer. I didn't blame her. Her tinsel-trimmed Christmas did a lot to cover up the ugliness of a certain Christmas-past--when my daddy'd been murdered.

From the living room I heard Jenks roll into a jazzy Jingle Bell Rock, and my head still spinning at the thought that Ben Rayburn might just be a fallen Texas Ranger, I followed Mama back to the piano.

Woodenly, I lined up between Mama and Mia, and the sleigh bells Mama had rigged at the back door jangled, just as we linked arms.

Great. A packed house, and now there were a few more nuts for the party.

I was working my way into a lackluster kick-ball-change when Cantu stepped into the living room, his eyes tired, his face drawn.

My heart stopped when I saw that he was wearing his dress blues.

The piano Jenks was jamming on jarred to a halt, mid-stanza, and every face in the room turned toward Cantu.

"Are you all right, Detective?" Mama said, her voice halting as she unlinked my elbow, no doubt remembering the last time he'd entered our Christmas house in dress blues.

I unlinked myself from Mia and moved toward him.

Cantu motioned to me and Logan, and we followed him into the kitchen.

"Rayburn was UC on the Texas Rangers," he said when we joined him by the kitchen sink.

The tears in my throat were very real as I nodded. "His tattoo. The Colonel said it was probably GPS coordinates. I tried to call you..."

"Yeah," Cantu shook his head. "There's more. That was no robbery. It was a setup."

I frowned, not understanding. "Who would do that? Set him up, I mean," I said and my voice sounded small. Logan moved closer and put his arm around me.

Cantu nodded. "Syndicate. They've done this kind of thing before," he said. "Test the new guys to see if they're police. Set up a situation to see how they react. What better test?"

"To see if they're cops?"

"See if they'll bleed for the team."

"And Avril Rodriguez--is she okay?"

"Soliz's team took him down. She'll never have to worry about him again," he said, his face grim, his words carrying the hard finality.

I swallowed hard. When Cantu said they got him, it meant he _got_ him.

Mama had drifted into the kitchen, her pretty face was pale, her pulse visibly quickening at her throat.

"What's going to happen to her?" I faltered. "To the baby?"

"That's out of our hands, now," Cantu said. "You got anything to say on her behalf, you may want to speak to the assistant district attorney tomorrow."

I nodded but couldn't speak.

Cantu ran a hand over his face. "The Rangers are notifying his wife and children now."

Small lights flashed in front of my eyes as a Ghost from Christmas past stole all the oxygen from the room, and in that instant, I saw the very young Cantu giving my mother that same news. That daddy wouldn't be home--how she'd collapsed on the kitchen floor. How our lives were changed in that one, horrifying moment.

In that one, small blink of an eye.

Mama and the Colonel had been listening in the arched pass-through to the kitchen, Mama clutching her heart as her slight body sagged against her the strong, solid form of her husband.

I went to my mother, put out my hand.

She shook her head. Still dressed in her Mrs. Claus skirt, Mama regained her composure. She smoothed her hair, ran a hand over her flat stomach and stood silently in the archway, and for a moment, I wondered if her knees would buckle.

Then she cleared her throat and said, "Cauley, help get me out of this skirt."

She tipped her pretty platinum head up to the Colonel and said, "Stephen, get me a box. Clairee, you load up the food. We've got a family to feed."

And my heart swelled.

Some magnolias really are made of steel.

## Chapter

# TwentyFour

"You didn't want to go help out with the Charity League?" Logan said, driving me and Marlowe home.

I shook my head. I thought about my list, and how badly I'd wanted to cross off all my To Do items. But not like this.

"I've got phone calls to make an obituary to write, and I just want to go home," I said, feeling morose. And, something about Detective Clark was nagging at me... I had some research to do on that end, and I had a bad feeling about what I'd find.

I had wanted to know the identity of Ben Rayburn, and how it was that he came to thwart a robbery. And now that I knew, I felt sick and empty.

And about to be very alone.

Marlowe had forgone the truck's center console and had squeezed in next to me in the passenger seat, accepting my weight as I leaned into him.

"Are you okay?" Logan said.

The crying came full force then.

"It could have been you," I sobbed. "You could have been the one in the morgue this morning."

He reached over and patted my back and stroked my hair and he felt so strong and solid and true.

"But it wasn't me," he said. "And what about you? Since I've known you, you've been kidnapped, shot at and stabbed in the ass."

I laughed in the middle of a sob and choked.

_Dang, why couldn't I cry pretty_?

He pulled up the steep hill to Arroyo Trail and parked in my drive. With my seat belt still on, I opened the door and Marlowe leapt out to go pee on my neighbor's rosemary bush.

At Mama's, I'd changed back into jeans and Logan's old navy blue FBI sweatshirt he'd given me when Mama changed out of her Sexy Mrs. Santa suit. I turned to Logan, who was still wearing his Santa hat. I sighed.

"Before I forget, I got you a Christmas present," I said, and still sniffling, handed him the red and green gift bag that contained the coffee cup with Mama's chocolate kisses.

His brows rose and he seemed genuinely surprised.

"What is it?" he said and I sniffled and said, "I don't know, open it and find out."

He removed the tissue paper from the bag and extracted the cup.

"The Bill of Rights?" he said.

"Yeah, the Civil Liberties disappear when you put coffee in it," I said, my sniffling subsiding. "A tribute to you Feds tiptoeing all over the First Amendment."

He laughed then, deep and strong, and I thought in that moment I could listen to that laugh the rest of my life.

His smile widened and he took a silver-wrapped chocolate kiss from the mug. "And I get all of your kisses?"

I shrugged. "Mama's idea."

He nodded. "I love it," he said, and reached over the console, and Marlowe, to kiss my tear-stained cheek.

Then he said, "Come on," and he came around the truck. He opened the passenger door and Marlowe leapt out. Logan scooped me out of the seat and set me gently on the walkway, where he walked me up the stairs and to my front porch.

In front of my door, I turned to face him. "You're still wearing your Santa hat," I said, and it occurred to me that he had family in Fort Worth who may or may not know he was alive.

"Hey," I said. "If your whole family is in Fort Worth, why did you come here for one evening and it's going to take five hours to drive right back to Laredo?"

He looked at me pointedly.

"Oh," I said, and blood rushed warm to my cheeks. I nodded. "Um, you want to come in?"

He smiled. "If I go in I'll never leave."

I nodded slowly and felt my lip quiver.

"Hey," he said softly. "I'm coming back, Cauley." And then he stepped closer, so close I could smell the scent of pine and leather and something else that was pure Logan, and a tear streaked down my cheek.

"Promise?" I said.

"Promise," he said, and his eyes were dark and seemed to go on forever.

I nodded and wiped at my tears.

"When you get inside, flip your porch light on and off so I know you're all right. And don't forget to lock your door."

And then he tipped my chin up and he kissed me, long and slow and deep and sure.

He smacked his chest and Marlowe leaped to his hind legs to give Logan a doggie kiss. "You take care of her, boy. I'll be back soon."

Then he opened my front door and the dog and I went inside.

I was about to flick the porch light on and off when Marlowe nearly knocked me down.

"What the--?"

The dog raced into through the small foyer and into the living room and turned three circles under the tree.

I stared at the twinkling lights on my spindly little pine tree.

"I didn't leave the Christmas tree lights on," I said, and a streak of panic stabbed me in the stomach.

And then I saw what the dog had seen.

There was a small, catnip mouse for Muse, and a dinosaur-sized dog bone with a ribbon and a big card that said, "Feliz Naughty Dog" on it.

_Right next to a pair of red Nocona cowboy boots_.

And for the first time in my life, I knew how The Grinch felt when his heart grew three sizes.

Then I heard the unmistakable static of a .45 dropping onto the turntable in Aunt Kat's old Juke Box, and Aretha Franklin wailed that she'd be home for Christmas.

I went to the jukebox, where Muse sat, wearing a ribbon that I hadn't put on her, her tail witching to the beat.

"Aretha didn't sing _I'll Be Home for Christmas_ ," I told the dog, and he looked at me skeptically.

"Right," I said. "Why am I even surprised?"

Marlowe yipped and danced to the music, and I noticed a Post it stuck to the colorful Wurlitzer.

I pulled it off and read,

_Merry Christmas, kid,_

_I'll be home soon_

_And lock your damn door!_

I smiled then, and quickly shucked off my tennis shoes and slipped the cowboy boots on, feeling like a real life Cinderella.

Slipping and sliding on the slick new soles, I raced to the porch to catch Logan before he left.

He was sitting in his truck in front of the house, grinning.

I could feel his smile in my whole body and I blew him a kiss.

He flashed his headlights, backed out of the drive and was gone.

Then I went in and flicked on the porch light.

I left it on.

And I would leave it on until Logan got back.

And as I closed and locked the door, I knew in my heart that he that he would be back.

He'd promised.

Maybe it wasn't the Christmas miracle I'd hoped for, but it was as close to a miracle as an obituary writer was likely to get.

The End--

_*Thank you for sticking with me to The End, and I hope you'll stop back by to see what Cauley, Logan, Marlowe and that naughty cat, Muse are up to these days._

_Yes, some of the characters are based in real life, and yes, I used to be a reporter who sometimes wrote obituaries, but most of the rest I made up --I'll let you decide what you'd like to be real. In real life, I live in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, west of Austin, though all of my books are a love letter to my hometown and the people and animals who still live there, very deep in the heart of Texas._

_I'd love to hear your questions, comments and/or concerns at KitFrazier@gmail.com, and please make sure you reference the book you're talking about, because I'd hate to delete your mail because I thought it was an ad for male enhancement products (I've got all the male enhancement I can use already)._

_Y'all stick around for a little something from the story that started it all, and little treat from the MacKinnon Family Cookbook..._

_And here's hoping your holidays are very merry and bright..._

_Love,_

_Kit Frazier_

Read on for an excerpt from Hard Scoop, the beginning of the Cauley MacKinnon Mysteries...

## From **_Hard Scoop_** , by Kit Frazier

## Chapter

# One

I ducked under the crime scene tape the way I always do, like I know exactly what I'm doing, but this time I was a little more careful on account of the black-clad SWAT guys drawing down around the perimeter. Sometimes I think the only things standing between me and certain doom are instinct, pure dumb luck and a kick ass hairdresser.

"Little early aren't you, Cauley?" Jim Cantu was lounging against his cruiser looking like a Hispanic Marlboro Man as he surveyed the rugged limestone hills and gnarled oaks at the back of the Barnes' ranch.

"What we got here is your basic suicide threat," he continued, squinting into the hot, Central Texas sun. "Don't obituaries get written after somebody's turned up a corpse?"

"This isn't for _The Sentinel_ ," I said, swatting dirt from the seat of my jeans. "Scooter called me this morning and said he wanted to talk."

"Doesn't matter. No media behind the line," he said, nodding toward the SWAT guys. "You're lucky you didn't get shot."

"Calling me media is pure charity on your part," I said. "And I almost never get shot."

Cantu grinned down at me as I settled in beside him.

Every now and then, Cantu cuts me a break, because once upon a time, he'd been a rookie beat cop when my dad was a detective and he sometimes steps in where my dad left off.

Cantu and I stood, staring at the tumble of weathered planks of the shed where Scott Barnes had holed up, presumably sucking on the business end of a shotgun.

This wasn't the earth-shattering incident it might seem elsewhere in the world. Here, you don't ask if you have any crazy people in the family. You ask which side they're on. In Texas, we believe our own myths, and the wet heat of summer presses heavily on already fanciful minds.

Crossing his arms, Cantu looked at the bruise that was blooming on my forehead. "All right, blondie, I give. What happened to your head?"

I reached up, feeling the budding bruise on the bump I'd just given myself. "Banged it on a big piece of wood."

Despite a raging hangover, I'd climbed a crosstie fence to get past the police line. I was hot and sweaty, and I had enough dirt under my nails to re-pot a geranium.

Plus, now I had a bump on my head and a hole in my jeans, which showed a big patch of pre-laundry day, Wal-Mart underwear. These things almost never happen when you're wearing nice undies.

"Hurricane Cauley." Cantu shook his head. "You want off obits? Go chase a real story. I hear El Patron's on the move."

I had to stop myself from growling. Cantu knew I'd sell my Aunt Kat's china for a story that would get me off the obituary page, and while I'd been assigned to do some of the research on El Patron the latest South American syndicate to set up shop in Central Texas the News Boys on the City Desk got the byline on the story. For the most part, I spend my days re-writing death notices, and if I'm lucky, I occasionally get to do legwork for the real reporters.

But getting something on El Patron could fix that for me. Organized crime was nothing new in Texas, but El Patron crossed the city limits into Looney-ville when they shoved a Firestone over some poor bastard's shoulders and burned him alive.

Talk about a front-page, above-the-fold scoop.

"Yeah, well, El Patron will have to wait," I said, and winced as one of the SWAT guys with an orange-stocked sniper rifle disappeared into a thicket of sage.

"Did you have to call the Jump Out Boys?" I said, staring at the rest of the SWAT team scattered among bushes and perched in the gnarled forks of live oaks.

"Had to," Cantu said. "I got dinner duty tonight."

"You called SWAT because it's your turn to cook?" I said, thinking of Cantu's three kids who could make a sane person call SWAT on a good day. "You know Scooter never hurt anybody."

"And he won't hurt anybody. Captain's called a negotiator."

"We don't need a negotiator. Let me talk to him."

"You talked to him last time."

"Hey," I said. "That thing with the goats was not my fault." Cantu snorted. "You busted in the back of that pet store and scared _los cabritos_ so bad they passed out cold."

"They were those weird fainting goats," I said, staring at the shed. I shook my head. "Exotic animals. I don't know why Scooter can't sell dogs and cats like a normal person."

"He's not a normal person. He's a serial suicide. This is the second time he's threatened to bite a bullet this month. It's standard procedure to call SWAT and I shoulda never let you talk me out of it the first time."

I started to say that serial suicide was an oxymoron and that Scooter had issues, what with his wife leaving him and all, when I sucked in a breath and stopped dead in my tracks. "Who is that?"

Near the fence line, a lone man loomed, speaking into a cell phone as he surveyed the scene. I'd practically grown up in the West Side substation, and I knew all the precinct cops and most of the usual suspects.

This guy was no usual suspect.

Tall and bronzed with a wide-legged stance, he was a dead ringer for Captain America. I had to remind myself to close my mouth. Probably my hormones. I haven't had a steady relationship since I installed my shower massage.

"Tom Logan." Cantu scowled. "FBI."

"You don't like him?"

"Nothing personal. We just don't need a bunch of Feds fucking up a local case."

I frowned. "The Feds? On a suicide threat? Why would the Feds care if Scooter Barnes is having a bad day?" I said, but the rumble of an engine rolled over my voice.

" _Miranda_ ," I swore.

Miranda Phillips stepped out of a white van, shook out her platinum hair, smoothed her slim skirt and tapped her Ferragamo-heeled foot while her television crew set up outside the flapping yellow crime scene tape. She might have been annoyed.

It was hard to tell because her face never moved. It was frozen in a permanent look of surprise on account of all those Botox injections.

Miranda has her own wildly successful syndicated column at _The Austin Journal_ , the Sentinel's flashier, better-funded rival newspaper and she's broadening her already triumphant resume by breaking into television.

Miranda never did time on the obituary page.

Miranda is Barbie, if Barbie gave up her Malibu Beach house to pursue a career in journalism. She's tall and blond and has all the accessories, including a closet full of fuck- me pumps.

My gaze dropped to scuffed up Keds. The best I could manage was Skipper, Barbie's little sister. Permanently disheveled and always trying to keep up.

As long as I've known Miranda, I've never seen her sweat. She uses pretentious words like "exquisite" and "extraordinary" at inappropriate times.

I know this because a couple of Christmases ago I walked in on her riding my former husband like a wild, wet pony. _Exquisite_ , she'd panted. _Extraordinary_.

"How'd she find us so fast?"

"Probably she has GPS," Cantu said. He looked down at the hole in my jeans. "You should get that."

"I don't need any help," I said. The old shed was hard to find if you didn't know where to look. It was perched on a wooded knoll behind Scooter's dad's house on a bend in the Pedernales River near Paradise Falls. My friends and I used to spend sultry summer afternoons skinny-dipping in the cold spring waters, a memory not even two years in Northern California could extinguish.

"You were sneaking into a crime scene," Cantu pointed out. "You're not supposed to be here at all."

"Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better these were my favorite jeans."

Miranda had finished tossing her hair and did a double take when she caught sight of me and Cantu.

"Well, hello, Carrie," Miranda purred as she prowled toward us, but she looked right past me at Cantu like one of those smart bombs in search of a target.

" _Cauley_ ," I said, like she didn't already know.

"Right," she said without looking at me. "Like the dog." I narrowed my eyes.

"What do we have here?" she said, and I was about to think of something really clever to say, but it didn't matter because she was staring at Captain America, who was still stalking the fence line talking on his cell phone.

I glanced over the horizon expectantly. The News Boys would be on the scene soon. Luckily, I had anticipated this. You can only screw me four or five times before I start to notice a pattern. From somewhere down the tree-lined road, a red Toyota four-by-four rolled up and slid to a stop next to Miranda's van.

A rangy, pimply-faced kid climbed out of the truck and yelled, "Somebody order a pizza?" His voice only cracked a little, and it was hardly noticeable, what with all sniper rifles ratcheting his direction.

"Thirty minutes or less." I grinned at Cantu. "Just like the ad says."

The kid was reaching across the passenger seat to pull out a big white pizza box when a deep voice yelled, " _Freeze_!"

I watched as six SWAT guys had the pizza kid spread-eagled on the ground and Miranda was mobilizing her troop of television techs.

"You could go to hell for this," Cantu called after me.

"They're trained professionals," I called back. "They almost never shoot anybody."

## About the Author

 Kit Frazier gave up her life as an award-winning journalist because the Central Texas newspaper frowned on publishing fiction. Her real-life misadventures in search and rescue with the Austin Police Department and an FBI agent were the catalyst for her award-winning Cauley MacKinnon novels. While her stories are primarily fiction, some are steeped in fact--particularly where the FBI agent and the dog are concerned *both of whom said they always wanted to be a thinly veiled character.

Keep up with Kit at her blog, www.kitfrazier.com/wordpress.

Kit loves hearing from readers! Contact her (or her dog, Bodhi) with questions, comments or concerns (on the rare occasions the comments are mean, expect a snarky reply from the dog) at kitfrazier@gmail.com.

## MacKinnon Family Holiday Cook Book

~because life's too short to eat cheap chocolate

# Drinks--of course

**Nana MacKinnon's Knock You Naked Egg Nog** (Sissies need not partake)

_Brace yourself, this one's a hangover waiting to happen._

**You need you some:**

1 cup bourbon

1 cup brandy

1 cup Tia Maria

12 eggs (yes I said 12)

1 quart cream, 1 quart half & half

1/2 lb powdered sugar

**Directions**

Separate eggs and combine booze and yolks and whisk in 1/2 lb of powdered sugar.

Store in fridge for 24 hrs. Keep the whites chilled also.

24 hrs later, whip cream in large bowl until thick, then add half & half and the yoke/booze mix.

Add the egg whites and whip till frothy. Pour a li'l for yourself, then chill the rest for a while before serving.

* _you may wanna triple the recipe_ ...

**Pink Passion Pomegranate Martinis**

_Will also knock you nekkid_ ...

**You need you some:**

1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice

2 ounces Absolute Citron vodka or white tequila

1 ounce Cointreau liquor

Cup of ice

Splash of sparkling water (optional)

Squeeze of lemon (optional)

**Directions**

Shake ingredients in a shaker and put in chilled martini glasses. Put pomegranate fruit into glass as garnish.

**Nana MacKinnon's Revirginator Margaritas**

_Refreshing, rejuvenating, and just the thing for a killer hangover..._

**You need you some:**

1-1/2 cups good tequila!

_Life is too short to drink cheap tequila! Jose Cuervo Gold is the minimum standard. My latest personal favorite is 1800 Silver or I've also been using Sauza Hornitos Reposado a whole lot lately._

_And, face it, the margarita will be incrementally better if you jump up to a higher-end brand (besides the better the tequila, the less severe the hangover!)._

_Experimenting with high-end tequilas will add subtle flavors and allow you to create your own signature margarita._

_My latest favorite is a brand called Cazadores recommended to me by Fernando Avelar whose family has a legacy of growing and harvesting the blue agave cactus for tequila in Mexico. Patron Silver Tequila has also been a very good mix._

1/2 cup Grand Marnier

_This is as good as is gets. I do not float this on top but rather mix it in with the blender._

_A great alternative is the Italian version of Grand Marnier called Gran Gala (it's less expensive and just as good)._

1/3 bottle of beer

_Yes, you did read that right, a 1/3 bottle of beer. The best results are with a standard bland American icon beer like Budweiser, Coors or Miller. Avoid micro-brews with lots of character as this will leave an aftertaste to your margarita. Beer is one of the few food groups that are less acidic and so the addition of beer to this margarita will make a mellow tasting, smooth drinking formula. It also adds the barest hint of carbonation during mixing. This is one of the 'secret' ingredients and I have never had anyone guess that there was beer in their margarita._

1 can frozen lemonade _(from concentrate if you're not particular)_

_I've experimented with lime-aid, and all sorts of lemonades. You're gonna have to do the same. I avoid the ones with the pulp. Sometimes you will have to add sugar if you've selected a sour brand. (12-ounce size)_

_A big long healthy squirt of Real Lemon_

_This is real lemon juice concentrate and adds the wonderful lemon tanginess a great margarita needs._

_You can squeeze an actual lemon, but then you're dealing with the pulp issue (which you can filter out), but for a more authentic blend, this is the way to go._

_A big long healthy squirt of Real Lime_

_This is real lime juice concentrate and also adds the lime tartness for a subtle enhancement._

_As above with the lemon, you can squeeze an actual lime, but then you're dealing with the pulp issue (which you can filter out), but for a more authentic blend, this is the way to go._

Water or Ice to fill up the blender

_My preference is to add half ice and half water to fill up the blender to the top. This way you are not serving a frozen margarita but a very cold one with shards of crushed ice. The best margaritas are quite concentrated but then poured over a heaping full glass of ice that starts to dilute the power of the cocktail as it melts. Now, lately we've been serving these straight up or "perfect" in a margarita glass or (my personal favorite) a martini glass. Shake it up on the rocks and pour it in straight up. Somehow this promotes more of a sipping approach (very fast sipping often, but still technically sipping)_

Sugar to taste.

_As you are completing the mix portion in the blender, you may choose to add sugar to taste. By doing it in a blender you don't have to worry about a granular texture in the drink._

**Pomegranate Punch**

_If you are looking for a delicious and easy punch to serve to a festive crowd of revelers, this one will fit the bill. Not only is it beautiful, it is really, really tasty!_

**You need you some:**

1 bottle cranberry-pomegranate juice

1/2 cup grenadine syrup

1 bottle raspberry soda

Pomegranate Rimmer Crystals (optional, you can find rimmer in some liquor stores or liquor sections of stores)

1 pomegranate

To keep the punch from being watered down, I freeze the soda in seasonal silicone pans and add instead of ice. You could use ice cube trays to achieve the same thing. I thought the snowflake and tree shapes of the pans were fun. Just do this a day or two before your party.

Just before you are ready to serve, pour the Pomegranate Rimmer Crystals onto a very flat dish. Wet the rims of your glasses. You can do this with a lemon or lime wedge or plain ol' water. I dampened a paper towel and ran it around the rim. Dip the rims of the glasses into the crystals and set aside.

Cut the top off your pomegranate and then slice down through the sections. This is the easiest way to get the seeds and all the sweet-tart goodness out. Drop a scattering of seeds in each glass.

Place the ice in your punch bowl, pour in the soda, juice and grenadine syrup. Stir lightly to mix. Ladle into glasses and watch your guests turn into glass-licking goons as they try to get every last little speck of the rimmer off their glasses and dig the last little seed out of their glass. (Besides being tasty, the punch will provide you with unlimited entertainment!)

# A Li'l Somethin' To Snack On

**Cheesy Pencil Dicks**

_*Because a little dick can be a good thing..._

**You need you some:**

1 24-4 1/2 inch long sesame breadsticks, package

12 slices bacon

2 teaspoon garlic salt or powder

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

**Directions**

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, combine the Parmesan cheese with garlic salt and set aside. Cut the bacon slices in half so they are approximately 5-inches long. Wrap each bread stick with one slice of bacon, starting at one end and ending at the other. Place wrapped bread sticks on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and bake for 15 minutes or until bacon is browned. Remove from oven and immediately roll bread sticks in cheese mixture.

**Bacony Jalapeno Poppers**

_'Cause a little dick is better when it's got some heat to it..._

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Bake Time: 20 to 30 minutes

**You need you some:**

20 whole, fresh jalapeños

2 8-oz blocks of cream cheese, softened at room temperature

1 to 2 pounds of bacon

**Directions**

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place a wire rack on a baking sheet and set aside.

2. Cut the jalapeños in half, lengthwise. Remove the seeds and membranes. Stuff each jalapeño half with cream cheese. Wrap each jalapeño half with bacon. Secure with a toothpick.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. If after 20 minutes the bacon doesn't look brown enough, turn on the broiler for a couple of minutes to finish. Just keep a close eye so they don't burn!

**Snake Bites**

_Try to let 'em cool off, first. These thangs are so yummy, you'll eat 'em right straight out of the oven..._

**You need you some:**

1 can crescent rolls

Flour, for dusting

4 tablespoons spicy mustard

10 ounces thinly sliced ham

10 ounces thinly sliced salami

12 ounces Monterey Jack, grated

3 egg yolks

2 whole cloves

Toothpicks

2 small pimiento-stuffed olives

1 (1-inch) strips jarred roasted red peppers

**Directions**

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Line a cookie sheet with foil. Grease the foil and set aside.

Dust a flat surface lightly with flour. Spread out the crescent dough -- do not separate. Pinch together the seams so that you have 1 piece of dough. Roll out to make a large rectangle. Make sure the dough is not stuck to the surface at all.

Brush the dough with the mustard, leaving a 1-inch border. Layer the meats down the center of the rectangle, leaving a 1-inch border on either end. You can feel free to use your favorite cold cuts.

Top the meats with the cheese. Fold 1 side of the dough over the filling, lengthwise. Then, fold the other 1/2 over and press the seal the filling inside. Take 1 egg yolk, and beat lightly with a fork. Brush the egg yolk over the top of the dough. The yolk will act as the glue to hold. Fold the dough in 1/2 again lengthwise. Pinch the seam with your fingers to seal. Press the outside of the dough to make sure everything is sealed tight and to make an even thickness for the body of your snake. Taper 1 end of the dough to form a tail shape. Form the other end into a head shape.

Beat the 2 remaining egg yolks together. Transfer to 3 separate small bowls. Add some food coloring to each bowl -- whatever colors you like! Using a clean paintbrush, "paint" the snake with the egg yolk/food coloring mixture.

Transfer the snake to the foil lined sheet tray. Form into an "s" shape so it looks like the snake is slithering. Insert 2 cloves into the head to look like nostrils and 2 stuffed olives for eyes. Create a mouth or tongue with the roasted red peppers. Bake the snake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.

**Sausage Cajones**

_Well, we could all use more cajones..._

**You need you some:**

1 (1-pound) package ground sausage

3 cups baking mix (we use Bisquick)

4 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

1/8 tablespoon pepper

**Dip:**

1 cup Duke's mayonnaise

1 tablespoon mustard

**Directions**

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spray a baking sheet with vegetable oil cooking spray. Combine all ingredients in a large glass bowl. Mix well with your fingers. The mixture will be very crumbly. Form into 1 inch balls, squeezing the mixture so it holds together, then rolling it between the palms of your hands to form balls. Place the balls on the baking sheet. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. To prevent sticking, move the balls with a spatula halfway through cooking. To make the dip, combine the mayonnaise and mustard. Hot or cold, it don't make us no never mind.

**Devil Wangs** (that's _wings_ if you're not from around here)

_Positively angelic..._

**You need you some:**

_For the Wangs_ :

1 1/2 cups hot sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning

1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper

3/4 tablespoon garlic powder

3 pounds of chicken wangs

Enough peanut oil to fry it all up

_For the Saucey Sauce_

1 stick salted butter, softened

1/2 cup hot sauce

1 cup sweet chili sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

**Directions**

Prepare the wings: Combine the hot sauce, Cajun seasoning, cayenne and garlic powder in a large bowl and mix well. Add the wings and toss. Cover and refrigerate 24 hours.

Heat about 2 inches of oil in a deep fryer or deep-sided pot until a deep-fry thermometer registers 350 degrees F. Remove the wings from the marinade and drain off excess moisture. Carefully add the wings to the hot oil in batches (the oil may splatter) and cook until crisp, about 10 minutes.

Make the sauces: Whisk the butter and hot sauce in a bowl. Mix the chili sauce and soy sauce in another bowl.

**Chicken Dip**

_Make a lot of this 'cause you're gonna need it..._

**You need you some:**

2 cups of shredded chicken or (2 cans chicken, drained)

1 package (8 oz) of softened cream cheese ¾ cup Cayenne pepper sauce

1 cup Ranch Dressing

1 ½ cup Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese

**Directions:**

Heat chicken and hot sauce in a skillet over medium heat, until heated through.

Stir in cream cheese and ranch dressing. Cook, stirring until well blended and warm. Mix in half of the shredded cheese, and transfer the mixture to a slow cooker. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top, cover, and cook on Low setting until hot and bubbly. Have it with crackers, or with some celery sticks if you're feeling healthy.

**Grape Jelly Meatballs**

_Oh Clairee loves these things!_

**You need you some:**

2 12 oz jars Heinz chili sauce

1 32 oz jar grape jelly

1 bag meatballs (about 80 in a bag)

**Directions:**

Put chili sauce and jelly in a large pot, heat until jelly is melted and sauce is smooth, stirring often. Add frozen meatballs; heat until meatballs are thawed and then simmer for 3 hours.

# **Christmas Breakfast** _-- if you're up for it_....

Christmas morning the last thing you want to do is be tied down to the kitchen making breakfast. Plan ahead now and you can have a fabulous breakfast on the table with a minimal amount of effort!

_Quick Tip: If you can handle the shock of it all, eat leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner for Christmas breakfast. Captain The MacKinnon family always does a big meal Christmas Eve while my family does a big meal Christmas Day. Between the two big meals, the last thing we want to do is make another big meal for breakfast Christmas morning. One year I fussed and slaved over the stove making a huge Christmas breakfast only to find our houseguests preferred to clean up the leftover berry cheesecake!_

**Banana Bread**

Once in a blue moon, when I have a bunch of overripe bananas, I get inspired to bake banana bread.

The Colonel gets pretty excited when this happens and will eat half the loaf, still warm from the oven, slathered in butter - if I let him. (Have you ever tried stopping a hungry man from eating warm bread? Not an easy task, I assure you!) This recipe is easy to follow and turns out yummy every time.

**You need you some:**

1 3/4 cup flour

2/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup mashed ripe bananas

1/3 cup butter or shortening

2 tbsp. milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 cup nuts

1 tbsp. cinnamon

**Directions**

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix 1 cup flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mash two to three ripe (or overripe bananas, the riper the banana the stronger the flavor) bananas to make 1 cup. Add banana, butter, vanilla and milk to dry ingredients. Mix on low until blended then beat on high for two minutes. Add eggs and remaining flour, beat until blended. Add cinnamon and nuts. Bake 55-60 minutes or until golden brown and starting to pull away from the edges of the pan.

**Cinnamon Rolls**

They are, to say the least, divine, especially warm from the oven. The recipe is simple to follow and the rolls are so yummy. The rolls also freeze well, so you can make them up in batches and freeze for yourself or for gift-giving. They can be reheated in the oven or nuked in the microwave for about 20 seconds to bring back that fresh from the oven warmth and gooey deliciousness.

**You need you some:**

_Dough_

2 cups milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup sugar

1 package active dry yeast

4 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/3 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tbsp. salt

**Filling**

1 cup melted butter

¼ cup cinnamon

1 cup sugar

**Icing**

4 cups powdered sugar

¼ cup milk

3 tbsp. melted butter

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 tsp. vanilla extract

**Directions**

Scald the milk, oil and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat (bring heat to nearly a boil, but don't let it boil!). Set aside and cool to lukewarm (think temperature of a baby's bottle). Sprinkle yeast on top of milk and let rest for one minute.

Add four cups of the flour and stir until just combined. It is going to be sticky. Cover with a tea towel and set in a warm place for an hour.

Remove the towel and add baking powder, baking soda, salt and final 1/2 cup of flour. Stir it up, but don't overdo it or it's come out stringy.

On a floured surface, roll the dough into a large rectangle, somewhere in the proximity of 10 inches by 30 inches.

Pour melted butter over dough. Use your fingers or a knife to spread evenly. Sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar. You can also mix cinnamon and sugar into the butter before pouring over dough. Either way works fine.

Beginning at the long end farthest from you, roll the rectangle tightly toward you. Use both hands and work slowly, keeping the roll nice and tight. Some filling may ooze out and that is okay (it will give you something to snitch later).

When you have the roll finished, pinch the outside edge of the roll to create a seam. You should now have a long log. Transfer to a cutting board and cut into 1 1/2 inch slices. You should get about 25 rolls.

Spray a pan with non-stick cooking spray and place rolls in the pan. I like to use smaller pans and freeze them. If you want to give cinnamon rolls as a holiday gift, put them in disposable aluminum pans, then they are ready for gift giving!

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cover the pans with a tea towel and set aside for about 20 minutes. Remove towel and bake for about 15 minutes or until rolls are golden brown. Do not overcook! While the rolls are baking, whip up the icing.

Mix the powdered sugar, butter, cream cheese, milk and vanilla in a bowl. Icing should be thick but pourable.

When the rolls come out of the oven, pour on the icing. Make sure you cover every last bit of roll. This step is vitally important for the overall happiness of your taste buds.

Put one on a plate, take a deep breath inhaling that decadent cinnamon aroma, and enjoy!

**Ham & Hashbrown Heavenly Casserole**

_We could eat this ever'day if we didn't care about not ever wearing Spanx again..._

**You need you some:**

1 bag of southern hash browns (you can make 'em yourself, but if somebody's already done it for you...)

6 eggs

2/3 cup of cream

2 cups of ham, cut into cubes or bite-sized pieces

dash of salt

1 tsp. all-purpose no-salt seasoning

1 1/2 cups shredded Colby jack cheese

**Directions**

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease a 9×13 baking pan and place hash browns into pan. Pop into the oven.

While the hash browns are heating up, beat the eggs, add cream, seasoning and salt. Cut the ham into bite-sized pieces or cubes. If you don't have left-over ham to use, a ham-steak provides just the right amount of ham for the casserole. Take the hash browns out of the oven, sprinkled the ham over the top then pour in egg and cream mixture.

Turn oven temperature down to 350 degrees, put the pan into the oven and bake for about 45-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. When the eggs are set, sprinkle the top of the casserole with cheese and continue baking a few minutes until cheese is melted.

# ... And Pie. It's not just for breakfast anymore ~

**Aunt Kat's Bourbon Pecan Pie:** _The only pie you'll ever need_ ...

_Once you've had this pie in your mouth you'll swear there's no other pie in the world..._

**You need you some:**

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons white sugar

1/2 cup butter, chilled

4 tablespoons ice water

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup light corn syrup

2 tablespoons dark corn syrup

3/4 cup light brown sugar

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 pinch salt

1/2 cup pecans, finely crushed

1 cup pecans, quartered

1 cup pecan halves

**Directions**

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

To Make Crust: In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and white sugar. Cut butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. Gradually sprinkle the water over the dry mixture, stirring until dough comes together enough to form a ball.

On a floured surface flatten dough ball with rolling pin. Roll out into a circle that is one inch larger than pie dish. Place pie shell into dish and refrigerate until pie filling is complete.

To Make Pie Filling: In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, light and dark corn syrups, brown sugar, butter, salt and finely crushed pecans. Spread quartered pecans over bottom of refrigerated pie crust. Pour syrup mixture over top of pecans, then arrange pecan halves on top of pie.

Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for one hour or until you can stick a toothpick (and not a used one, Clairee) and let it cool down about an hour. Or if you're not prone to addiction, you can eat it hot out of the oven, just kind of scooped over some Bluebell Vanilla Bean ice cream. _But don't say I didn't warn you..._
Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

TwentyOne

TwentyTwo

TwentyThree

TwentyFour

One

About the Author

MacKinnon Family Holiday Cook Book
