Off the Grid Christmas Read online

He’d been a stupid punk when he’d spent summers and winter vacations there with his grandparents. His parents had never had time for more than a couple of days off during school break. They’d had busy lecture schedules that took them to many universities, hospitals and research facilities around the globe. None of those engagements would be considered fun for an active kid like Kane.

  So when he wasn’t in boarding school, he’d been shipped off to his grandparents at the Cape. Seventeen years of hanging out with the same spoiled summer crowd. Seventeen years of being Mr. Popular, Mr. Cool, Mr. Least-Likely-to-Get-Caught.

  Seventeen years, then it all changed.

  One bad decision. One stupid choice. One moment forever etched in his mind.

  Like Kane, Evan had never forgiven himself for Lexi’s death. The party had been his idea. They’d been distracted and it had cost Lexi her life. Two months later, Kane was left shouldering the guilt alone. Facing Evan’s mom and siblings across another mahogany casket. Knowing he was one of the reasons they were grieving. There was no way he wanted to face Arden’s family under similar circumstances.

  He’d caused enough harm to last a lifetime. He’d enlisted in the army, both to honor Evan’s plan to join the military and to atone for his role in Lexi’s and Evan’s deaths. Evan had intended to send money to his mom to help support his siblings. Instead, Kane did that for him. Every month. While in the army, Kane had found God. He’d been forgiven, but he’d never been able to forgive himself.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his heart pounding painfully.

  That summer had altered the course of his life for the better. He knew that. But he’d still give anything to go back, to change what had happened, to make a different decision. He’d lived with those regrets for thirteen years. He definitely didn’t need any more.

  * * *

  The drive into Cape Cod took longer than it should have. Sudden winds and icy snow hampered their progress along I-93. The blinding, relentless storm didn’t let up for more than an hour.

  Arden was silent for most of the four-hour ride.

  She’d handed him cash when he’d stopped in a small town to fill the tank, asked once how many miles stood between them and the Cape. Other than that, she didn’t speak.

  Though she’d dozed on and off, she’d stayed awake for the majority of the trip. He felt her tension as he crept along the nearly empty highway. He hoped she wasn’t planning her escape.

  She could plan all she wanted, but she wasn’t going to succeed. The more he knew about what she’d gotten herself into, the more dangerous it seemed. She needed help and protection. Whether she wanted to admit it or not.

  “We’ll be at the cottage in less than ten minutes,” he said quietly, and she opened her eyes, straightening in her seat and stretching a kink in her neck. Sebastian protested as she disturbed his sleep.

  “Silly boy,” she said, patting the cat’s fuzzy head. “I’m sorry I woke you. Just a little while longer and you’ll be able to freely roam about for a bit.”

  “He’s been a pretty good traveling companion.”

  “Running-for-our-lives companion is more like it. I should have left him at home, but I’d have had to ask someone to watch him, and that would have meant explaining why I needed to leave. Plus, he’d have missed me.”

  “And you’d have missed him?”

  “Of course. Aside from my dad and brothers, he’s the only guy who’s ever been loyal to me.” She must have realized what she said. “What I mean is, he and I have been buddies for a long time.”

  “Randy isn’t loyal?” he asked, not really surprised and not really disappointed that she must have finally seen the guy for what he was. Kane had met him a couple of times, and that had been a couple of times too many. The guy was an arrogant blowhard who seemed to get a kick out of poking fun at Arden. All Arden’s brothers had thought the same.

  “He’s not part of my life anymore, so how about we change the subject?”

  “To?”

  “The weather seems like a safe choice. The storm is breaking. It should be a good night for coding.”

  “Or sleeping,” he suggested.

  “I’m too wound up, and I’m way too close to accessing what’s in those files.”

  She leaned her forehead against the window as they crawled through town. The roads were lightly layered with snow, the businesses decorated for the season with bright lights, wreaths and ribbon. “I’ve never been to Cape Cod, but I like it. They know how to do Christmas right.”

  “So there’s a way to do that?”

  “Sure.” She pointed at several pine trees decorated with colored lights and red bows. “That’s the right way. Bright. Fun. Happy.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You’re not a Grinch are you?”

  “What?”

  “A Scrooge? A Christmas curmudgeon?”

  “I like Christmas as much as the next person,” he said, turning onto a side road that would bring them closer to the beach.

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.”

  “My family never made that big of a deal about the holidays.”

  “No big family celebrations when you were a kid?”

  “I mostly celebrated with my grandparents. It was nice. Quiet. A good meal and a couple of gifts.” And parents who’d called around noon to ask if he liked whatever they’d given him.

  Kane could only remember one or two times that his parents had been home during the holidays. Even then, they’d shipped him to his grandparents during his school breaks and joined him on Christmas Day.

  “That sounds...lonely.”

  “It wasn’t. I always had a good time. My grandparents were great.”

  “Did they raise you?”

  “Mostly. What they didn’t do, boarding school took care of. My parents were busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Being internationally renowned geneticists. They spent a lot of time traveling to hospitals, labs and universities.” He turned onto Sea Street and followed it to the end. His grandparents’ 1835 cottage sat on two acres there. Surrounded by tall evergreen trees on three sides, it was bordered on the fourth by a sandy section of beach. He’d spent a lot of time there. He thought he knew it and remembered it well, but it looked different now—the cottage more quaint than he remembered, the yard larger.

  “Is this it?” Arden asked as he pulled into the snow-covered drive.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s cute. It would be even cuter with some Christmas lights, a Nativity scene, a wreath.”

  He followed the driveway around to the back of the house, driving under the boughs of an overgrown spruce. Everything was locked up for the winter. His parents used the place a few times a year. Usually in the summer and spring. Other than that, it stayed empty, the skeleton key that opened the back door hidden in a faux rock that sat at the edge of the flower bed.

  He pulled up to the detached garage. A motion-activated light above the garage door flicked on and illuminated the area. There were no footprints in the pristine snow, no tire tracks on the paved drive. Kane cut the engine.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go,” he said, reaching over the seat and grabbing Arden’s backpack. “We’ll go in the back door. You’ll stay in the house. I’ll get the key for the garage and move the truck into it.”

  “Okay,” she responded.

  “You’re agreeing that easily?” he asked. He eyed the back of the cottage. His grandmother’s gnome was still standing guard in the barren flower bed. Beside it, the cement birdbath stood empty. The place had an air of neglect that bothered him. Sure, it was still charming but in a few years, it would look like so many forgotten properties—lonely and old.

  “Of course. I’ve got work to do, remember
?”

  He remembered. He also remembered that she didn’t want to go back to her family. She didn’t want other people involved in her trouble, and she’d been wanting to lose him since the moment he’d found her.

  He grabbed his duffel as well, and got out of the truck, listening to the winter silence. Cape Cod was busy in the summer, but this time of year, it quieted down. Mostly locals and a few die-hard visitors who loved the beach in the winter.

  “It’s quiet,” Arden whispered as she climbed out of the truck, Sebastian in her arms.

  “The quieter the better,” he responded. He put a hand on her back and urged her to the rear stoop. He stopped at the flower bed, lifting the rock his grandfather had bought decades ago. His grandmother used to constantly lock herself out of the house.

  Thinking about what a great couple they’d been, how committed to each other and to their only daughter and to him, made him smile.

  “Are you planning to break a window?” Arden asked, eyeing the rock as he turned it over in his hand. The compartment that housed the key opened easily, and he dumped the key into his palm.

  “Not unless this key doesn’t do its job.”

  “I hope it does. It’s freezing out here.”

  “I can’t promise it’ll be any warmer in the house.” He shoved the key into the lock and turned it. He opened the door and held it so that Arden could walk into the mudroom at the back of the house.

  He followed her inside, pulling the door closed and turning the lock. The mudroom was small, the kitchen just beyond it pitch-black. He expected the place to have the closed-up musty smell of a house that hadn’t been used in a while, but it smelled like...

  Christmas?

  Cinnamon for sure.

  Pine.

  Something else that he couldn’t quite place. Cookies maybe. Or bread.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t belong. He grabbed Arden’s arm, pulling her back.

  “Something isn’t right,” he muttered, the hair on his nape standing on end. “We need to get out of here.”

  Too late.

  A floorboard creaked and the kitchen light flicked on.

  Kane stepped between Arden and the threat, dropping her pack and pulling his gun in one quick movement.

  TEN

  Arden had always wondered if a person’s heart could actually stop from fear.

  Now she knew.

  It could.

  Hers had.

  It started again when a woman screamed, the high-pitched sound like a jolt of electricity to Arden’s flagging cardiac muscle. Arden jumped, her grip on Sebastian loosening. Sebastian yowled and twisted out of her arms.

  Arden grabbed for him. Missed. Started after him as he rushed across the room.

  “Sebastian!” she yelled, her heart pounding over the sound of other voices.

  “Stop!” Kane commanded, and Sebastian did, plopping his furry body down on a pretty throw rug near the kitchen sink. Arden skidded to a standstill a couple of inches from Sebastian.

  “What in the world,” a woman said, “is going on here?”

  Arden whirled around, found herself three feet from an older couple. Flannel pajamas, bare feet, salt-and-pepper hair. They were a matched set. The man clutched a baseball bat. The woman held a huge tome that probably outweighed her by several pounds.

  “Is that The Iliad?” Arden asked, and the woman glanced down at the book.

  “Why, yes! It is,” she responded.

  “Light reading before bed, Mom?” Kane asked, slipping his gun back into the holster beneath his coat.

  “Mom?” Arden repeated, but no one seemed all that interested in responding.

  “This was one of your grandfather’s books. It was the first thing I could find that could be used as a weapon.” The woman set the book down on the counter. “We were certain we were about to get murdered in our beds.”

  “Except that we’re not in our beds, dear,” the man pointed out. He leaned the baseball bat against the wall and let it rest there. “We would have been murdered in the kitchen. It’s good to see you, son. It’s surprising, but good.”

  “I’m as surprised as you are.” Kane ran a hand over his hair. “I thought you were overseas.”

  “We flew back a few days ago,” the woman said, her gaze darting to Arden. “We got to our place and a pipe had burst. They’re fixing it and drying everything out, so we decided to stay here until the work was finished. You did say that we could use the cottage any time.”

  “Right. I did.”

  “So...” Arden cut into what seemed like an awfully awkward conversation. Shouldn’t they be hugging? Throwing themselves into each other’s arms and talking about how much they’d missed each other? “I guess these are your parents?”

  “Julia and Henry Walker,” Kane said. “Mom and Dad, this is Arden DeMarco.”

  “DeMarco...” Mr. Walker mused. “Why do I know that name?”

  “Because my business partner is Jace DeMarco, Arden’s...”

  “No, no. That’s not it,” Mrs. Walker interjected. “Remember, Henry? That paper we read on quantum computing?”

  “Oh, that’s right! Superb work. Real cutting-edge stuff.” Mr. Walker smiled broadly. “Are you that Arden DeMarco?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, surprised that they’d read any of her work. “It was part of my dissertation.”

  “Your theory on error-correction algorithms was groundbreaking. Were you really able to use only four qubits?”

  “To a point,” Arden answered. “Unfortunately, as you are probably aware, interference is still an issue, even with the use of trapped ion qubits with intense magnetic fields.”

  “So true, yet the technology is promising,” Mrs. Walker added, smoothing her hair and smiling at her son. “Kane, we’re infringing on your time with your friend. Your father and I will pack our things and go to a hotel.”

  “Why would we do that? This place is plenty big enough for all of us, and I want to talk to Arden about her research,” Mr. Walker said.

  “As do I, but I think that Arden and Kane would prefer to talk to each other.”

  “Statistically speaking, after traveling here together, they are probably both ready for a break from each other. Why, just yesterday, I read a study on couples. Genetics aside, we tend to be attracted to that which is both different and familiar.” Mr. Walker was off chasing rabbits, and Arden had a moment of clarity, a moment of absolute vivid truth—Kane’s parents? They were her flannel-clad, tome-carrying people.

  “Wow,” she breathed, and Kane grinned. He took her elbow and led her through the kitchen and out into a cozy living room.

  “I figured you’d like them,” he murmured, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel the warmth of his breath.

  “I like you, too,” she responded, the words out before she could stop them. Her cheeks were suddenly hot. “What I mean—”

  “Don’t ruin the moment,” he replied, smiling.

  And she couldn’t make herself say what she’d been going to. Not while she was looking into his gold-flecked eyes, seeing the humor there.

  “How far did you two travel today? Miles or kilometers is fine,” Mrs. Walker said.

  “Longer than either of us planned to, Mrs. Walker,” Arden said. As much as she loved talking shop and chasing intellectual rabbits, she was more interested in decrypting files, finding her answers and shutting down GeoArray. “I’m exhausted,” she added. Just in case the older woman hadn’t gotten the hint.

  “Call me Jules. And my husband answers to Henry. Your father and I are in the room at the top of the stairs, Kane. That leaves the blue room and the yellow.”

  “Let’s give Arden the yellow,” Kane said.

  “It is the larger of the two.” Henry steppe
d into the room, Arden’s backpack over his shoulders, Sebastian cradled in his arms. “My son has always been a gentleman. Is that one of the things that attracted you to him?”

  “We’re not—”

  “Henry! What a thing to ask!”

  “It’s a valid question, honey. Remember that piece we read two months ago?” Henry started upstairs, continuing on about the article as he went. Jules followed, the two of them batting around statistics.

  Henry disappeared into a room down a wide hallway and reappeared at the top of the stairs seconds later without Sebastian or the backpack. “Do you need me to grab luggage from your car?” he asked.

  Kane shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Then I’ll head to bed. You know how I’ve always been. Early to bed and early to rise. Statistically speaking, people who live by that pattern have longer, healthier lives.” Henry offered them a quick smile and went into his room.

  “I really need to turn in, too,” Jules said. “The bathroom is at the end of the hall, Arden. Linen closet is stocked with toiletries if you forgot anything.”

  She’d forgotten everything.

  She couldn’t tell Jules that, so she just nodded and smiled and said good-night. She followed Kane up the stairs, past the Walkers’ bedroom door to her own room. The room was large, with a full-size bed, dresser, single nightstand and one window facing the front of the house.

  It was definitely called the yellow room for a reason. Pale yellow walls and white bedding with yellow and orange flowers and throw pillows screamed of an era long gone. A yellow area rug under the bed covered most of the scratched wood floor.

  She sat on the bed. “The room’s been aptly named.”

  Kane stood at the threshold of the room, watching as she pulled her laptop from the backpack that Henry had left on the bed.

  “It lacks a yellow brick road, but I hope it will do.”

  She laughed. “Well, there’s no place like home, but this does have a homey feel.”

  He smiled. “My parents being here complicates things.”

  “Should we leave?”

  “We’re both running on fumes, so it’s best if we stay, at least for the night. Hopefully, they won’t call the neighbors to brag about their houseguest and her dissertation work.”