And it wasn’t just the weather, Sly knew. Without Maria finding out, Sly asked a lot of questions about the doctor after the tragic happenings in September.
Lucas De Angelis was scary smart, ruthless, and dedicated. The gossips warned that the doctor was a man who they needed and who they relied on—but who none of them ever wanted to cross.
In her way, even Maria was afraid of Lucas. And, with the utterance of those two words, Sly thought he might know why.
Without giving his hand the conscious gesture, his glove strayed toward his belt, subtly searching for the gun he knew was snapped back in the holster.
He caught the way Lucas’s eyes darted toward him before just as quickly looking away, staring straight ahead. Sly knew in an instant that Lucas had just dismissed him. And he remembered how Lucas had been shot—allegedly by Mason Walsh—and decided that the doctor had looked at him, seen the weapon, gauged the odds of Sly actually using the Glock 22, and figured he was safe.
Sly hoped so. He hadn’t had to fire a weapon since he was in combat, but his aim was exact. If Lucas thought that Sly would hesitate to draw and fire if he absolutely had to, then that would be the last mistake Lucas ever made.
Hopefully, Maria would forgive him.
Suddenly moving ahead of Sly, for the first time totally focused on the task before them, Lucas took three steps and then pointed toward the ground.
“Look.”
Sly followed the point of Lucas’s finger. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at—until he moved closer and saw the cream-colored mitten lying discarded at the trunk of the nearest tree.
Hiking up his pants, Sly squatted down low and grabbed the mitten. He held it up so that they could both get a better look at it.
“What do you think, Doc?”
“Looks just like the one his sister was wearing.”
That’s what Sly thought, too. “We’re on the right path.”
“Then let’s keep on going.”
7
Like the abandoned car, Sly was the first one to spot the red suit in the distance.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered under his breath. “Annabelle was right. Santa Claus.”
Even from the considerable space separating Sly and Lucas from the man standing ahead of them, Sly could see why the little girl was fooled.
This Santa wasn’t as big as the legend, and he had a short, dingy beard instead of a fluffy white one, but the outfit—from the red suit and black boots to the sorry hat with a cotton ball dangling on the end—was a dead ringer for every mall Santa he’d ever seen back in Cali.
He was standing, pacing in a mockery of the worried patrol Therese Johnson took around her front yard, stopping every few steps to mutter something angrily at the lump at his feet. He gestured wildly with his hands, stomping in an uneven gait.
A split second later, Sly realized that the lump was a person. A little boy, to be exact.
Liam Johnson. It had to be. They found him, and he was huddled in a ball, hugging himself for warmth, sitting in the snow as Santa marched behind him.
Waving his glove, Sly gestured for Lucas to move off to the left. If they could see the man ahead of them, then he could see them once he turned his attention away from the boy he stole.
“You saw him, right?” Sly asked.
“Santa.” Lucas shook his head. “That’s fucked up.”
Both men kept their voices low as they ducked under the cover of a large tree. The wind had died down some; the last thing they needed was for their voices to carry and send the man running before they could catch up to him.
Would he continue to drag Liam further into the woods, or abandon the child like he did the car?
Sly didn’t know—and he didn’t want to find out.
“How do you want to do this?”