Damn.
Mary glared at him. “I intend to learn more about you and what’s happened to my father tomorrow. So, don’t go anywhere.”
His lips twisted. “Don’t worry. I’m not. I’m just as interested in finding your father as you are.”
After closing the door with a sharp click, Mary leaned against it and wondered if Nick’s reasons were much darker than hers. She tested the lock on her window and shoved her dresser in front of the door. When she fell into bed, she lay with her eyes half-open, jumping every time the heater kicked on or the walls settled. Questions raced through her mind, keeping her awake into the wee hours.
Who had bumped into her in the hallway? Was he after her father? Why hadn’t her father tried harder to contact her once she was in North Pole? And what did the sexy mystery man across the hall have to do with her father’s disappearance? Most of all, what did her father’s clue mean?
Chapter 5
The incessant theme from Mission Impossible jarred Nick from the light doze he’d fallen into after lying awake all night listening for any sound from the room across the hall.
Mary might have been certain about the intruder in her room being her father, but it didn’t account for the man who’d plowed into her in the hallway. Probably the same man who’d chased her father away on a snowmobile. Since her father had left a clue, what would keep the other man from coming back to claim it?
Nick grabbed for the cell phone on the nightstand. The display screen indicated a private number. “Yeah.”
“Patch did a name search into Alaska state records.” A pause lengthened as if an acknowledgment was required.
Patch was their techno-guru back at the SOS office in Texas. Royce Fontaine didn’t waste words on simple pleasantries. It took two full seconds for his boss’s voice to register.
“You awake?” Royce asked.
Nick scrubbed his hand down his face and glanced at the clock. The bright green digits indicated five-thirty, Alaskan time. “What did you find?”
“Not what, but who. Charles Mercer.”
Nick shook his sleep-clouded head. “And Charles Mercer should ring a bell?”
“Frank Richards had contracted with a New York publishing house to sell his military memoirs. Patch hasn’t been able to tap into Richards’ computer. The motherboard looked pretty much like Swiss cheese. We also learned that Frank Richards had recently been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. His doctor gave him three months to live, four months ago.”
“Could his memoirs be some kind of confession?”
“If so, it wasn’t just his actions he’s confessing. He’s got someone else scared.”
“What do Richards’ memoirs have to do with Santa?”
“Patch checked his phone records. He’d made two calls to North Pole, Alaska, in the past two weeks. The phone number he called belonged to our Santa Claus, aka Charles Mercer. Mr. Mercer had a legal name change twenty-eight years ago upon his arrival in Fairbanks. Your Santa’s fingerprints also match the military records of Mercer.”
“Branch?”
“Army. Special Forces.”
Nick frowned. “Why change his name?”
“That’s what we have to figure out,” Royce said. “Do you need help on this one?”
“No. It’s still early in the investigation.”
“Yeah, but we have one man dead and another missing. I already have Tazer running a scan through military records to see if we find a connection between Mercer and Richards. I lay you odds they served together. I’ll alert Kat Sikes from the Anchorage office to head your way.”
“How is Kat?” Nick asked. He’d worked with Kat on a mission involving a terrorist element in Florida. The woman was a top agent until her first husband was killed in an embassy bombing in Africa a couple of years ago.
“She and Sam should be back tomorrow from their delayed honeymoon in Nome.” Kat had helped keep Sam alive when an SOS agent-gone-bad had tried to end Sam’s life during the previous year’s Iditarod dogsled race.
Nick rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. “Nome, Alaska, in the winter? Whatever happened to honeymooning in Hawaii?”
“They never made it to Nome when they were competing in the Iditarod. Sam wanted to go, Kat went along with him.” Royce laughed. “Me? I would have gone for a tropical beach, not a frozen coastline. I’ve got another assignment for Sam, but I can send Kat when they get back. Can you hold out for a day or two?”
