His appointment with the doctor had gone well. His two and a half weeks of good behavior showed in the X-ray, and he was able to take off the sling and just wear the brace until Christmas Eve. The added movement was positively liberating.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he turned to see who was watching him. He looked through the window, past the bags of groceries for dinner that night, and found Ely staring back at him. More like glaring. As soon as he realized Forest was making eye contact, he shoved his cheeks up into a smile.
He moved so he could talk over the truck bed, and Forest did the same. “Can I help you?”
Ely nodded, swiping his thumb across his nose. “You find that reindeer yet?”
Forest’s hands clenched into fists. He’d had a medium-sized suspicion that Ely was the one who’d broken into the barn, but he hadn’t wanted to alarm Mitzi. Since it’d been days since the break-in and no other forms of harassment had manifested themselves, he’d let it go. Besides, one shoe print in the snow wasn’t enough proof to even have Ely questioned. “Why?” He wanted to ask a whole lot of questions, but the last year of training kicked in and he held back, letting Ely volunteer the info.
“I might have seen her.”
“Might have—or did?”
Ely put his hands on Forest’s truck like he had a right to. His entitlement irked Forest to no end. Only being raised with four brothers who had a gift of getting under a guy’s skin gave him the strength to hold back. “Yeah. I saw her. But I’m not saying anything until I get the thousand dollars.”
“I’m not handing over a thousand bucks without some proof.”
“You want me to cut off an antler or something?”
A yell of protest welled up inside his throat and cut off his air. Cut off her antler? Yeah, and throw off her balance and aerodynamics. “That won’t be necessary. What’d she look like?”
“She was pretty. Clean. Well cared for—don’t worry.”
“What color was her coat?”
“It was dark … I couldn’t rightly tell you except that it was a light shade of brown.”
Dark. As in, dark in the barn in the middle of the night when Mitzi and Billy were ice skating.
What Forest was looking for was an identifying marker, like Snowflake’s snowflake-shaped birthmark. Without it, the “reindeer” Ely saw could have been a regular deer. Why did Ely think he didn’t know about Snowflake? Probably because she’d been there for almost a year and he hadn’t seen her until he’d broken into the barn.
Forest considered his options. He could pay Ely and get a confession out of him—which would be thrown out of court because money changed hands. Or he could send him on his way. Really, if he put Ely off the track, that’d work even better. “Well, sounds like it might have been her, but I already had a hot tip that looks like it’ll pay off.”
Ely’s grip tightened on the truck. “I’ll bet it will.” He was suggesting there would be more in it for Forest than just finding the reindeer.
“It’s not like that,” Forest ground out. “And I don’t take kindly to what you’re insinuating.” He drew in a breath, making his chest and shoulders expand like one of the bull reindeer facing off with another bull.
“Don’t get all upset with me. I just call it as I see it.” Ely patted the side of the truck. He looked at Forest out of the corner of his eye. “You know what? I think that reindeer I saw was worth a whole lot more than a thousand bucks. She’s …talented.”
Forest’s blood went cold. It wasn’t possible that Snowflake had flown in front of Ely, was it? She could have flown up to the rafters to get away from him. Would she have done that? He didn’t know. But it wasn’t a risk he could take.
He opened his mouth to call Ely back, but he was gone. Disappeared. Nuts! This changed things.
He pulled out his phone and called Pax. “It’s Forest.”
“Yeah. I’m not Dad; I can use caller ID.”
Forest smirked. “Listen, I need you to get up here with transport for Snowflake. We need to get her out of town as fast as possible.”
“You know the fastest way to get her out is to fly her, right?”
He scowled. “That would be simple, if she would fly. She’s still refusing to go more than three feet off the ground.” Not to mention the fact that the sleigh wasn’t ready. All they had left was to cover the seat, but he wasn’t sure how long that would take them. He’d been hoping to stretch it out a couple of days so he could at least spend Christmas Eve morning with Mitzi and Billy.
Pax let out a slow whistle. “All right. I’ll talk to the family and work out the details.”
Forest’s stomach clenched. The goodbye he’d hoped to put off was suddenly staring him in the face. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to break a young boy’s heart, smash his Christmas wish, and tell the woman he was quickly falling in love with that he was leaving town.
What a scrooge-y Christmas list.
