Page 119

Nathan rests his arms on his thighs. “You think Arnold, what, got his nose redone, just to evade the FBI?”

“For starters.” I analyze the man on the laptop to the Con website with the judges’ photos. “Look. Definitely rhinoplasty, chin surgery, and jaw reshaping. He’s got blue eyes but is wearing brown contacts. His gap-toothed smile… he got veneers, or he’s wearing dentures.”

“He has had plenty of time to recover,” Nathan says, “and he has the money.”

“Nothing like paying for a facelift with dirty money,” Meyers retorts.

I cradle my head in my hands. “We finally have the advantage of knowing who it is.”

“Suspecting,” Nathan says, pulling his Santa hat over his head. “Of suspecting it’s him. We have no hard proof. Nothing to connect him to being Sadistic Santa.”

I clench my jaw. “We will. How’s the warrant coming along? We need to search Arnold’s rooms and track him.”

“It’s nearly midnight on Christmas Eve Eve,” Meyers says. “We’re working on it. Can’t we just arrest the guy? He should’ve already been arrested on the boat.”

“He was clearly very good at staying clean. We could get him on something minor, maybe, but he’d be put away for less than a year,” I say. “But if we can get him for the star bomb, the Con, threatening agents… he’ll be put away for a long time. Now we finally have the advantage. Let’s keep at it.”

Nathan and I really need to leave.

“You said this was about the Icicle necklace, right?” I ask on our way down to the ballroom.

He tells me about the riddle. It’s a message, for sure. A taunt? A reminder of what he’s been through?

“Payne, last year, I was involved with something. It was terrible. There were interrogations and polygraphs.” Nathan grimaces. “I’m no longer a suspect. This feels eerily similar to that, though.”

I had always wondered why Nathan was investigated for so many months. “That went on way too long,” I say, rushing down the hall. “I don’t know why you didn’t just tell them you were with me. That cleared you right away.”

“I wasn’t going to throw you under the bus or risk your job—” Nathan stops walking. “Hang on. What did you say?”

Outside the lobby window, the snow falls harder, the flakes accumulating higher on the ledge. It’s like the weather is trying to remind me that time is passing, that the longer we wait, the longer it all just compounds.

I turn around, realizing my slipup too late. “I said, if you told them you were with me, that would’ve cleared you.” I wave him forward. “Come on, you’re going to be late.”

He doesn’t move. Instead, he looks at me with a confused expression like he’s playing back my words. “Payne, you didn’t…”

I blink. “What did you think cleared your name? After you cut me out of your life, I pulled in favors from contacts to find out what was going on with the investigation. Nathan, you were their number one suspect.”

The muscle in his neck twitches. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

I throw my hands up. “What did you want me to do? Stand by and let you go down for something you didn’t do? Sorry, but no way in hell.” I grab his hand. “Come on, we’ll talk about this later, I promise, but we can’t right now.”

“You didn’t have to be my alibi!” Nathan says, letting me pull him down the hallway. Latecomers gawk at him and take photos. “How did you even know?”

“Agent Lewis. Ever since Chicago, he’s helped me keep tabs on you,” I admit. “I just wish it had been you who told me.”

“I almost lost my job,” he whispers. “I lost the respect of my entire squad. I still don’t think I earned it back. Being cleared felt like the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.”

“Forget anyone who didn’t believe you. They don’t deserve your friendship.”

“The light wasn’t because anyone had believed me, though,” he says, his brows furrowed. “It was because of you.”

I rest my hand on his shoulder and position myself in front of him. “I only told them the truth.”

“Which was?”

“That we were together those days,” I say, shaking him a little. “Which we were. A source told me that the Icicle necklace was moved from the evidence vault and returned to the store between December twenty-sixth and the twenty-eighth. We were literally out of state. How was that not enough for you to be cleared?”

“I don’t know.” He tugs at his collar. “But we were on an operation. We shouldn’t have gotten together. We risked—”