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This is what you owe me,

for your little ruse.

Your decoy will find your present

where you get the booze.

You can mull it over

But I warn you to be wise

You’re not going to stop this,

so don’t fuck with me.

~ Mr. Claus

“Wow, he wasn’t even trying at the end,” I say, looking up to meet worried glances from Nathan, Meyers, and Bird. I pace our hotel room “office.” Our Santa Takedown HQ is a little over four hundred square feet, with Bird and Meyers on the folding desk housing several thirty-inch monitors and a scanner.

“Mr. Claus… that was a deliberate choice,” Nathan says, pointing to the sign-off. “Even if he’s trying to use different variations of Santa nicknames, Mr. Claus isn’t a common one.”

No, it’s not. In fact, it’s the nickname Nelly used last night at the Snow Ball.

“Think Santa’s really a mister?” Meyers asks. “Maybe this person wants to throw us off.” Josie Meyers is an extremely competent, thirty-seven-year-old, biracial special agent. We started on the same day and quickly bonded over both being asked “what we were” within the first week. Her skepticism, thoroughness, and computer expertise—especially with surveillance systems—make her a powerful asset.

“We’ll play along,” I say, “but let’s not get comfortable. I still want us to keep an eye on Cameron.” Maybe becoming Santa of the Year made her feel powerful enough to get back at law enforcement while trying to win a second time in a row. “So the bomb isn’t at the hotel?” I call out the stanza with landmark in it.

“Technically, this hotel is a landmark, but it could also be somewhere in the city,” Bird says. Special Agent Troy Bird, a fifty-five-year-old intelligence analyst with invaluable experience, cut his teeth for decades as a forensic science technician. Prints are his thing—both fingerprint analysis and digital footprints.

“There are dozens of landmarks,” Nathan says. “Skyscrapers, bridges, parks, museums… this tells us nothing.”

A bomb going off at the Con would kill hundreds. At a landmark in the city, tens of thousands.

We need to call this in.

The news also makes Barrel very, very mad. “We don’t have enough resources to search every landmark in the city by midnight,” he says on the other end of the line.

“If we can get to the finale, it shouldn’t be a problem,” I say, hearing my words and everything wrong with that sentence. “Sorry, not if. When. And not shouldn’t. It definitely won’t be a problem.”

“I want you to catch this sick son of a bitch well before the finale,” Barrel says. “Tell me you have this under control, Payne.”

I press my phone against my ear. “I have this under control, sir,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.

He makes a frustrated back-of-the-throat noise. “Do you actually?”

I move to the bathroom and lower my voice so everyone else can think in peace. “I’m getting a handle on it. I want Sadistic Santa to feel like he’s in control for a little while, but then I want to counterpunch.”

“Counterpunch?”

“Yeah. We bait him, let him strike a few times, and then when he least expects it, we get him back when he’s most vulnerable.”

“Didn’t realize you were into boxing, Payne.”

“I’m not. I just appreciate the metaphor.”

“We don’t play games, boxing or otherwise, with criminals—”

No, we compete with them.