Page 79 of The Santa Claus Con

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@GarlandAndTinsel0102

The toy delivery’s almost over! Where’s #HotSanta??

Chapter 23

SCARLETT

6 hours and 2 minutes until midnight

Nathan runs a red light. Cars screech around us, slamming to a stop at an intersection.

Could that be true? Sadistic Santa’s not after me, he’s after Nathan?

“Where’d you learn to drive? The North Pole?” an angry man on an e-bike shouts, flipping Nathan off as he whizzes by.

“You better watch out! He’ll put you on the Naughty List!” I shout back at him.

Nathan hits the gas before the next light turns red. The Tail Mix goes flying as I brace myself against the dashboard.

“You think Sadistic Santa’s been after me this entire time? Or only now that I’m part of this?” he asks, all color drained from his face.

“Yes.” I slide down into my seat. “I know I encouraged it, but we are still down a tire! Sadistic Santa can’t kill us if you do it first.”

“The letters were addressed to you,” Nathan says. “I’m only here because you roped me in. If Sadistic Santa was after both of us, why not invite me himself? There was no way to guarantee my involvement.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Of all the cases we’ve worked on separately, these clues are related to operations you and I have done together. You have to admit that’s weird.”

“So it’s someone we both know?”

“It’s someone who knows enough about us,” I say, thinking back to the anonymous tip I was stubborn enough to follow, the explosion I took personally, and the invite that literally lured me in. “Somehow, they knew I’d bring you into it.”

“How?”

The clues swirl around in my brain until they form into a theory.

“You’ve saved me before,” I say. “You’d do it again.”

“So what? You’ve saved me, too,” Nathan says.

My heart thumps so wildly against my ribs that it threatens to break another one. “That’s exactly it. Who else other than you would I have brought in? It could only have been you, and this person knew that somehow.”

My phone lights up with notifications of people tagging #Hot Santa. I read the posts, learning that there’s only one spot left to claim to make it through to the next round.

That person needs to be Nathan.

“Silver Belle, last Christmas Eve,” I recount. “It’s someone from the boat. It has to be. We need the full list of passengers.”

“No one here looks like anyone from the boat.”

“Not even Freddie?”

“I don’t recognize him,” Nathan says, his forehead wrinkled in deep thought. “It’s possible he could’ve been part of the Durands’ operation. Someone I didn’t interact with much.”

“Was anyone jealous that you played a bigger role than them?”

Nathan’s eyes narrow. “If anything, I think someone would be mad I played a part in taking them all down. I was brought into the group. I betrayed their trust.”