Spirit (Blackwood Security, #10.5) - Elise Noble Page 0,10

inside. Even my niece. No, especially my niece. Ana had bought Tabby a junior crossbow for Christmas, and that trip to Sierra Leone was sounding better by the day. Too bad Black was flying home tomorrow, or I could have joined him.

CHAPTER 6

ONE DOWN, THREE to go. I’d escaped the UCan project with only minor crush injuries from Kiara’s hugs. We’d arranged to take a helicopter flight around the Virginia countryside on Christmas Day, and I might have offered to take her for a ride in my stunt plane next summer too. She’d promised not to puke. Now Dan and I were on our way to Appletree Acres with nine dozen donuts because we figured that we should share the sugary love. Originally, there were ten dozen, but the two of us had made a good dent in them already, and now the steering wheel was kind of sticky.

We found Gwendolyn sitting alone in a sunroom at the back of the main building. She seemed younger than many of the residents—in her early sixties at a guess—and she was bundled up in brightly coloured knit blankets. Gertrude’s handiwork? Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” was playing somewhere, and the room was freezing. My breath steamed as I walked in. If I’d known we’d be spending time in the Arctic, I’d have worn a snowsuit. How had Gwendolyn not frozen to death?

“Cold?” she asked when she saw us.

“A tiny bit chilly,” I admitted.

Gwendolyn laughed, and boy did she have a dirty laugh. “Even though I moved south with my Dirk thirty years ago, I never quite managed to acclimatise.”

A guy wearing an Appletree Acres polo shirt came in with a mug of tea on a tray. “Gwen likes to sit in here and watch the birds. Can I get drinks for you ladies? Are you new volunteers?”

“Not exactly.”

“We’re here as part of Project Mistletoe,” Dan told him. Good job, because I still couldn’t utter the words and keep a straight face. “Coffee would be great. Black for both of us, no sugar.”

“Ooh.” Gwen beamed at us. “Project Mistletoe? Really? When that nice young boy visited, we thought it was all a joke, didn’t we, José? But he did bring a lovely tree.”

So José was Gwendolyn’s caregiver? I sized him up. He was in his late twenties with a slight build, neatly cropped black hair, and a personable smile. From the way Gwendolyn grinned back, I could tell there was a genuine friendship there.

“No, Bradley wasn’t joking.” I resisted the urge to add “unfortunately.” “You mentioned that you want to spend Christmas with your sister?”

Gwendolyn giggled, but I didn’t miss the sadness in her eyes.

“Everyone got a little silly with those shiny boxes on the tree, I’m afraid. If we’d known it was real, I’m sure we’d have made our wishes more realistic. Joan Bertwell and Doris Hayes asked for a troupe of topless Santas to serve Christmas lunch, for goodness’ sake.”

Uh, what? No. No, no, no. I’d read Bradley’s notes three times, and they didn’t say a thing about Santa costumes. Had he deliberately left that part out? I wouldn’t put it past him to spring the news at the last minute when it was harder for the men to wriggle out of the job. And Dan had suggested bribing Black with sexual favours? At this rate, I’d be pole dancing in a cheerleader costume for the rest of my natural life. Dan’s shocked expression said she’d come to the same conclusion.

“Topless Santas? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. We had a giggle about it over supper last week. Joan’s been downloading pictures from the internet.” Gwendolyn whipped a phone out from under her blankets. “See?”

Dan thumped me on the back as I went into a coughing fit, and her twitching lips told me she was trying to keep a straight face and not doing a terribly good job of it. The tinsel-trimmed underpants didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“Those outfits might be a bit chilly,” I said. First rule of project planning: manage expectations.

“I know, dear. We may have got slightly carried away. Is it too late to change my request to a new pair of slippers?”

“It’s not too late at all.”

“Slippers?” Dan asked. “Are you sure? Because if it’s a question of transport, we can fly your sister in to see you. Uh, where does she live?”

At that moment, I began to regret bringing Dan. Please say the sister was still alive because otherwise this would be hella awkward.

“I don’t know.”

“You…don’t know? Did she