Lone Star Santa (2 page)

She should have come home more often. They
would be thrilled to see her. She had a responsibility to check up on them. She shouldn’t have left their well-being all to Nicole. Nicole didn’t even live in Sugar Land anymore.

Her poor parents were just sitting in front of the TV waiting for the grandchildren to appear.

Kristen had to go rescue them from a life of drudgery.

While she was rescuing them, she’d live at home and save rent money. She could borrow a car, too, because she’d just made up her mind to sell her old car for scrap. She’d settle up with the rent, repay everybody she’d borrowed from, make a token payment on her credit card and head for home. She happened to know that a one-way bus ticket from Los Angeles to her home was less than a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Before she could change her mind, Kristen punched the speed dial on her phone.

“Hey Mom!”

“Kristen?
Kristen?
What’s wrong?”

Why did her mother always assume something was wrong? “Everything’s fine. I—”

“Can you hold? I’m on the other line.”

What other line? “I don’t really have enough minutes to hold. I just wanted—”

“Then I’ll call you right back. I need to deal with this other call, and then I want to hear your news.”

Oh, great. Her mother probably thought she’d finally gotten her big break. Or little break. Or any break.

Kristen used the time she waited for her mother to call her back to loosen her mouth and practice injecting enthusiasm into her voice.

The phone rang. “Now tell me everything,” her mother said.

Kristen pasted a wide smile on her face. People could hear smiles. “I’m coming home for the holidays!”

A beat went by. “You are?”

“Yes!” Kristen felt herself relax as she envisioned her mother’s expression of delighted surprise.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” She laughed. “It’s the holidays. Going home for the holidays is what people
do
.” Kristen couldn’t remember the last Thanksgiving she’d spent at home, but never mind. She was going to make up for it now.

“Which holidays?” her mother asked.

“Why…all of them!” There was silence. Her mother was obviously stunned with happiness. “Oh, Mom, it’ll be great. I know I haven’t been home much lately—”

“Not since your sister’s wedding two years ago.”

Had it been
two
years? “That long?”

“That long.”

Okay, so her mother was understandably cautious about giving free rein to her happiness. “Well, that changes now. You can start decking the halls and killing the fatted calf because I promise that Kristen Kringle is coming home.”

“Who?”

“Me, Mom.”

Her mother snorted. “I’m sorry! It’s just…it sounds like a stripper’s name!”

“So I’ve been told.” Kristen watched the reflection of the blinking chili pepper in the windows of the
building across the street. “Anyway, I’ll see you in a couple of days, Mom. It’ll be good to come home.”

M
ITCH
D
ONNER
had overslept and still only managed about five hours sleep. If anybody deserved a double shot latte this morning, he did. So, yeah, he indulged himself. He was already late and the downtown Dallas traffic made him even later. But it was weird the way people glanced at him and looked away as he got off the elevator. It wasn’t as though he did this a lot. And even if he did, so what? Owning half the company ought to be good for
some
perks.

“Hey, it’s only ten after nine,” he muttered when Lindsey, the receptionist, barely managed to return his greeting. He didn’t add that he’d been here all weekend working by himself. That revealed more about the current state of his social life than he wanted known.

Social life
. He thought for a moment. “Did I miss somebody’s birthday party this weekend? Wedding?”

“No, sir,” Lindsey said without looking at him and pressed a button on the console.

Sir? Since when had he become a “sir”?

“Sloane and Donner Financial Services. How may I direct your call?”

“Donner and Sloane” sounded better, but it mattered to Jeremy to have his name first and he was the more visible partner while Mitch was the work-on-the-weekends partner.

And apparently the stepped-in-something-smelly partner, too. As Lindsey pressed another button, Mitch gestured for the interoffice mail. There wasn’t any yet, so he sipped his coffee and headed toward his office.
He heard voices and saw a couple of men hanging around outside his door.

What now? Clearly, it was going to be one of those days. He stopped walking, chugged the rest of his coffee and hoped the caffeine would kick in pronto.

And then one of the men standing outside his office turned and Mitch saw SEC emblazoned in yellow on the back of his windbreaker and the issue of caffeine became moot, what with the adrenaline spurt.

What were the Securities and Exchange guys doing here?

These were the field guys. The guys who seized files and computers and stuff. Apparently Mitch’s stuff. This could not be good.

Where was Jeremy? Mitch tried for a cautious, yet confident, demeanor as he approached the men. It wasn’t as though he’d done anything wrong, or even close to wrong, a stance that frequently put him at odds with Jeremy, his partner in Sloane and Donner Financial Services. Jeremy was a little too creative with money but Mitch was a little too careful, so together, they were about perfect.

He reached his office door and looked in. It was worse than he’d thought.

“Mitch, buddy.” Jeremy stepped over to him and took his arm—the one not holding a briefcase. The arm holding a briefcase was liberated of said briefcase by one of the SEC men.

“What’s going on?” Mitch kept his voice low and calm. In retrospect, it might have been better if he’d shouted.

“Buddy—why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Jeremy wore his concerned sympathy face—the
face he wore when he faced clients who’d followed their advice and yet, inexplicably, lost money.

Mitch’s eyes narrowed. Jeremy had taught him that face. He’d practiced it with him. Mitch was not fooled by that face. Jeremy was worried. “What do you mean ‘trouble’?”

Jeremy gestured as two men wheeled out his file cabinet on a dolly. “You’re over an hour late. I could have used a heads up.” Jeremy managed to speak without moving his lips.

“I overslept! You know I spent all weekend here and—”

“I’d keep that to myself for now.” Jeremy glanced at one of the men—the one who wasn’t wearing a windbreaker with SEC on it, but was talking into a cell phone. He stared at them.

Mitch knew why he stared at them—Jeremy looked guilty. In fact, Jeremy couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d held a blinking sign over his head.

“You look guilty,” he told him.

“No, Mitch. I look concerned, but cooperative.” His grip tightened.

Mitch pulled his arm away. “What are we cooperating with? What’s going on? What do they think is wrong?”

“Well, Mitch, that’s what we’re trying to find out.” Glancing over at the man again, he leaned closer to Mitch. “I’ll handle this. Just play along.”

“It would help if I knew the game!”

“The game is stay out of jail, buddy.”

Mitch couldn’t think of anything to say. He simply couldn’t process what was happening. He’d always followed the rules. Prided himself on doing so, even.
Nothing he’d done recently, or in the past few weeks—or ever—was even remotely suspicious.

He drew a breath to ask if Jeremy knew what they were supposed to have done, but Jeremy rubbed the place above his eyebrow. The “be quiet” signal.

So Mitch swallowed his questions and leaned against his office wall. Way back when they were in business school together, heck, even before that when they’d been in high school in Sugar Land, Texas, Mitch had learned that Jeremy was very good at reading people and good things always happened when Mitch stood back and let Jeremy take over. This method had worked for them in the eight years since they’d gone into partnership with each other and Mitch sure hoped it worked now.

He watched as the men packed up his computer, every pencil, pen and paper clip in his desk and even his office plant. Some palm thing. “They’re taking my plant.” He turned to Jeremy in genuine bewilderment. “Did they take all your stuff?”

Jeremy looked at his shoes in much the same way everybody in the outer office had found the carpeting so fascinating this morning.

“You’re kidding,” Mitch said flatly. “Just my stuff?”

Drawing a deep breath, Jeremy met his eyes. “I don’t care what you’ve done. I’m here for you. And we’ll get you a good lawyer. The best.”

“I don’t need a lawyer!”

“I’m thinking you do.” The head-honcho type approached them and handed Mitch a card.

Mitch blinked, his vision as fuzzy as his brain, barely able to make out “FBI Economic Crimes Unit.” FBI?
The FBI was here, too? Crimes? This could not be happening, at least not to him. “There’s got to be some mistake,” he said to the man. He squinted at the card. “Mr. Jenkins.”

“Then we’ll find it.”

“I—” He couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was as though someone had filled his head with molasses. Not enough sleep.

He’d been working such long hours because it was nearing the end of the year and many of their clients made adjustments to their financial portfolios at this time for tax purposes. Nothing unusual. It was always this way. And the truth was, he liked the work. It meant business was good. It meant end-of-the-year profits.

He waved his hand around his denuded office. “What am I supposed to do? Our clients—”

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy broke in. “Go home. Take the rest of the day off. In fact take a couple of days. The rest of the week.”

“You might give us a few hours before you head back home.” Jenkins smiled without mirth. “Do some early Christmas shopping.” He handed Mitch a piece of paper. “You can make one ATM withdrawal.”

Several beats passed before Mitch understood that Jenkins’ men were in his town house, presumably leaving it in the same condition as his office.

No.

He turned, but Jenkins stopped him. “You’ll have to sign the paper.”

“What is this?”

“Basically, it says we’ve impounded the contents of your office until such time as we evaluate the evidence.”

The words swam before his eyes. “What if I don’t sign?”

Jenkins shrugged. “Stuff tends to get lost.”

Right. Mitch signed, aware that Jeremy had been remarkably quiet during everything. He was no doubt as shocked as Mitch was.

Mitch handed Jenkins his precious paper and promptly took his own shocked self back home.

B
AD MOVE
. O
UTSIDE HIS
town house, Mitch leaned against his car, which he’d parked at the curb because, hey, he didn’t want to block the truck into which SEC minions were loading his possessions.

And, oh, it wasn’t his own personal car. It was a rental because his own personal car had been impounded.

As soon as he got his breathing under control—getting just the right speed to avoid hyperventilation was tricky at the moment—he’d give Jeremy a call. Just a, “Hey, how’s it goin’? What the hell is going on?” call.

He gripped the cell phone and held his breath. It beat breathing into a paper bag.

He speed dialed Jeremy.

Jeremy answered with, “This isn’t a good time for me.”

“Well,
buddy
, this isn’t such a hot time for me, either.” Mitch spoke through clenched teeth. He hoped anyone watching would think was a smile. “A Jenkins clone is here with his minions. They’re taking ‘items of interest.’ Then I’ll be allowed to pack. Then, they’re sealing off my town house and I won’t be able to get
back into it for God knows how long. They don’t seem to care where I go—maybe because they’ve made it so hard for me to go anywhere. Did I mention they took my car? I had to rent one. I used the corporate card, since all my freaking credit cards are frozen.”

“I have no idea what they’re looking for,” Jeremy said in a barely audible voice. “You know with all the corporate malfeasance of the past few years the Feds are probably being extra careful.”

“Whatever.” Mitch was suddenly very, very tired. “Maybe we can figure it out tonight. Obviously, I need a place to crash. After Jenkins II is finished here, I’ll come by the office and get your key, unless you’ve got an extra floating around somewhere outside your place.”

A couple of beats went by. “That doesn’t work for me.”

Mitch blinked. “It doesn’t work for me, either, but I’ve got nowhere else to go and the three hundred bucks I got out of the ATM isn’t going to last me too long.”

There was silence. Mitch watched as two men hefted his eight-foot palm into the van. “What is with them and plants?” He turned away. “Come on, Jeremy. I was the neat roommate. We lived together for four years, I think you can stand a few days or however long it takes before the SEC realizes they’ve made a huge, tax dollar–wasting mistake.”

“I think it’s best if we keep our distance until this blows over.”

He
did
, did he? Who the
hell
did he think he was? “Have you got a girl living with you? Is that it?”

“Yes, but no.”

“Then why?”

“Because we’re lucky only one of us is being targeted.” Jeremy spoke in a near whisper.

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“I can help you better this way, buddy. If I get dragged into this investigation, too, then there’s nobody on the outside.”

“
I
plan to stay on the outside!”

“That’s one thing I’ve always admired about you, Mitch. Your positive attitude.”

This conversation was not making Mitch feel positive. It was making him feel slightly sick. “Why shouldn’t I feel positive? You… Jeremy? Hey, man, you don’t believe I’ve done anything, do you?” Mitch couldn’t believe he actually had to ask.

Jeremy hesitated. He actually hesitated. “Let’s see what the lawyer says, okay?”

“You can’t make up your mind without a lawyer?” A thought occurred to him. “Do we have a lawyer yet?”

“I’m working on it.”