The little girl’s head bobbed up and down. “In church tonight.”

Grace hugged her granddaughter. “Oh, Katie, you’ll be the best angel ever.”

The girl beamed with pride. Noticing Mary Jo, she immediately walked over. “Hi, I’m Katie.”

“Hi, Katie. I’m Mary Jo.”

“You’re going to have a baby, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

The door opened again and a young couple came in. The man carried a toddler, while the woman held a large, quilted diaper bag.

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” Grace’s daughter said, kissing her mother’s cheek. She turned to Mary Jo.

“Hello, I’m Maryellen. And I’m so glad you’re going to be joining us,” she said, smiling broadly.

Mary Jo smiled back. She’d never expected this kind of welcome, this genuine acceptance. Tonight would be one of the most memorable Christmas Eves of her life.

Now, if only her back would stop aching….

13

“Officer, let me explain,” Linc said, doing his best to stay calm. His brothers stood on either side of him, arms raised high in the air. The deputy, whose badge identified him as Deputy Pierpont, appeared to have a nervous trigger finger.

The second officer was in his car, talking into the radio.

“Step away from the vehicle,” Pierpont instructed, keeping his weapon trained on them.

The three brothers could’ve been playing the children’s game, Mother, May I as they each moved forward one giant step.

“What were you doing on private property?” Pierpont bellowed as if he’d caught them red-handed inside the bank vault at Fort Knox.

“We’re looking for our sister,” Mel blurted out. “She ran away this morning. We’ve got to find her.”

“She’s about to have a baby,” Linc said, feeling some clarification was required.

“Then why are you here?” the deputy asked, his tone none too friendly.

“Because,” Linc said, fast losing patience, “this is where we thought she’d be.”

The second officer approached them. His badge said he was Deputy Rogers. “We had two separate phone calls from neighbors who claimed three men were breaking into this house.”

“We weren’t breaking in,” Mel insisted, turning to his brothers to confirm the truth.

“I looked in the window,” Linc confessed, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize that was a crime.”

Pierpont snickered. “So we got a Peeping Tom on our hands.”

“There’s no one at home!” Linc shouted. “There was nothing to peep at except a crazed cat.”

“I tried to open the back door,” Mel said in a low voice.

“Why’d you do that?” Rogers asked.

“Well, because…” Mel glanced at Linc.

As far as Linc was concerned, Mel was the one who’d opened his big mouth; he could talk his own way out of this.

“Go on,” Rogers prodded. “I’d be interested to know why you tried to get into this house when your brother just told us you were searching for your sister and that you knew there was no one here.”

“Okay, okay,” Mel said hurriedly. “I probably shouldn’t have tried the door, but I suspected Mary Jo was inside and I wanted to see if that elderly couple was at home or just hiding from us.”

“I’d hide if the three of you came pounding on my door.” Again this was from Deputy Rogers.

“What did I tell you, Jim?” Pierpont said. Mel’s comment seemed to verify everything the officers already believed. “Why don’t we all go down to the sheriff’s office so we can sort this out.”

“Not without my attorney,” Linc said in a firm voice. He wasn’t going to let some deputy fresh out of the academy railroad him. “We didn’t break any law. We came to the Rhodes residence in good faith. All we want…all we care about is locating our little sister, who’s pregnant and alone and in a strange town.”

Just then another car pulled up to the curb, and a middle-aged man stepped out, dressed in street clothes.

“Now you’re really in for it,” Pierpont announced.

“This is Sheriff Troy Davis.”

As soon as Sheriff Davis approached, Linc felt relieved. Troy Davis was obviously a seasoned officer and looked like a man he could reason with.

The sheriff frowned at the young deputies. “What’s the problem here?”

They both started talking at once.

“We got a call from dispatch,” Pierpont began.

“Two calls,” Rogers amended.

“From neighbors, reporting suspicious behavior,” Pierpont continued.

“The middle one here admits he was trying to open the back door.”

Mel leaned forward. “Just checking to see if it was locked.”

Linc groaned and turned to his brother. “Why don’t you keep your trap shut before we end up spending Christmas in jail.”

To his credit, Mel did seem chagrined. “Sorry, Linc. I wanted to help.”

Linc appealed directly to the sheriff. “I understand we might have looked suspicious, peeking in windows, Sheriff Davis, but I assure you we were merely trying to figure out if the Rhodes family was at home.”

“Are you family or friends of Ben and Charlotte’s?” the man asked, studying them through narrowed eyes.

“Not exactly friends.”

“Our sister knows Ben’s son,” Ned told them.

Mel nodded emphatically. “Knows him in the Biblical sense, if you catch my drift.”

Linc wanted to kick Mel but, with all the law enforcement surrounding them, he didn’t dare. They’d probably arrest him for assault. “Our sister’s having David Rhodes’s baby,” he felt obliged to explain.

“Any day now,” Mel threw in.

“And she disappeared,” Ned added.

“If we’re guilty of anything,” Linc said, gesturing with his hands, “it’s being so anxious to locate our sister. Like I said, she’s alone in a strange town and without family or friends.”

“Did you check their identification?” the sheriff asked.

“We hadn’t gotten around to that yet,” Deputy Rogers replied.

“You’ll see we’re telling the truth,” Linc asserted.

“None of us have police records.”

With the sheriff and his deputies watching carefully, Linc, Mel and Ned handed over their identification.

The sheriff glanced at all three pieces, then passed them to Pierpont. The young man swaggered over to his patrol car, apparently to check for any warrants or arrest records. He was back a couple of minutes later and returned their ID.

“They don’t have records.” He seemed almost disappointed, Linc thought.

The sheriff nodded. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Mary Jo Wyse,” Linc answered. “Can you tell us where we might find the Rhodes family? All we want to do is talk to them.”

“Unfortunately Ben and Charlotte are out of the country,” the sheriff said.

“You mean they aren’t even in town?” Mel asked, sounding outraged. He turned to Linc. “What are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know.” Mary Jo must have discovered this information about the Rhodes family on her own. The only thing left for her to do was head back to Seattle. She wouldn’t have any other options, which meant this entire venture through dismal traffic, falling snow and wretched conditions had been a complete waste of time.

“She’s probably home by now and wondering where the three of us are,” Linc muttered.

“Maybe.” Ned shook his head. “But I doubt it.”

“What do you mean, you doubt it?” Linc challenged.

“Mary Jo can be stubborn, you know, and she was pretty upset last night.”

“We should phone the house and find out if she’s there,” Linc said, although he had a sneaking suspicion that Ned was right. Mary Jo wouldn’t give up that easily.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Sheriff Davis inserted.

Linc reached for his cell phone and called home. Five long rings later, voice mail kicked in. If his sister had gone back to Seattle, she apparently wasn’t at the house.

“She’s not there,” Linc informed his brothers.

“What did I tell you?” Ned sighed. “I know Mary Jo, and she isn’t going to turn tail after one setback.”

This was more than a simple setback, in Linc’s opinion. This was major.

“Have you tried her cell phone?” the sheriff suggested next.

“Yeah, we did. A few times. No answer,” Linc said tersely.

“Try again.”

“I’ll do that now,” Linc murmured. He reached for his phone again and realized he didn’t know her number nor had he programmed it into his directory.

He cleared his throat. “Ah, Ned, could you give me the number for her cell?”

His youngest brother grabbed the phone from him and punched in Mary Jo’s number, then handed it back.

Linc waited impatiently for the call to connect. After what seemed like minutes, the phone automatically went to voice mail. “She’s not answering that, either.”

“Maybe her cell battery’s dead,” the sheriff said. “It could be she’s out of range, too.”

Actually, Linc was curious as to why the sheriff himself had responded to dispatch. One would think the man had better things to do—like dealing with real crime or spending the evening with his family. “Listen, Sheriff, is Cedar Cove so hard up for crime that the sheriff responds personally to a possible break-in?”

Troy Davis grinned. “I was on my way to my daughter’s house for dinner when I heard the call.”

“So you decided to check us out.”

“Something like that.”

Linc liked the sheriff. He seemed a levelheaded guy, whereas his deputies were a pair of overzealous new-bies, hoping for a bit of excitement. He’d bet they were bored out of their minds in a quiet little town like Cedar Cove. The call about this supposed break-in had sent these two into a giddy state of importance.

“The only essential thing here is finding our sister,” Linc reiterated to the sheriff.

“The problem is, we don’t know where to find her,” Ned put in.