Sitting at the head of the mahogany table, Chase Jackson forked a drumstick onto his plate, his third of the evening. His mouth was half-full when he took a bite of it.
“Chase,” Shannon said, dabbing his face with a napkin. “Slow down and enjoy yourself, will you? There’s no rush. It’s Christmas, baby. Relax a while.”
Chase choked it down and sat back. “You’re right. Sorry, Shannon. I’m not used to relaxing.”
“I can tell,” she said, grinding pepper onto her sweet potatoes. “So what’s on the agenda tonight? Nothing that involves energy, I hope.”
“How about sledding?”
Shannon shook her head. “You’ve been gone for three weeks. I want to have a quiet night with you.”
“What do you have in mind, then?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.”
“What do you think, Howard?” Chase looked at a bearded man sitting to his right and making swirls on his plate with gravy. “You’ve been quiet as a mouse tonight.”
Howard put down the fork and let his handcuffs rest on the edge of his plate. “How ’bout you take the cuffs off?” he mumbled.
Chase laughed as gravy dripped down his chin onto his apron. “Sorry, Howard, but the chains stay on. President’s orders.”
“When do we get rid of this guy anyway?” Shannon said.
“The chief said he’d call tomorrow to work out the pick-up details. Apparently they’re going to fly a copter in. Isn’t that exciting, Howard? You’re going to go on a helicopter ride!”
Shannon looked past the crackling fireplace to the snowstorm in the window. “I don’t know if that’ll be possible if this keeps up.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Howard said. “I think everything’s going to work out the way it should.”
Chase stopped chewing and glared at Howard. His face was still, solemn. A wave of silence moved across the room. “What was that?” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Howard said.
“Ignore him, Chase,” Shannon said, putting a hand on him. “He’s just trying to rile you up.”
But Chase did not stop staring at Howard. Nor did Howard stop staring back. The moment lasted for a long time.
Suddenly, Chase stood up and, pulling a gun out of his pocket, shot two bullets behind Shannon’s head. A man in the corner collapsed to the ground, wincing and nursing his bleeding arm. Another one appeared behind Howard and pointed his gun at Shannon.
“Make a move and I’ll kill her,” he said. The blood from the injured man sunk into the carpet and made the silence feel thick and pungent. Howard was on his feet now, his comrade giving him a gun with his free hand. Shannon sat shaking in her chair, watery eyes looking at Chase, waiting.
“So what now, Howard?” said Chase, practically yelling. “You run away and wait for us to come after you again? All of Washington knows your name. The cat-and-mouse game doesn’t end after one round.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Howard said, and shot his handcuffs off. They dropped to the ground and soaked in the blood. “In the cat-and-mouse game, you, my friend, are the mouse.”
At that moment, a bullet flew by Chase’s head and shattered the window behind him. Shannon made a break for the window and jumped through the broken shards of glass, Chase close behind her, and they heard a flurry of gunshots sting their ears just as the cold snow stung their socks. With the Ferrari in sight, Chase drew the keys from his pocket and unlocked it. They climbed in and took off, speeding out the black gates of their hijacked mansion and down the narrow icy path that led to the main road, ten miles away.
“Slow down!” Shannon shouted, struggling to get her seatbelt on between Chase’s jerking turns.
“There’s a revolver on the floor in the backseat. Pick it up and make sure they aren’t following.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The woods were thick and unforgiving — they seemed to come at the car instead of vice-versa, the trees barreling toward them only to move out of the way at the last possible moment. Shannon was looking out the back window, gun in hand, waiting for the flash of headlights.
Eventually they reached the main road. There was no sign of Howard and the others in sight. Chase stopped for a moment and looked left and right — miles of Adirondack wilderness was in either direction. He decided to go right, not for any particular reason other than to keep driving away from the mansion.
Shannon finally turned around and struck the glove compartment with her heel. “I can’t believe you let that happen!”
“I let it happen? Sorry that Howard’s friends are rogue bounty hunters and ex-spies!”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. How else would they have found us? Look, I’m sorry. We’ll just have to lay low for a while until they forget about us.”
“Chase, there’s only three of them!”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. They’re stealthy, but they don’t travel lightly. They usually have the upper hand with numbers.”
Shannon didn’t say anything for a long time. The engine was the only sound in the wilderness.
“How’s Christmas in Quebec sound?” Chase said. “We could make it there by tomorrow morning.”
“I’m not speaking to you. I almost died in there.”
They drove on for a while, and when they knew they’d lost Howard’s group they drove some more because they didn’t know what else to do. Finally Shannon spoke.
“I want to spend Christmas in the Adirondacks. Like we planned.”
Chase sighed, knowing what she would say next. He pulled over to the side of the road.
They got out and walked to the trunk. Before she opened to trunk, Shannon gave Chase a knowing glance and nodded. He stared back at her blue face framed in a background of starlit pine trees. She turned the key and the trunk flew open. The two of them huddled together and looked carefully over the selection of weapons that lay neatly before them on a red, velvet cloth: sniper rifles, pistols, a shotgun.
“You pick first,” Chase said. “I’m in the holiday spirit.”