Free Covert Christmas by Marilyn Pappano Page B

of a hot meal.
    They were greeted by a shelter worker, given cups of cocoa and directed to tables laid out with Christmas cookies, snacks, cheeses and breads. From the kitchen at the back came the aromas of dinner cooking.
    â€œNice spread,” he commented.
    â€œPeople donate a lot of food at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The holiday spirit, you know.” Natalia didn’t sound as cynical as he thought she might have twenty-four hours earlier.
    Most of the chairs and sofas were occupied, so they found a table they could lean against near a large central pillar and still see most of the large room. Josh located an exit on the south side of the building and a sign indicating another at therear on the north side. Always like to know where the exits are, don’t you? Damn straight.
    Not a way for a grown man to live, huh?
    Damn straight.
    In the center of the room stood a Christmas tree, decorated with twinkling lights and glass balls. Children sat beside it with their parents, young couples held hands and gazed at it longingly, and old men stared sightlessly at it, probably lost in memories of better times, happier Christmases.
    He didn’t want another homeless-shelter Christmas in his future—or Natalia’s. You could run from your problems for only so long. Even if they didn’t catch up with you, there was always the fear that they would, and that was no way to live. It was no way to ask someone else to live.
    But testifying against the Mulroneys, probably having to be relocated with a new identity, leaving his parents and his brother behind for the rest of his life…
    Or refusing to testify, going to trial and hoping that the Mulroneys didn’t have someone in the system kill him to send a message. Asking Natalia to wait five or ten years on the off chance that he did survive, hoping that his enemies didn’t take their revenge on her…
    He sighed heavily, and she looked at him. “What?”
    â€œI hate it when the only choices are crappy, crappier and crappiest.”
    Her pretty features screwed into a frown, but before she could ask when he meant, movement near the main entrance caught his attention. Two men had just come through the door, and three more waited outside at the curb where a van sat. The cost of Clive Leeves’s suit would have fed the shelter’s clients for a month or two, and some of them recognized that as they eyed him speculatively. They paid little attention to skinny, cranky Frank at his side.
    It looked as if Josh had just been given one more option: very likely die in the next few minutes.
    As the men scanned the room, he eased closer to Natalia,momentarily blocked from their view by the massive column. “Take this, would you?” Reaching into his left pocket, he pulled out the wad of cash and surreptitiously pressed it into her palm, then did the same with the second wad.
    She stared at it. “You’re giving it back?”
    He grinned. “It’s your money. Besides, what’re you going to do now that you’ve got it? Run out on me?”
    Her green gaze was solemn, intent. “You know I wouldn’t.”
    â€œI know.” He swallowed hard and hoped she would forgive him for running out on her. Tugging the hood up to cover her hair, he forced another grin. “Go to the john. Fix it so you don’t have lumps in your pockets. You don’t want to tempt anyone in here to find out what they are.”
    She hesitated a moment, and he wondered where Leeves and Frank were in the large room and how long it would take one of them to spot him. Then, with a shrug, she pushed away from the column and headed to the hallway under the Restrooms sign.
    Barely breathing, Josh watched until she was out of sight, then looked around. Leeves was at one end, checking out everyone gathered around the food, and Frank was at the other, slowly circling every sitting area and clump of people. Hands shoved in his pockets,