Free The Christmas Thief by Julie Carobini Page A

on foot, especially after dark. The mountain zigzagged a bit, and she quickly found herself darting from one end to the other—only higher up in elevation.
    A surprising lack of people filled the neighborhoods along the ridge. Then again, weekenders had likely gone back to their normal lives, and those who lived up there were probably still on their way home—many in Cottage Grove commuted inland to work. Some properties did look abandoned, though. Not terribly unkept or dilapidated, just quiet, forlorn, like they hadn’t enjoyed inhabitants for a long while.
    Tasha pulled her Subaru up to a darkened house, pulling as close to the edge of the property as possible. She stepped out of the car, her boots scuffing over the needle-strewn roadway. The thick smell of damp pine met her senses, and cool fog dripped from the redwoods. She slipped on a pair of wool gloves to keep her hands warm as the night grew cold and began to walk, not quite sure what she expected to find.
    When her toe kicked a thin, woody branch that had fallen from a tree, she stooped and picked it up, bringing it along for a companion as she walked farther along the meandering road. Up ahead, a metallic green truck sat in front of a lighted yellow house. She slowed. She had seen that truck somewhere before. Her mind zipped through images of the post office, the grocer’s, and the organic fruit stand she pulled into on occasion after work, but she couldn’t place the truck.
    And then she remembered. Andy’s girlfriend had appeared one night at the barbecue in a truck similar to this one. At least, the color was similar. She peered at it more closely, taking in the stickers littering the truck’s back window—Country Girl, a pot leaf, and a saucy die-cut sticker of an anatomically flawed stick figure batting her eyelashes. No wonder Marc had steered Andy away from the girl.
    With resolve, she kept on walking, gouging the stick into the ground with each step. A few lights from homes to the north appeared in the canyon around the bend, bathing everything in a simmering glow. She breathed in the earthy mix of dense wood air and listened for the rhythmic sounds of the sea that she enjoyed from her small cabin that sat closer to the cliff. Occasionally, a burst of water slamming into rock would reach her ears, but otherwise, the mood on the hill was more quiet and forest-like.
    When she rounded the corner that led her back across the front of the mountain, she stopped at the sound of sparring voices. Words like “ogling” and “freezing” and “other woman” pierced the silence. She glanced at the white-painted wood home to her right, its lights blazing. It hung over the edge of the cliff, and as she moved past it, she looked back up the hill to see dormers inset like winking eyes in the sky.
    Jim and Helena’s house.
    She crept closer and listened in the dark to mangled sentences spoken in harsh tones. Guilt crept through her. What if they knew she was listening to their argument? Or, at least, that she was trying to? Tasha shook her head of curls and blew out a breath, determined to keep what she heard—or what she thought she heard—to herself. She took a step back, forgetting that to get there in the first place she had stepped over a row of river rock lining the home’s perimeter. She stumbled backward, letting out a small cry as she caught herself from falling squarely on her tail bone.
    The unmistakable bark of an angry beagle interrupted the peaceful night. A screen door creaked open, then fell shut. As she scrambled to right herself, Tasha caught sight of a figure in the dark. “Somebody out here?” a voice called.
    She recognized the voice as Jim’s.
    Tasha held up the stick. “Yes, yes. Jim, it’s me—Tasha, from down the hill.”
    Jim stood under the porch light, his eyes squinting. “What’re you doing up here in the dark?”
    She forced a chuckle and poked the stick back onto the ground. “Just out for a walk. Work was exhausting