“You think stores still have turkeys available two days before Christmas?”
“Probably not the good ones. We might be fighting some grandmother for the last decent bird.”
“If not, we’re hunting one ourselves. I’m not serving our Omega chicken nuggets for Christmas dinner,” I add.
“Could go full mountain man. Hunt a turkey, catch some fish, forage for vegetables.”
We’re both still chuckling as Chris pulls onto our property, the truck rumbling over the gravel, and I’m half listening to him talk about how many chairs we’ll need for this so-called Christmas party. I’m already thinking about food, drinks, and whether we can guilt Noel into baking something, but Lily is a master of her craft, so maybe we’ll just order from the bakery in town. Then something shifts in the corner of my vision, and every part of me goes still.
The front gate is wide open.
Not drifting open from the wind. Not unlatched. Wide. And crooked. Hanging at an angle that tells me someone put their hands on it and didn’t give a single fuck about the hardware we set up.
My pulse spikes. “Who the fuck broke in?” I yank out my phone and tap into our surveillance app, flicking through feeds. The gate camera doesn’t load at all. It’s just a dead black screen. “Gate feed’s out,” I mutter, already knowing that’s a bad sign.
Chris kills the engine so hard that gravel sprays across the yard like shrapnel. We’re both unbuckling before the truck even fully stops, boots hitting the ground in the same breath. Adrenaline floods my system, sharp and clean, pushing me forward. Chris doesn’t ask questions, just shoulders past me toward the front door, ready to go through it if it doesn’t open.
The door is closed. Locked. Perfectly intact.
“Watch this,” I say, stopping short when one of the front yard house feeds finally loads. I angle the phone toward Chris as he comes to a halt next to me.
The front yard camera shows a white van with no license plate rolling up our driveway an hour ago. No hesitation. No attempt at hiding. Just a slow, confident pull to a stop right in front of our house.
Four men pile out. All black clothing, hoods up, gloves on. They move quickly, knowing exactly what they’re after..
“Fuck me,” Chris murmurs, leaning in. “Play it back.”
I scrub backward a few seconds. We watch again, four men, heading straight for the side of the house. Not the front door. Not even checking the windows. Straight to the back.
“Hell,” I growl.
“Keep going,” Chris says tightly.
I tap the next camera, the one covering the southwest side of the house. It flickers, static crawling over the screen, then shows the men reaching the back corner.
Then a hand appears, grabbing the lens.
The feed goes white.
Then dead.
“Back cameras are gone,” I say, my teeth grinding. “They found them and destroyed them.”
Chris curses under his breath. “You’re telling me four masked fuckers came onto our property in broad daylight, cut our cameras, and no one noticed?”
“Someone noticed,” I say, thinking of the missing reindeer. “Us.”
He doesn’t argue. We both break into a run, circling around the house toward the rear where the last cameras died. The air feels colder back here, heavier somehow. My instincts are pounding in my ribs like war drums.
Then I see that the gate to the reindeer pen is wide open like someone ripped away the locks and walked straight through without looking back. And there are no reindeer in sight.
My stomach drops. I sprint to the barn, sliding on the frost-hardened dirt, grab the door, and yank it open, already knowing what I’ll see. Nothing.
Empty stalls. Fresh hay. The faint smell of feed. Not a single antler in sight. “Fuck!” The sound rips out of my throat, raw andloud enough to echo. I shove out of the barn, breath turning a sharp white in the cold.
Chris tried the back door of the house. “No one went inside!”
“They didn’t need to.” I point toward the empty pasture, my voice dropping to a lethal growl. “They took our reindeer.”
