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They all looked at me now.
“Nobody but us knows it’s missing,” I said. “It’s over a hundred and sixty-five years of tradition. If there’s even remotely a chance we could get this repaired and back in time for the parade, I think we should take it.”
“But they’ll know it’s gone, won’t they?” Noel asked. “When it’s not in the museum?”
Nick studied the sleigh. “I can run enough distraction to keep it from getting out. They move it in the morning to the reindeer farm to hook it up to the animals. It gets driven into town for the parade from there. I can stop at the farm, let them know the sleigh is running behind. Then I’ll tell the staff at the museum that we brought it to the farm early. They’ll believe it coming from me.”
“And you?” Noel asked, looking at Wayne. “Are you going to stop us?”
He stared at the broken sleigh. “I can pretend I know nothing about it. Best I can do. I think that’s what Melanie would want. But if you get caught, I will have to arrest you,” he said, looking at us. “I can’t lose my job, and I got no authority to make this kind of call.”
We all looked back at the sleigh.
“I think you should stay behind,” I said to Lauren. “Just tell me how to get there.”
“No. I’m coming,” she said. “Big Al is my guy. If we do it, we do it together.”
She held my gaze and she didn’t blink.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Let’s go.”
13
LAUREN
IT WAS 2:00 A.M. by the time we loaded the sleigh into a covered trailer Nick had at the tree farm, hitched it to Nick’s truck, and left. We gave Nick and Noel the dog for the night. We didn’t go back to the house to change or get clothes. We didn’t have time. We were still in our ugly sweaters.
Big Al’s was in St. Cloud, a two-hour drive from Little Christmas. We drove straight through and dropped the precious cargo in the shop parking lot at four in the morning with a note for Big Al to call me when he got there. Afterward, we went to the only hotel near the body shop with vacancies and booked the last room they had. It had only one bed.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” William said tiredly, taking off his boots.
“No, sleep with me. I don’t care.”
He didn’t argue.
He folded his sweater down onto the dresser and stood there in the white T-shirt he’d had under it, looking around the cheap room.
I peeled off my sweater. “Are you sleeping in your jeans? I feel like that’s illegal.”
“I didn’t bring anything,” he said.
“Just take them off,” I said, unhooking my bra under my tank top. “Also, I got us toothbrushes from the sundry. I’ll leave yours on the sink.”
“Thanks.”
I turned for the bathroom.
“Lauren?”
I stopped in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“We are in possession of stolen property. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me. “You can’t steal property with someone you just met two days ago.”
“Maybe the spirit of Christmas is the sleigh you steal along the way?”
