Page 44 of No Business Like Snow Business

She held the phone out of reach. “I can get it! Keep your eyes on the road.”

I gripped the steering wheel tightly and tried to pretend I believed she could do this. I loved Martha to bits, but phones were not her forte.

“And...sent!” she exclaimed. “‘I’m coming to see you. Don’t go anywhere yet.’ Oh, your stupid phone wrote yeti. Never mind. He’ll figure it out.”

The Christmas Falls airport—The Reindeer Runway—was only small. It was a very short dash from the parking lot to the terminal building, or at least it would have been without Martha slowing me down. Even at her pace, though, it only took a few minutes to get inside.

The terminal was tiny, and my heart sank when I looked around and realized Sterling must have already gone through security. I approached security—it was one TSA worker with a hand wand standing beside a baggage X-Ray.

“Boarding pass and I.D.”

“Hello,” I said. “Hi. My friend is through there, and I need to talk to him.”

“Do you have a boarding pass?”

“No.” I craned my head to look around the X-Ray machine to the small lounge area beyond. I could see a couple of kids playing on the floor, and a woman staring at a coffee vending machine. And, just behind her, I saw a pair of legs stretched out, though I couldn’t see who they were attached to because of the vending machine. But the jeans and shoes looked expensive. “Sterling!Sterling!”

“Sir—”

“Sterling!” I yelled one more time, and then backed away from the TSA guy. “Sorry! Merry Christmas!” I hurried back to Martha’s side. “Do you think he heard that?”

“I think the entire terminal heard that,” Martha said with an approving smile. She nodded toward the check-in desks. “You do realize you could have asked them to call him over the PA, right?”

“Well, I realize thatnow.” I tried to peer past the TSA guy’s glare. “I can’t see if he’s still sitting there or not. I think he’s still there? Is that?—”

“Harvey?”

I spun around to discover Sterling standing behind me, his handsome brow furrowed with confusion. “That’s not you.”

His brow furrowed further.

“In there, I mean,” I said, pointing a thumb over my shoulder at security. “Because you’re out here. You haven’t gone through security yet. Where were you three minutes ago when we got here?”

“The bathroom?”

“Okay, yes. That makes sense.”

I stared at him and he stared at me, and then he said, “What are you doing here? And hi, Martha.”

“Hello, dear,” Martha said.

“Um, didn’t you get my text? It sort of explained...well, no, it didn’t explain. But it did tell you we were coming.”

Sterling took his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen. “I didn’t get any texts.”

“Who did I send it to then?” Martha wondered aloud.

“Martha has a nephew called Goodwin,” I said, and Sterling’s expression morphed from one of confusion to one of utter shock. “Can she look at your photo, please?”

Sterling fumbled with his phone, and I reached out and caught his hand before he dropped it. “Thanks.”

I squeezed his fingers before releasing him.

He slipped his phone into his pocket, exchanging it for the photograph. He held it out to Martha, his eyes wide.

Martha pushed her glasses further up her nose and took the photo. She squinted at it for a moment, and then said, “Yes, that’s Win. And Kyle too. Look at that cap! This must havebeen back when they were still teenagers, and Kyle worked the festival.”

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed, loudly enough that the security guy looked over at us. “Sterling! We did it. We cracked the case.”

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