Page 25 of Silver Hills' Christmas Miracle

“That’s a relief,” Kitty murmured, and she pressed back into her seat.

“So,” I said, deciding this was the perfect time to get the truth. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“What do you mean?” Kitty asked, and I could hear the lilt in her tone. She was playing dumb, but I wasn’t going to stand for it. She was involved in this somehow.

“Well, for one, I caught you with that crowd, holding the door open for them. And another, that stranger you called a friend? Kitty, it’s my job to know all the people you’re in contact with, and he isn’t a friend.”

“Well… acquaintance is a better word,” Kitty said.

“Stop dancing around the truth and tell me straight, Kitty. What level of involvement do you have with those people?”

“What makes you think I’m involved?” Kitty snapped, and she straightened up in her seat. “Maybe I was just passing.”

I gripped the steering wheel. “How did we go from a confession of feelings to lying?” I ground out, staring hard at the passing tree line.

Kitty sucked in a breath and fell silent. From the dip in her brow, she seemed to be debating with herself and I no longer had the words for her. If she was going to lie to my face, then I couldn’t trust her.

And if I couldn’t trust her about this, then what else couldn’t I trust her about?

“Okay,” Kitty said eventually, and her voice was low. “I did let them in.”

“Why?” I exclaimed. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”

“Yes!” Kitty sighed deeply. “Look, I mean this as kindly as I can, but you’re not from around here, okay? I grew up with these people. This town is my life. I’m watching my father destroy it for money and his misguided desire to bring this place into the future. He’s destroying the livelihoods of my friends. There’s been more closed stores in the past six months than there has been in my entire twenty-six years living here.”

Kitty’s voice trembled slightly.

“I’m so vehemently against this deal and he doesn’t see it. I tried fighting with him, arguing and showing him the damage he was doing, and I’ve come up short, so when I heard there were protestors, sure, I got in touch with them.”

“You’ve been helping them?” I asked slowly, working to make sure I understood exactly what she was confessing to.

“Yes,” Kitty said softly. “I’ve given them information in the past. You remember the fire at the place on the edge of town where they house all the machinery?”

I nodded. That fire had been terrible but oddly contained. Despite being right on the edge of the forest, the flames only damaged the construction vehicles.

“Well, I helped with that, trying to delay the timeline to give people more time to organize. And so I gave them the address of the meeting because they asked for it.”

“And you let them in.”

“Yeah. That night when the alarm was tripped at the manor?”

Tension rippled down my spine. “The night you and I…?”

“Yes.” Kitty shifted in her seat to face me. “Don’t get me wrong. Everything that happened between you and me? Iwanted it to happen. It was going to happen. I hadn’t been planning on confessing my feelings so soon, but I’m glad I did.”

“But…?”

“But the alarm was tripped by Anton. The guy you tackled. He was here to ask me to let the protestors in. I think they’re trying to either scare my father or scare investors into thinking this deal is too much of a hassle. And I agreed because my dad just doesn’t listen.”

I understood her to some degree. She was right, I wasn’t from around here, but I could see at a glance how much this deal was harming this town. And at Christmas, a time when people were supposed to be forgetting their worries and embracing family. Instead, they were facing unstable land, dying businesses, and a mayor who didn’t care.

“Do you see how dangerous that was?” I said.

“Yeah…” Kitty puffed out her cheeks. “But who knows, maybe it will work.”

As I mulled over her confession, one thing stuck out to me and my gut twisted. “Kitty, if you’re working with these protestors, then the threats against you and your mother, are they fake?”

“No.” Kitty sighed deeply. “They’re real.”

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