The door still didn’t open, but Molly’s voice sounded from a hidden speaker. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you.” He looked around and spotted a small camera above her porch light. She never failed to surprise him. “Smart,” he noted. “Now open up.”

“I don’t think so.”

He stared into the camera. “We need to talk.”

“So talk.”

“Not happening while I’m standing on your porch with your non-elf neighbor staring at me with her phone in her hand.”

“That’s just Mrs. Golecky. And she’s probably calling the police because you look like a bad guy in your all-black SWAT gear.”

He thunked his head against the wood of her door.

“I’d hurry and start talking before the cops arrive,” she said.

“You’re really going to make me say it out here?”

Silence.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’ll do this your way, but heads-up, Mrs. Golecky just opened her window so she’s getting all of this.”

More silence. Never let it be said that Molly took her stubbornness lightly.

He blew out a breath and opened his mouth to tell her that he’d partner up with her on the elf case, but that’s not what came out. “I need to know what happened the other night,” he said instead. Because he was an idiot.

The door opened and Molly stood there, brows raised. “You sure you want to hear it? I mean . . . suppose you were really bad. And not the good kind of bad.”

“I was not.” Hell. “Was I?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to remember,” she said. “Since it didn’t take but a minute.”

From behind him and across the hedge bush between their front doors, Mrs. Golecky snorted.

Having had enough, he nudged Molly aside and let himself in.

She was grinning at him as he shut and locked her door and faced her. “Looking pretty pleased with yourself,” he said.

She shrugged. “I’m just surprised you’re being so persistent on this line of questioning given your level of . . . performance.”

“Are you going to keep insulting me or tell me the truth?”

She laughed, and damn, it was a nice sound. “Can’t I do both?” she asked.

He gave a single shake of his head and looked around. Her place was small. Tiny, actually, but neat and warm, filled with comfortable-looking furniture and lots of personal touches like pictures and books and thriving plants.

He’d never kept a plant alive in his life. When he’d been with Carrie, they’d shared a place during the times he hadn’t been undercover. She’d loved plants too and he’d been banned from touching them, claiming his bad attitude killed them dead.

He hadn’t cohabitated with a woman again.

Or owned a plant.

“About the other night,” he prompted.

“What about it?” Her eyes were sparkling with amusement. Clearly, she was enjoying the hell out of this.

“I—” He broke off, catching sight of her kitchen table. There were three elves sitting there drinking tea.

“Tell me this is a tea party,” he murmured to Molly. “And that you’re not figuring out their bad Santa situation.”

“Of course I’m trying to figure things out for them. I told them I’d help.”

And that’s when he realized they were far more alike than he could have imagined.

Molly gestured to the first woman. “You’ve met Mrs. Berkowitz, my neighbor. And Mrs. White, her knitting partner. And that’s Janet, one of their coworkers.”

“Here,” Mrs. Berkowitz said, holding out a cup of steaming tea toward him. “It’s ginkgo. It’ll help you with your memory problem.”

“And you can take kava and ashwagandha for your, er, not being memorable problem,” Janet said.

Then they all cackled while Lucas did his best not to bash his head against the wall. “Any new developments?”

“None of your business,” Janet said.

Great. Terrific. With Archer’s directive in his head—watch after Molly, don’t let anything happen to her—he pulled her aside and hopefully out of earshot range. “If you’re serious about this—”

“I am,” she said, no longer smiling, looking very serious indeed. “And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“You’re going to help me.”

Which is exactly what he’d come here to do, but he was curious—and highly suspicious—about why she’d ask. Actually, she hadn’t asked at all; she’d told. She was nothing if not Joe’s sibling. “What makes you think so?” he asked.

“Because it you don’t, I’ll tell Archer and Joe about us.”

Lucas took a deep inhale. “So you hate me and want me to die.”

She laughed. “No.” Her smile faded. “But I’m not stupid, Lucas. Or reckless. I can do the legwork on this, but I also want to go to the village and poke around. I need to get a feel for the place and hopefully find someone to talk to, someone who knows Crazy Nick’s last name, for one. But I need backup. A partner. Someone who’s smart, resourceful, and not afraid to bend a few rules.”

“You have my attention,” he said.

She smiled. “Do you happen to know anyone else with those attributes besides yourself?”

Shit. He looked into her pretty but sharp-as-hell hazel eyes and knew he was sunk.

She turned from him and moved across her living room to the kitchen to sit at the table with the ladies, clearly still favoring her right leg. In the past, he’d tried asking her about it, several times actually, and she’d always brushed off his concerns while at the same time making it clear it was none of his business.

There was no one more proud or stubborn than Molly.

Well, except for maybe him.

But as time went on, he found himself not just wanting to know what had happened to her, but needing to know. He had the feeling it was bad, but as his own past wasn’t exactly filled with happy memories, he’d never pushed because he knew what that felt like.

He had the means to dig into her past. At Hunt, they had the best of the best search programs. Some were so intense and invasive, he could have found the day she’d been conceived and how many cavities her dad might’ve had at the time. Lucas had used those programs without remorse or regret when it came to work and digging into the scum of the earth as needed.

But he’d never been able to bring himself to dig on Molly. He couldn’t justify, even to himself, the invasion of her privacy.

None of which lessened his curiosity any.

Knowing when to fold, he joined the ladies at the table. Mrs. Berkowitz nudged a cup of tea in his direction. He looked at it. It was green, with some flecks swimming around in it. Great. He took a sip and burned his tongue. On top of that, it tasted like ass. “Okay, ladies. Talk to me.”

Everyone started talking at once.

He shook his head and held up a hand. “One at a time. You,” he said and pointed at Mrs. Berkowitz.

“We work all year long,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I have a ledger of work details—Hold up, where are my glasses?”

“On your head,” Mrs. White said.

“Oh. Right.” She put them on her nose. “Better. Anyway, as you know, we’ve not been properly paid and we think Santa’s guilty of fraud and money laundering.”