Through the mirror, Pike and Archer watch Nyota Uhura take a seat at the table in the interrogation room. The young woman is not just lovely but beautiful in the kind of way that entices men to do stupid things. Her hair is long and dark and sleek, pulled into a tight ponytail that shouldn’t be so tidy hours after an arrest. Even her lipstick is a vibrant cranberry red, like it was recently applied, matching perfectly to the color of her Santa’s Village outfit. Chris gives Uhura an once-over, from lush mouth to low-cut uniform top all the way down the seemingly endless line of her bare legs, and wonders how long it took Jim to hit on her the first time they met. Five seconds? Ten? And she would have slapped him down, Chris bets, because the Kirkian charm never works so well on women who ooze self-confidence and supreme satisfaction like this one does.

After the deputy-guard is gone, Nyota Uhura gives the room one cursory glance before she adopts a bored expression and begins to pick at her manicured nails.

“We had to take her out of the women’s holding,” the sheriff whispers, “and put her in with the men.”

“Is that wise?” Chris asks quietly.

Jonathan looks pained. “Trust me, where she is is safer for everybody involved.”

Uhura lifts her eyes to the mirror, her gaze landing directly on the men as though she can see them standing there, talking about her. Her hands have stilled momentarily. Next to Chris, Jon shudders.

“Jon?”

“Women,” he says bleakly, “are vicious creatures, Christopher. Better to stay the hell away from them.”

“What?” Chris realizes he is whispering and clears his throat, repeating in a normal voice, “What?” Really, they’re being foolish. The woman can’t hear them.

In the other room, Uhura cocks her head. “Are you Chatty Cathies coming in here or not?”

Jonathan jumps in surprise and backs away from the mirror. Refusing to look anywhere but at his boots, he mutters in Pike’s direction, “Good luck.” Then, in the same breath, “Anything particular you want on your tombstone?”

Is that a joke? His friend’s face implies the question is entirely serious, and he will personally see to it that Pike gets a favorable epitaph. Fighting a sigh, Chris slips his hands into his pockets, grateful the material of his borrowed jacket is sturdy enough to hide the outline of the bandage around his arm. “Just make certain you take notes, Sheriff.”

Jonathan nods mutely and returns to watching Uhura like he knows what is about to happen is a train wreck and he is still incapable of looking away. Chris decides he won’t let another man’s fear get the best of him. Smoothing his expression into an aloof mask, he tugs on the doorknob and leaves the hideaway room, certain his years of experience in dealing with hardened criminals will not fail him.

It could be, he admits much later, that he is occasionally wrong. Even the hardened criminals would eventually run screaming (or curl up into a tiny ball if their shackles prevent escape) once they went toe-to-toe with Nyota Uhura.

Chris takes one slow, deep breath after another. In-out. In-out.

“That isn’t going to help,” Nyota tells him sagely.

Somehow, somewhere, she acquired a nail buffer. Chris has never been frightened of a nail buffer until now. He doesn’t dare take it away from her.

“We’ll start over from the beginning,” he says and winces. “At six o’clock you were fix—um, brushing your hair for the party when you realized…”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

Nyota stops inspecting her nails and looks at him. “Why do we have to go over this again?”

To torture me? “I need to be certain I understand the facts.”

Her eyes roll ceiling-ward. “Here they are then, in order of priority: Fact 1, you’re less of a dipshit cop than your sheriff buddy with the stupid hat but I’m still not telling you anything; Fact 2, I was finishing the second coat of paint on my toenails at six, and at six-oh-five I started combing my hair—”

Chris pillows his head on his arms and lets her go on. No point in stopping her now.

“—Fact 3, your son is an ignoramus and if he ever puts his hands on my chest again, I will castrate him with a spoon—”

Pike’s shoulders shake. He doesn’t lift his head because he isn’t ready to reveal that he is crying, not laughing.

“—and finally Fact 4.” Uhura takes a long pause, waiting on Chris to wipe his eyes and sit up. “Whatever you think happened is wrong.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“You’re male. You can’t be thinking much, so I don’t have to guess too hard.”

“Please don’t insult me.”

She cocks her head. “Then don’t arrest me on charges you can’t even prove and waste my time.”

“This is a waste of my time,” he snaps, suddenly irritated. “Why the hell are all of you kids so stubborn? We want to sort out this mess and help you, for god’s sake!”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Uhura asks, sounding curious.

He rubs at the bridge of his nose and corrects, “I want to help you.”

“You want to help your son. What do you care about the rest of us?”

It’s a legitimate concern on her part. Pike is worried mostly about Jim. But knowing Jim cares about these people does make a difference with Chris and how he approaches this case—mainly because Jim isn’t liable to leave unless everyone does. Kirk is loyal to a fault, which Chris supposes is natural given that Jim trusts almost no one and so those he does become close to have proven worthy of his trust in some fashion or another.

It makes him wonder, not for the first time, how loyal Jim is to him. If, by now, he has earned a proper place in the boy’s heart. Sometimes Chris thinks so; at other times, he simply expects Jim to end all contact with him. Kirk is legally an adult. He doesn’t need Pike anymore for food or clothes or a roof over his head. And no matter how often Chris convinces himself it won’t make a difference to Jim, the simple fact is they aren’t related by blood. To Chris, two people who choose to be family will always be strongly tied together, but he knows not everyone feels the way he does.

Chris sets aside those thoughts because now it isn’t the time or place to be worrying about where he fits into Jim’s life besides, obviously, as a reliable source of bail money.

“I have no desire to put innocent people in prison,” Pike tells her. “But at this point, Uhura, you haven’t given me much to go on.” He drums a rhythm on the table with his fingers. “I know the party was a cover.”

She doesn’t flinch or look away but asks him bluntly, “Why do you believe that?”

He smiles slightly. “It sounds like something my son would think up.”

A thoughtful silence stretches between them. Nyota’s dark eyes burn with intelligence as she thinks about what she wants to say next, and Pike muses with deep regret that she is wasting her talents on retail work. Why isn’t this woman in college—or at a police academy somewhere? He’ll mention the idea to her if they make it out of this mess unscathed.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Nyota begins, “if the party was a cover, what do you think would be the motive behind it—other than stealing some shitty old town relic? Which, by the way, only morons would do.”

Oh, yes. She would definitely make a great detective some day.

“Jim is a moron on occasion,” Chris admits, making Uhura laugh, “but if we’re talking motive, when it comes to Kirk…” He doesn’t even need Sulu’s hint to know the right answer. “I would have to guess people.”

Jim doesn’t give a damn about politics—governmental, corporate or religious—unless it’s directly related to a person he knows. It comes down to the basic fact that if Jim sees someone in trouble, he has a tendency to try to help. Pike was very surprised to learn that Jim had a hero-complex at such a young age. Most children are too scared to jump into a serious fight. Jim would without a moment’s consideration for himself. One time he tried to run into a burning building after a firefighter, and Pike had to lock him in the back of a squad car. Apparently the boy had seen a puppy in one of the windows and thought nobody would save it. Suffice to say, Pike had a talk with every firefighter coming in and out of that building about the puppy, much to their chief’s growing rage. The dog did get saved though, and Jim’s face, pressed against the car window, was priceless when a sooty young man handed over the wriggling bundle to an EMT. Jim named the puppy Sam, and they kept it for about one week before the owner showed up to claim Sam with a teary-eyed child in tow. Jim had been rather gracious about the whole thing, except that he refused to leave his room for an entire weekend and Pike had to listen to the child’s muffled crying.

Chris thinks he made a lot of mistakes in those days. It was slightly traumatizing to go from being a bachelor to the father of a preteen in a matter of days, and it took a long time for him to figure out what he should be doing and, of those things, what actually worked when it came to Jim.

Nyota draws his attention from the past by leaning forward, her mouth curved as she says, “That’s a universal motive, Detective—but a good guess.”

His heart leaps in his chest. “Then who is Jim protecting?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions.”

“What are the right questions?”

“Why would any of us need protection, and why would it involve a stupid star?”

But will she provide Pike with the answers? He knows he has to tread very carefully now. “Usually a scenario involving those questions would be nefarious in nature.”

She nods, suddenly serious, and agrees, “Very nefarious.”

His mouth feels dry. Jim and nefarious are two words Chris never wants to put together in a sentence. “Can you tell me about… this scenario?”

Uhura sits back and considers him. “I don’t think I can.”

“Why not?”

“Because you may want to turn us loose, but the moment you do things fall apart for everyone.”

“I don’t understand.” But he does. Oh, he does.

Nyota gives him a hint of smile and tells the mirror behind him, “I’m done here. Take me back.” To Pike, she lowers her voice so the words won’t carry well through the microphones hidden around the room. “I will give you one last thing to think about, Detective.” She allows for a momentary pause. “Your son is the only one of us who used his phone call—and he called you.” She gives Pike a slow once-over. “I hope you’re as smart as Kirk seems to think you are.”

Jonathan is in a strange mood when Chris returns to the room on the other side of the mirror.

“You let her lead you around by the dick,” the sheriff accuses, pacing along the back wall of the room.

“I had to,” Chris says, shutting the door quietly. “She would have sent me on a wild goose chase otherwise just to prove she wasn’t intimidated. I’ve dealt with ones like her before, Jon. Let them hold the reigns for a while, and you have a better chance of getting what you want from them.”

“I still don’t—” But Archer doesn’t finish what he wants to say. Instead he stops pacing and studies Chris with an inscrutable gaze.

“What else?” Pike asks patiently, leaning against the closed door. The metal is cold enough to be felt through the layers of his clothes.

“This should be over. Why isn’t it over?”

Chris puts a hand to his injured arm as an answer.

Jonathan’s eyes darken. “That bastard won’t see the light of day ever again. I swear it, Chris.”

Pike just shakes his head, disappointed that his friend doesn’t understand. But Jon will, soon enough. First though, there is the matter of an idiot Pike needs to talk some sense into. “I want to see McCoy again,” he tells the sheriff.

Jon sighs through his nose but doesn’t argue against the request, only reminding Pike, “We’re almost out of time.”

“Yeah,” agrees Chris, “we almost are.”

Christmas Day is but a few short hours away.

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