Annie leaned over the side of the sleigh. She was close enough to whisper, “We’ll be back if you don’t keep your promise.”

“I know, Annie. I’m working on it. The papers are actually on my desk.”

“Attagirl, Madam President. We don’t have a lot of patience.”

The magic words galvanized Delilah, who took off at a full gallop. Annie fell back into the sleigh as the horses rumbled down the road to the gate that somehow magically closed the minute the sleigh went through.

Martine stood in the snow and laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“You get all that, Espinosa?” Jack bellowed.

“In living color, Jack!”

Back at the gate Mark Paterno was bellowing for someone to call a goddamn electrician.

“Why?” the president asked. “They made their getaway. And to think you head up my Secret Service detail.” She shook her head in disgust.

“What are you talking about, Madam President?” said Paterno.

“The vigilantes! They just left in the sleigh. Right under your nose, Agent Paterno! Merry Christmas! I’ll see you after the New Year. By then all your bad publicity should be just a memory. No, you are not going to Camp David with me.”

Martine took a deep breath as she walked back to her lonely digs in the White House. She offered up a salute of sorts to the defiant women known as the vigilantes and wished with all her heart that she was one of them.

“Merry Christmas, ladies!”

Epilogue

Epilogue

New Year’s Eve!

With the clock ticking down, the guests on Big Pine Mountain threw on wraps and ran to the center of the compound, where Charles and Myra were standing, their hands full of the sleigh bells from Baron Bell’s sleigh that they had brought back to the mountain.

The solid wall of evergreens and tall pines whispered and trembled, their scent intoxicating, while the blanket of stars overhead winked at and twinkled down on the happy guests.

In unison, the guests started to count down.

“Six!”

“Five!”

“Four!”

“Three!”

“Two!”

“One!”

“Happy New Year!”

The happy, joyous sounds rang over the mountain as the guests slapped one another on the back, kissed each other, and wiped at their eyes.

A new year had just been ushered in.

In just eleven hours and fifty-five minutes, another momentous fete would take place: Myra and Charles’s wedding.

Laughing and singing, the guests made their way back to the main building for their third and last champagne toast of the evening. They gathered around the twelve-foot-tall Norwegian spruce tree, which glowed with brightly colored lights, the angel on top of the tree smiling down on them. The guests held their glasses high as they toasted in the New Year and whatever it would hold for all of them.

Eyes misty, they sang, mostly off-key, “Auld Lang Syne.”

And then it was time to call it a night.