Witness Protection Ambush
Autor:in
Jenna Night
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Targeted by criminals — and nowhere is safe After eight years in witness protection, EMT Emma Hayes thought she and her family were safe in rural Montana…until their identities are compromised and she's nearly abducted. She's rescued by her coworker, paramedic Cole Webb, who vows to do whatever he can to protect her. Together, they must outrun the vicious criminals on their trail while searching for Emma's younger brother, who's put himself in the kidnappers' crosshairs as well. But when danger follows them to Cole's family ranch, their race to thwart the ruthless gang after them could be lethal.
ONE
“Single vehicle crash. Sedan struck a tree. I’ll check with the occupants and see if there are any injuries.”
Part-time EMT Emma Hayes was actually off duty as an emergency responder for the small mountain town of Cedar Lodge, Montana. She was on the way to her second job as a librarian when she came across the accident scene along a narrow road skirting the edge of Bear Lake. But she always kept her emergency radio with her in case she came across situations like this when someone needed her help. She gave the dispatcher the specifics on her location.
“Copy EMT-26” came the staticky reply over the radio. The town was in a narrow valley surrounded by jagged mountain peaks and radio reception wasn’t always the best. “Standing by for your update.”
There was more radio traffic after that, but Emma tuned it out for the moment as she pulled up closer and parked. Lakeside Drive was curvy as it edged along the waterfront on one side and a grassy, forested hill on the other. Emma had caught a glimpse of the dark green four-door a few moments earlier, but she’d had the impression that it was parked alongside the shoreline. At the very least, it hadn’t had the front bumper pushed up against a big pine tree like it did now.
She grabbed the basic first aid bag that she kept in the car—she didn’t carry the advanced equipment the paramedics had, but it was definitely better than nothing—and got out. She approached the car and yelled, “Hello! You okay in the car? Anybody hurt?”
The car made some ticking, settling noises as a result of the crash.
Lord, please let the person or persons in this car be okay. And if they need my help, please guide my actions.
The driver’s-side door was open, likely knocked that way in the collision. Emma approached it, concerned when she didn’t see the driver’s head, and she prepared herself to see them slumped over the steering wheel, possibly unconscious. But when she looked into the vehicle, she didn’t see a driver. She didn’t see anybody.
The accident had happened just moments ago. She put a hand to the dented hood. It was still warm.
The crunch of a footstep on gravel pulled Emma’s attention toward two men walking in her direction. Like her, they were on the lake side of the road and they’d apparently been hidden from view by the trees. The occupants of the crashed car, she assumed. They must have gone searching for help. This stretch of road didn’t get much traffic in the late morning.
It seemed strange, though, that they’d gone in the direction they had. Because the main section of town—where they could have found people and businesses—was in the opposite direction.
But they had just been in a crash. Could be that they’d bumped their heads and they were addled.
With her determination to help undiminished, Emma sped up to close the gap between them. “Hey, what happened?” she called out. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” one of them—a bald man with a beard—called out. “Must have been a problem with the brakes.”
His companion, a tall and slender guy with a ponytail, said nothing.
Both of them fixed their gaze on her in a way that caused her to slow her pace without consciously deciding to. And then she realized her mind had registered something. In the dappled light shining down through the branches of the trees alongside the road she saw sunlight glint off of an object. It was metallic and located just below Bald Man’s right hand. The same kind of glimmer showed itself beneath Ponytail Man’s right hand, too.
Guns.
Emma stopped. Her breath caught in her chest and her body tensed.
Eight years after her family was whisked out of Los Angeles and dropped into northern Montana, she’d believed they were safe. She’d imagined the threat was over.
Maybe this was unconnected to all of that. Maybe it was just some random robbery.
No, she knew better than that.
She thought of the car crashed into the tree. No occupants. A staged accident. Their witness protection handlers had told them stories of people who’d been captured and tricked by pursuers in the past. But those witnesses hadn’t been securely hidden with solid cover stories and new identities. They’d all been people trying to evade the bad guys on their own. The point of the stories was to convince Emma’s family to go into the protection plan.
“Emma Burke,” Bald Man called out her old name. Well, same first name, old last name. Either way he confirmed what she’d just thought. He knew her true identity.
So what had happened? How had they found her? And what about the rest of her family? Fear twisted her heart. Had they already captured her parents and her younger brother?
Her thoughts froze as Ponytail Man raised his gun and pointed it at her. “You’re going to have to come with us.”
Her heart thudded so hard that for a moment it was all she could hear. Her body began to shake. She was on the sharp edge of panic with no idea of what to do. Emergency responders should be on their way, but waiting and hoping they’d get here in time was not a great plan.
A loud growling sound caught her attention. Someone riding a personal watercraft on the lake jammed by with the throttle fully opened.
Emma realized the gunmen were also distracted by the loud noise.
Run! Now!
She let the bulky first aid kit drop to the ground and darted across the road and up into the forested grassy hill. Her emergency radio slipped through her fingers. The crack of a gunshot kept her from stopping to retrieve it.
She still didn’t have a coherent plan, just a panicked impulse to survive and get to her family to warn them—if they hadn’t already been discovered and snatched up by Royce Walker’s criminal gang members.
She raced up the grass-and tree-covered hill, immediately feeling short of breath, as if her lungs were locking up. Some of it was triggered by panic and exertion, but there was no mistaking the tight, wheezing sensation of an asthma attack. And of course her inhaler was in her purse back in the car.
She forced herself to continue on. Trying not to leave a trail was hardly an option when it took all of her focus to keep moving and breathe. Finally, she slid behind a group of towering pines with thick trunks and a deep bed of dropped, dried needles at the base. Maybe she could bury herself underneath it. But first, she had to catch her breath.
Listening carefully, she dared hope that the pursuers were straight out of Los Angeles where the gang was centered and that they were helpless and unable to track anybody in the woods.
The sound of male voices along with footfalls in the wild grass and atop fallen pine cones confirmed that her hope was misplaced.
Where was everybody? Where was the cop who should have been on scene by now? Why were they taking so long? Even though she hadn’t given the dispatcher an update, some kind of official response should have been activated.
With the next labored breath she realized that it hadn’t been so long since she’d called in the crash. Just a few minutes. Of course all the emergency responders knew minutes could be critical, but you could only do so much. There were immutable laws of physics. There were other vehicles on the road and sometimes trains at railroad crossings. Even when you were responding to a call and desperately wished those things were not in your way, they were.
The tightness in her lungs eased a little. She didn’t want to go farther up the hill because of the added exertion triggering her asthma, but heading that way made the most sense. It might not feel like it right now, but this was a relatively small hill. On the other side it dropped down into the edge of town where there were small farms and then farther on some streets with houses and shops. There had to be somebody in the vicinity who would help her. And maybe if she got to a populated area, that would be enough of a deterrent to make the gunmen back off.
Her body tensed with fear as the sounds of the pursuers grew louder. She pushed herself to her feet and continued up the hill.
She was gasping loudly now. She couldn’t help it. Each step felt like her foot was chained to a block of cement. Sweat ran down to her brow and into her eyes. She told herself that she could rest when she was safe. Right now she had to keep moving.
She avoided the open areas on the hillside and kept to the shadows beneath the trees until she finally reached the top. She didn’t hear anyone following her and she had to rest for a moment. Pressing her hand against a tree trunk to help her keep her balance, she took a moment to just breathe.
Bang!
A bullet tore through the tree trunk beside her hand.
Fresh waves of icy terror sent her diving to the ground and frantically trying to roll out of the way of gunfire. She tucked her body into a ball, desperately shrinking her profile so she wouldn’t get hit as one of the thugs fired another shot.
After a few moments of quiet, she got back to her feet and continued down the hill on the other side to put some distance between herself and the attackers. But it was clear that continuing along in the same direction was no longer a good option.
New plan. Forging a different path, she’d head back the way she’d come. If she moved quietly enough, maybe the gunmen wouldn’t realize she was doubling back to the road.
She’d just have to breathe the best she could while moving quickly enough to get to her car. Then she could drive away before the creeps noticed. She’d go directly to her parents’ house to make sure they and her brother Austin were okay. Even better, she could grab her phone from the purse she’d left in the car and maybe even retrieve her emergency radio if she came across it and alert everyone in the county about the dangerous situation that was happening.
Doing her best to ignore the fear that nearly overwhelmed her and focus on a good outcome instead, Emma pushed herself to hike back downhill and toward the road.
Halfway there it was painfully obvious that her body was not receiving the benefits of optimal amounts of oxygen. Her head was pounding and her gait was stumbling and clumsy. But she kept going, telling herself that she was almost to the street and soon she would be safe.
She pushed through the edge of the forest where it met the road, grateful to see that she was very close to her car. It was only a few steps away. But she had to take a moment and at least partially catch her breath before she fell over. She was lightheaded and her vision was getting blurry. Her fight to save herself would all be for nothing if she passed out here.
She didn’t hear the bad guys behind her, so she figured she could just take a couple of good breaths and then move on. Well, as good as they would be in the middle of an asthma attack.
Exhausted nearly to the point of collapse, she bent forward and braced her hands on her knees as she took first one breath and then another. Then it was time to get moving again.
But before she could straighten, she felt the tip of a gun barrel press against the back of her neck followed by the voice of Bald Man. “It was a mistake to stop. You should have kept running.”
Paramedic Cole Webb knew something was off as soon as he arrived on-scene.
It had been years since he’d served in a combat zone as a Navy corpsman routinely heading out on patrol with a squad of Marines, but the old instincts and habitual vigilance had never completely left him. Not even back home in Cedar Lodge.
He brought his pickup truck to a stop on the side of the road and began cataloging what was in front of him while considering what could have triggered his unease. Emma Hayes’s SUV was parked by the side of the road but there was no Emma in sight. That was concerning. Initially he’d thought she might be working with patients on the ground and she was hidden from view by her car, but now that he could take a closer look, it was obvious that wasn’t the case. In fact, he didn’t see anybody at all.
“Dispatch, this is Webb. I’m on-scene at the single car crash. No sign of EMT-26 or the driver of the other vehicle. I’m going to look around.”
“Copy,” the dispatcher replied. “I’ve been waiting to hear back from EMT-26. Update as soon as possible.”
Cole had just completed a fifteen-hour shift as a paramedic with the Cedar Lodge Fire Department. He’d been scheduled to work twelve hours, but a multi-vehicle crash with major injuries on the highway west of town this morning meant he was working for as long as emergency services needed him.
He’d heard Emma’s initial transmission regarding the single vehicle accident. With resources already stretched thin and no report of the immediate need for emergency medical response or police assistance, her call dropped to a lower priority. Not an ideal situation, but an emergency system could only do what they could do.
When his shift finally concluded, he’d let dispatch know he would check on Emma. This was his usual route around the eastern edge of the lake and over to the ranch where he lived with his grandfather, his cousin and her husband. Emma, he knew, would have been on her way to the tiny Meadowlark branch of the public library where she worked a half day on Mondays.
“Emma, I’m here at the accident scene,” he said into the handheld emergency radio all the first responders carried even when off shift. Cedar Lodge was a beautiful town, but it was also fairly remote. People needed to look out for each other as much as possible.
He’d already reached Emma’s car and as he glanced inside he heard a sound to his left, seeming to come from the side of the road. It sounded like a radio transmission. He looked over and spotted an emergency radio on the ground. The transmission he’d heard was his own voice. That had to be Emma’s radio.
His initial concern shifted to a chill racing up his spine. Something was very wrong. He quickly turned his attention back to the inside of Emma’s car, searching for signs of foul play. There was no visible blood, but her purse and phone were on the front seat. His pulse quickened as his heart kicked into overdrive. Emma would not have intentionally, willfully, left all these items behind.
He checked the other vehicle. Looked like minor damage at first, but enough of a dent on the front left fender to make the car not drivable. No skid marks on the road, which indicated the driver hadn’t hit the brakes in an attempt to regain control of the car. Was this an intentional collision?
If there was some kind of criminal activity going on, why hadn’t the driver of the crashed car taken Emma’s vehicle to leave the scene? Was the driver aware that Emma worked for emergency services and that most of the cops in town would recognize her SUV? Anyone who took it would be quickly apprehended.
Cole keyed his radio and requested that dispatch roll a law enforcement unit to the crash site.
A familiar voice popped onto the radio almost immediately. “Dispatch, show Volker en route to Webb’s location.” It was Officer Kris Volker, a friend of Cole’s since their school days and an excellent cop.
Cole took a breath and focused his thoughts. He glanced at the dirt and grass beside the crashed car and also beside Emma’s SUV, looking for an extra set of tire tracks. If assailants had grabbed Emma for some reason and left their own car as well as Emma’s SUV behind, wouldn’t that imply that they had accomplices with another vehicle for the getaway?
But why would somebody grab Emma?
They’d worked a few shifts per month together for two years. She’d started as a volunteer with the fire department when she was twenty. At the time Cole had thought of her as a kid. Not only was she eight years younger than Cole, but she’d lived a quiet, predictable life in Cedar Lodge while Cole had been in combat and had spent time in places around the world far different from northern Montana.
But then he couldn’t say he knew her life story. Of course they talked when they worked together, but they kept things professional. He knew she hoped to be a full-time librarian someday, but she could only get a part-time gig doing that for now. She’d told him she had to wait for someone with more seniority than her to quit or retire before she could get a full-time librarian job. Not exactly the kind of job that Cole could personally imagine sacrificing a lot of time waiting for an opportunity, but he had to admire Emma’s determination.
A shadowy thought flickered across his mind. Maybe Emma had some other interest he knew nothing about and that interest had drawn her into a dangerous situation. Plenty of people had some aspect of their life they liked to keep hidden. Cole had seen evidence of that many times. Why should he be surprised if Emma turned out to be no different?
Cole’s own father was not the man he’d pretended to be. He looked clean cut and fooled lots of people while he was actually a criminal lacking ethics or a conscience. His father’s deception, revealed after his parents were married, might not have literally killed Cole’s mom, but he was certain the stress of it had contributed to her poor health. She died when Cole was still in high school.
Enough.
Emma’s personal life was not his business. Didn’t matter if she was living some kind of secret life. Right now he needed to figure out what kind of trouble she was in and help her out of it.
Growing up on a ranch on the edge of the forest with his grandpa, Cole had obtained wilderness and survival skills long before he went into the military. Tracking was something he could do. If Emma was not taken from the scene by a vehicle, but by attackers who were on foot for some reason, then he had a pretty good chance of finding her.
Cole spotted trampled wild grass on the opposite side of the road a few yards away and took off in that direction. He had no idea what kind of situation he would be walking into and he had no weapon other than the short blade on the multi-use tool he carried on his belt. But he would find a way to improvise if he had to, because he couldn’t just stand there and wait for Kris Volker to arrive in his squad car. He needed to see what kind of danger Emma was in right now.
Moving as quickly and quietly as possible while staying alert to his surroundings, Cole walked through the grass and up the hill into the forest. At least the path was unmistakable, with the grass just recently bruised. He guessed that he was following Emma plus one other person, possibly two. They were obviously heading up the hill and back toward town.
As an emergency responder he knew the streets and alleys and dirt roads of town and much of the countryside very well. He knew there was a small farm at the bottom of the hill on the other side. When he crested the hill he saw Emma walking with a man on each side of her. One guy with a long ponytail held her arm and kept yanking her forward as she stumbled. The other guy, a bald man, was yelling into a phone, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying. Each man was carrying a gun in his free hand. They seemed to be headed for a dilapidated storage shed at the edge of the woods.
Cole didn’t want to think about why they were headed there. To kill Emma and conceal her body? To hide themselves for a while because they knew someone was obviously going to be checking out the crashed car and Emma’s SUV beside the road? The possibilities popping into his head were terrible, and he could not let any of them happen. Armed suspects with a hostage in a building was not a situation anyone wanted to deal with.
The small farm at the base of the hill looked quiet. If Cole could get someone to come outside, maybe that would redirect the thugs away from any of the outbuildings and back into the forest. Then Cole would have a better chance of keeping Emma from harm.
Skirting the edge of the woods and grateful the bad guys weren’t bothering to look behind them, Cole picked up a rock and threw it at a farmhouse window. Glass shattered. Dogs inside the house started barking. As Cole had hoped, the attackers immediately changed direction and dragged Emma back into the cover of the woods.
Cole’s phone buzzed. It was his cop friend, Kris Volker. “I’m on-scene, where are you?”
Cole gave a quick description of where he was, the direction he was going and what he’d seen.
“On my way,” Volker said before disconnecting.
Cole couldn’t let up in his chase. Volker was fast in an emergency, but in this instance he might not be fast enough. Fortunately, the assailants still weren’t bothering to look behind them. They appeared to be on a panicked run to get deeper into the forest. Cole would use that to his advantage. He followed them into the shadowy woods and moved up closer on them.
Emma kept stumbling and the thugs were getting impatient. The one who had hold of her jerked hard on her arm and Cole was afraid the man would lose his cool and shoot her. When Emma finally tripped and fell, Cole grabbed the opportunity to jump on the back of the man with the ponytail who’d been hanging on to her. Yanking on the startled gunman’s arm, he wrested the weapon away from him.
On the forest floor where she’d fallen, Emma turned to Cole, an expression of shock on her face.
Ponytail man scrambled into position to take a swing at Cole, but then the criminal saw Cole pointing his own gun at him and he froze.
The bald guy had already vanished into the forest. Cole hated to see the thug get away, but Cole wasn’t a cop. He was a medic. And there was no missing the fact that Emma was having trouble breathing. He could hear her wheezing. She hadn’t even said anything yet. Probably because she couldn’t catch her breath. Cole knew she had asthma and he was concerned for her.
Ponytail guy, now without his gun, put his hands up. Then he slowly backed away. “See you later, Emma Burke,” he said before disappearing into the dark forest.
“Cole.” Emma sounded breathless when she said his name.
Mindful to keep an eye on their surroundings in case the criminals snuck back, Cole radioed Volker with the specifics on where they were and the current situation.
“Almost there,” Volker replied.
Having done all he could, Cole squatted down beside Emma. “Take a minute to rest and try to catch your breath.” Without even thinking about it he was already counting her respirations, which were too fast. He reached for her wrist to take her pulse and she burst into tears, moving her hand so that she was gripping him so tightly his hand went numb.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” she said, gasping and crying as she tried to speak.
Against his better judgment, violating his own rule to keep things completely professional with all of his coworkers, Cole moved closer and wrapped his arms around her until she was clinging to him, her tears soaking his shirt. He could feel her heart racing as she was pressed against him. The paramedic side of him couldn’t help confirming that it was beating way too fast. But the compassionate human side of him felt the stirrings of a protective tenderness that wasn’t exactly part of his job description. Though normally a decisive man, for a second he wasn’t certain what to do about that.
Finally, she released her grip on him and drew back. She was breathing a little easier but still wheezing. Tear tracks ran through the dust on her face.
“What happened?” Cole asked. “Who were those men? Where were they taking you? And why?”
She closed her eyes for a long moment, apparently steadying herself. And when she opened them again, she focused her gaze on his shoulder instead of his face before saying, “I don’t know who they were or what they wanted.”
She was lying. And he wanted to know why. In fact, there was a lot about Emma Hayes he wanted to know right now. He couldn’t help being curious about the woman he’d thought he knew after working with her for two years. Whatever the situation was that she’d gotten herself into, he felt responsible for her safety. Maybe she’d made some bad decision somewhere along the line. Lots of people did. His own mother had made a bad decision in choosing his father. That hadn’t made her a bad person.
Officer Kris Volker pushed his way through the pine trees and stepped up with his gun drawn and his gaze shifting as he surveyed the scene.
“I’m a little concerned they’ll try to jump us as we make our way out of here,” Cole said.
“I’ve got four more cops just a little bit behind me,” Volker said.
Of course. Cops and medics oftentimes used cell phones because anyone could listen in on a radio transmission. Just because Cole hadn’t heard Volker call for backup didn’t mean he hadn’t done it.
When the other officers arrived to make sure everybody got out of the forest without any further trouble, Cole helped Emma to her feet. “I’m assuming your asthma inhaler is in your purse back in your car rather than in your pocket.”
She nodded.
“Are there any officers still at the crash scene who could bring Emma’s asthma inhaler?” Cole asked.
Volker shook his head. “I brought them all with me. I thought the perps might still be lurking nearby and we could catch them and bring them in.” He glanced around. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Breaking another one of his rules regarding coworker professionalism, because apparently this was the day for it, Cole swept Emma up in his arms intending to carry her back to her car. It would be faster than having an officer go fetch her inhaler.
“Are you all right with my doing this?” he asked. “I don’t think a hike would be good for you right now.”
Wide-eyed, Emma nodded, her cheeks red with exertion or embarrassment, Cole wasn’t sure which. “Yes, I’m okay with it. Thank you.”
Relieved that she was alive and safe for now, Cole started walking back toward the road with Volker and the other cops accompanying them.
Emma Burke, the thug had called her.
It was Emma’s choice how she lived her life, and maybe there were some details she kept hidden. Didn’t matter what Cole thought about that. His immediate concern was for the safety of a coworker who was capable, diligent and kind. He worked as a first responder because he cared about the safety of the people in his town. He had some added skills thanks to his military service that could keep Emma safe until the cops got the bad guys. Cole would stay by her side as much as possible until this dangerous situation was stabilized.
Whatever her real name, whatever her true story, Cole had no doubt Emma was in serious danger. Whoever wanted her kidnapped no doubt still wanted her kidnapped. They would try again.
