Witness Protection Unraveled
Author
Maggie K. Black
Reads
17.2K
Chapters
18
ONE
Travis Stone sprinted down Main Street in the small town of Kilpatrick, Ontario, ignoring the fact that Detective Jessica Eddington, the one and only woman his damaged heart had ever really cared about, was now relentlessly calling his cell phone.
The late June evening was warm around him. The air was thick with the threat of rain. He was fifteen minutes late to pick up the two most amazing little kids in the world, and their grandmother, Patricia, needed him to take them so she could close up her store for the night and rush off to her book club. Right now, that was what mattered.
When he’d gotten them from Patricia’s and dropped them off at school in the morning, five-year-old Willow had told him she’d had a nightmare about a “shiny man” with a flashlight standing outside her bedroom window. Travis figured it was probably just part of her dealing with the tragic death of her police officer parents six months ago, shortly after Willow’s baby brother was born. They’d both been killed when a drunk driver had panicked and accidentally careened through the impaired driving checkpoint they’d been manning. Still, not giving Willow or her grandmother any reason to worry mattered more right now than stopping long enough to take Jess’s call.
Even if, after four long years hiding in witness protection, he still missed Jess so much that even just seeing his former partner’s name on the screen made his chest ache to breathe.
Travis and Jess had worked over fifty cases together and, according to her message, Jess was calling to get his advice about one more for “old times’ sake.” Considering the dangerously unhealthy workaholic he’d once been, he didn’t want to risk getting sucked back into the career that had almost destroyed him. Not one case. Not one call. Even though hearing her voice on his voice mail a few days ago had almost been enough to make him call her back to say he’d help with the case.
Lord, help me be strong enough to not get mixed up in whatever case Jess wants my help on and to put my life as a detective behind me forever.
The final operation he and Jess had worked together—taking down an international crime lord known only as “the Chimera”—had led to a disastrous personal failure that had forced Travis into witness protection for his own safety. It had felt like the death of everything he’d cared about but had led instead to his slow and painful rebirth as a new man in this close-knit Ontario community. He was now a better man. One who showed up for the people who mattered. One who didn’t toss back coffee and caffeine drinks to stay awake all day and then pour obsessively over files or pace crime scenes at night like an irritable and jittery insomniac. He no longer laughed off belief in God or snapped at anyone who irritated him.
He was now a man people cared about and relied on. He couldn’t give that up.
Not even for Jess. No matter how much her dazzling blue eyes and determined smile might still float at the edges of his mind some nights.
The phone stopped ringing as he passed Harris’s Bakery. He waved a quick hand at the couple sitting on a bench by the front door. The new kindergarten teacher, Alvin Walker, had his arm around Harris Mitchell’s daughter Cleo. That was new, and likely to be the most exciting gossip Kilpatrick had seen in weeks, especially since Cleo’s last boyfriend, Braden, had been a particularly nasty piece of work.
“Hey, where’s the fire?” Alvin shouted to him.
Three years since Travis had joined Kilpatrick’s voluntary firefighter brigade and still the joke never got old.
“Got to pick up Willow and Dominic for dinner so Patricia can close up the store,” Travis called without letting his footsteps falter. “And I’m running late!”
Alvin laughed. “Well, you’d better hurry then.”
He was. Travis reached Tatlow’s Used Books and Café with its tiny apartment on the second and third floor that Travis called home. The red and white sign in the front window had already been flipped to Closed but the front door was still unlocked. He pushed the door open, as chimes jingled.
“I’m here!” he called. “Sorry I’m late! Someone called the volunteer firefighters about a baby skunk caught in a smoothie cup. Took me forever to coax him out—”
He froze. The store was empty. No gray-haired Patricia wagging an understanding finger at him from behind the front desk. No Willow leaping up from a spot on the multicolored carpet where she’d been “reading” her baby brother a picture book and then charging into his arms. And yet the lights were on. Stained-glass lamps cast a gentle glow over an array of mismatched furniture, well-worn shelves stacked high with books and the long side counter that sold flavored coffees and pastries. An unexpected chill ran down his spine. Where was everyone?
“Patricia?” The front door swung shut behind him. “Willow?”
Then he heard a crack, soft and muffled like a firecracker going off inside a blanket, followed by the faint clink of something metal hitting the floor. No matter how many years he spent in civilian life, he’d never forget those sounds. Somewhere inside Tatlow’s Used Books someone had fired a handgun with a silencer and the bullet casing had fallen to the floor.
I don’t know what’s going on here, Lord. But I need Your backup right now.
The undercover detective he’d once been knew without a doubt that if he didn’t proceed cautiously he could put himself in the line of fire. But the man he was now—part-time landscaper, unexpected babysitter and volunteer firefighter—knew that he’d gladly take a bullet for Patricia and her grandchildren.
What had started out as a simple landlady and tenant situation when he’d first rented the apartment above the bookstore had found him unexpectedly blessed by a family. It had been Patricia’s son and daughter-in-law, Geoff and Amber who’d practically hauled him through the rough patch of starting his life all over again, even though he’d never been able to tell them why he’d come to town and that he’d once also worn a badge. When Geoff and Amber had then been struck and killed, leaving elderly Patricia alone in the world and orphaning the children, Travis had vowed he’d do whatever it took to keep them safe. He wasn’t about to break that promise now.
“Willow?” he shouted, scanning the main room rapid-fire before moving into the next one. “Anyone there? Shout if you can hear me!”
A crash sounded that seemed to shake the walls around him and his hand reached instinctively for the weapon he no longer carried. He made his way through the bookstore then pushed through a door into the back hallway. To his left was the staircase leading to his second-floor apartment. Straight ahead was the door that led outside. He turned right and ran into the back storeroom.
And saw his landlady’s lavender-clad pant legs and sensible shoes sticking out from behind a pile of boxes.
“Patricia!” He dropped down on the floor by her side. “Are you okay? What happened? Where are the kids? I heard a gunshot.”
Sweat soaked her short white hair and her face was pale, but he didn’t see any obvious injuries or blood.
“Travis...” Her eyes were open but as she tried to sit, pain flooded her face. “I saw a bright light...and I... I think I fell...off the ladder.”
Had she? A rolling ladder lay just a few feet away and he knew how stubborn she was about doing things herself instead of waiting for help.
“A light?” he repeated. “Like a gunshot or flashlight?”
Like the “shiny man” from Willow’s nightmare? It had been just a nightmare, right? There hadn’t actually been someone outside Patricia’s remote farmhouse shining a light in the little girl’s window, had there?
“It was like...” Patricia’s voice faltered. “Like a camera flash.”
A portable video baby monitor lay on the floor by her side. The screen was shattered.
“Where are the children?” he asked again.
“Upstairs. Asleep.”
He reached for his cell phone and dialed.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” The voice was male and crisp. Travis quickly gave him the address and the details. The dispatcher confirmed paramedics were on their way. His phone rang again but he ignored it as Patricia’s eyes fluttered closed.
“The children are safe upstairs?” Travis repeated.
Patricia nodded faintly. “In your apartment. Dominic was napping and Willow fell asleep reading to him. I was watching them on the monitor.”
“Okay,” Travis said. He’d set up a few baby monitor screens around his apartment and the store, so the adults could be in another room while the kids napped. “Paramedics are on their way. I’m going to run next door and get someone to come wait with you while I go check on the kids.”
He turned to go, but felt Patricia grab his hand. He spun back.
“Promise me you’ll take care of my grandbabies,” she said. There was a weight to her words he couldn’t grasp. “No matter what. Promise me.”
“Of course,” he said. He squeezed her hand gently and let it go. “I promise.”
Then he ran back outside as fast as he could push his legs to go. Seconds later, he was back with Alvin and Cleo, who’d immediately leaped to their feet and agreed to help. Once he was sure they were settled with Patricia, he pelted upstairs. He was almost at his apartment door when his phone rang again. This time he answered. “Hello?”
“Hey Travis? It’s...Jess... Um, Detective Jessica Eddington.” Instantly her face swept into his mind, her long blond hair tied up in a bun at the nape of her neck and her perceptive blue eyes on his face. “I know this is unexpected but—”
“Is this a secure line?” Travis cut her off before she could finish her sentence.
“Yes—”
“Has my witness protection file been compromised?” he asked.
“No,” Jess said and he appreciated how direct her answer was.
“Are you sure?” he persisted. “Is there any way the Chimera knows I’m still alive?”
Known only by his alias, “the Chimera” was believed to be from Eastern Europe and had managed to amass a cruel and vicious international operation due to one simple principle: no one who’d ever seen his face or left his employ lived to talk about it. When Travis had gone undercover to take down his North American operation, with Jess as his behind-the-scenes partner, they’d successfully located and dismantled his cover business, arrested his entire team and freed every person he’d trafficked.
But one thing had gone disastrously wrong. They hadn’t arrested the Chimera or successfully identified him. Yet Travis had seen his face. He’d even had the man set in his sights, but his hands had been shaking so hard from lack of sleep plus caffeine withdrawal, he’d failed to make the shot. No match had ever been made for the police sketch Travis had been able to supply. The Chimera had set a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head, and the man Travis had once been had disappeared forever.
“We’ve had absolutely no indication of any kind that your identity has been compromised,” Jess said.
“The entire RCMP witness protection database was stolen by criminal hackers at Christmas,” Travis reminded her. “Over a dozen files were auctioned off.”
“And your secret identity file wasn’t one of them.”
“Yeah, I know,” Travis said. He’d fielded over half a dozen calls from RCMP officers in the months since then, both reassuring him of that fact and offering him a new identity if he wanted one. But he hadn’t been about to leave Kilpatrick.
He reached the top of the stairs and unlocked his apartment door. “So you all say. But I’m dealing with a potential situation and I need to know if it could be connected to me, my past, my identity, criminals we took down together, the Chimera, any of it?”
There was a short pause, as if Jess was confirming something before responding. From the background noise, it sounded like she was in a car. When her voice came back, she was all cop.
“No,” she said, “there has been absolutely no suspicious activity anywhere online related to you.”
He breathed a prayer of thanksgiving.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Hopefully nothing.
“My landlady fell,” he said. One of the two children he’d babysat might’ve seen a “shiny man” with a flashlight outside Patricia’s farmhouse and mistaken it for a nightmare. And he was still really sure he’d heard a gunshot even if he didn’t know where or how. “I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
He hung up before Jess could answer, his heart still reeling from having heard the sound of her voice, and ran through his front door, down the hallway and into his study. Dominic’s crib was empty as was the little cot beside it that Willow sometimes napped on. Warm June wind rushed through the open window that led out to the fire escape.
The floor creaked behind him. Travis felt a blow, swift and hard on the back of his head. He fell forward, dropping his phone as it rang. The last thing he saw before being jumped from behind was Jess’s Caller ID.
Detective Jess Eddington stared down at her cell phone where it sat mounted on the dashboard of her car. Her hands shook as she tightened them on the steering wheel. Hearing Travis’s warm and deep voice down the phone line had unexpectedly stirred something inside her, like how hearing a snatch of a song could take her back to a place and a time she’d loved long ago. She glanced up at the blue-and-white sign welcoming her to the town of Kilpatrick. Travis still had no idea she was here.
“Well, you tried to warn him we were coming.” The lackadaisical voice of hacker Seth Miles rose from the seat beside her. He had two laptops balanced on his long, skinny legs plus at least two cell phones. “I can’t believe he actually hung up on you. That’s gotta sting. Remind me again why we drove six hours across the province to recruit a man for an operation who clearly doesn’t want to talk to you?”
She pressed her lips together and drove. Seth was teasing her and she didn’t have to rise to the bait. But that didn’t stop the answer to his question from circling through her mind. Because she was about to take on the riskiest mission of her life to unmask the vicious crime lord who’d forced Travis into witness protection and didn’t want to do it without him.
Travis had been one of the best she’d ever worked with, in the grueling and exhausting work of taking down those who preyed on the most vulnerable. While he’d worked too long hours and was frequently worn down from forgetting the basics like eating or sleeping, he’d also been relentless and thorough, and had this way of having her back that made her feel invincible.
The sheer relief and elation she’d felt four years ago when they’d finally taken down the Chimera’s entire Canadian operation had led to heartbreak when somehow a fluke missed gunshot had led to the crime lord himself getting away and escaping the country, forcing Travis to fake his death and give up his life in law enforcement for good.
But things had changed since then. She’d been part of forming an elite, off-the-grid team that had worked hard to undo the damage of the theft and sale of the witness protection files. They’d gotten smarter about protecting people’s identities and one of their own, Seth, was himself in witness protection. With the right tactics and new location, they could completely hide Travis from the Chimera, too, while he helped her stop him once and for all.
“Because we could use someone like Travis,” she said eventually, trying and failing to keep her thoughts to herself. “He’s the best I’ve ever worked with. He risked everything to take down the Chimera. We thought the crime lord had escaped the country and gone underground for good, until his name popped up in your dark web data analysis of the secret identity file auction. If I’m going to track the Chimera down and stop him for good this time, I need Travis. I know he can’t ever go undercover again, but he can still be my handler back at headquarters with you.”
Was she reminding herself? Reminding Seth? Or practicing out loud what she was going to say to Travis? When he hadn’t replied to her voice mail, she’d assumed he might not think the phones were secure, and so had decided to come to him in person.
Everything had fallen into place with the Chimera operation at rapid speed. Seth had identified his cover operation as a holiday complex in Victoria three days ago. She’d applied for a job as a hostess the next day and was set to start her cover life there on Monday. Everything was in place. All she needed was Travis. She glanced to the clouds above and prayed he’d say yes. He just had to.
“Why are you so set on this guy when it’s his fault your first mission against the Chimera failed?” Seth asked.
Something bristled at the back of her neck. “The mission didn’t fail,” she said. “The Chimera’s entire operation was taken down, all of his henchmen went to jail and dozens of women he’d trafficked were freed.”
“Travis’s file says he had the Chimera in his sights and missed the shot.”
“The file doesn’t know him,” Jess said. “I do. We worked fifty-two cases together.”
“How did he miss the shot?” Seth asked.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Which was a bit of a cop-out answer, considering she’d been in his earpiece at the time. “I didn’t have eyes. The Chimera ran. Travis took the shot and missed. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
Seth shrugged. “The file says it was officer error.”
“And your file says you used to be a criminal,” she shot back.
Seth snorted. “People change. Or so I’ve heard.”
She knew he wasn’t the slightest bit offended at being reminded of his past. Seth was like a duck that way. Everything rolled off his back. Yet she was slightly irked at his good-natured banter and wasn’t sure why. She’d worked with Travis for years and had no doubt he’d beat himself up to no end about missing the shot. Besides, she was giving him a chance to redeem himself by finally taking the Chimera down for good.
“His file also says he racked up a whole lot of speeding tickets,” Seth added.
She ignored him. Seth didn’t say anything for a long moment. Instead the former criminal hacker now mostly reformed member of her team, kept typing away furiously on the laptop balanced on his knees. Then he frowned.
“Please, tell me we’re heading straight to Tatlow’s Used Books and Café,” Seth said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I just picked up an ambulance dispatch to that location,” Seth said. “Elderly woman, potential fall.”
“Yeah, Travis had mentioned his landlady had an accident.”
“Plus there’s this.” Seth pushed a button and a small child’s voice filled the car.
“Maynaise. Maynaise.” The voice was young and scared, but also very determined. “This is Willow Tatlow with my brother, Dominic. We’re in Uncle Travis’s apar’ment. Uncle Travis has been captured by the Shiny Man. Send rescue. Over.”
Jess gasped. “What is that?”
The town ahead grew closer. Seth played the little girl’s voice again on repeat.
“I don’t know, that’s all I’ve got,” Seth said. “It sounds like she was sending it on a very short-wave radio signal and then changed to a different channel looking for a response. I’m guessing a walkie-talkie or baby monitor. Tell me you know what that was about.”
“Not a word.” She could see the bookstore ahead on her right now. An ambulance was parked by the front door and a small crowd had gathered. She pulled up a few doors down and watched as an elderly woman she recognized from her intel as Travis’s landlady, Patricia Tatlow, was wheeled out the front door on a stretcher, flanked by a couple she didn’t recognize. Her eyes were open, which Jess took as a good sign. A tall, winding fire escape crawled up one side of the building, facing the bakery next door. She glanced up. There were windows open on both the second and third floors.
“I’m going in,” she said. “You’re coming with me. So stash your computers and grab us both an earpiece.” She yanked her long, blond hair free from its ponytail and shook her head so that it fell around her shoulders almost all the way to her waist. She didn’t normally wear her hair down. At five foot two, with the type of eyes people sometimes called “baby blues,” adding natural blond hair to the mix made people assume she was more of a peppy cheerleader than a veteran RCMP detective. Came in handy for hiding earpieces though.
“Need I remind you our entire plan was not to blow his cover,” Seth said.
“I’m not going to blow his cover,” Jess said, taking the earpiece the second it appeared in his hand. “We’re going up the fire escape.” Thankfully, Seth was tall enough to grab the bottom rung of the fire ladder and pull it down, so she wouldn’t have to jump for it. “If anyone asks, I’m an old friend, you’re my brother and we’re coming to surprise him. Now, come on.”
They exited the car and strode down the sidewalk, weaving their way through the gathered crowd and then slipping into the alley between the bookstore and bakery. Seth yanked the fire ladder down and they started up. The first second-floor window they reached opened into a kitchen. She glanced at Seth. “I’ll take this floor, you take the third. Got it?”
Seth nodded and ran past her, his footsteps clanking as he went. She slid through the open window and entered a narrow kitchen. Two chairs, one with a booster seat, sat at a small table, along with a high chair. The wall was covered in pictures, taped up in every possible space. Most were colorful splattering and scrawling done no doubt by a child. But a few were more artistically sketched drawings of a woman with long, flowing, blond hair, her face completely turned away from the person drawing her. Jess felt her heart stutter a beat. Even without a face, the woman in the picture looked an awful lot like her.
Jess slid through the door and came out into a hallway. More doors stood to her left and there was a staircase to the third floor on her right.
“I’ve got the kids!” Seth’s voice crackled in her ear. “They’re safe.”
Jess thanked God. She could hear a child’s voice babbling in the background.
“Willow says she saw Uncle Travis on a monitor screen being attacked by the Shiny Man,” Seth added.
“Just keep them safe,” Jess said, “and hang tight.”
A bang sounded from somewhere to her right. She ran back into the hall, grabbed another door handle and threw it open.
And, for the first time in years, laid eyes on Travis.
Her heart caught in her throat. Her former partner’s back was up against the wall and there was a handgun pointed to his head. His attacker wore a bulky, orange-reflective jumpsuit, like a construction worker, work gloves and a creepy, buglike silver respirator mask with large bulbous filters on either side of his face.
The figure in reflective gear shouted at her in an electronically distorted voice that he’d put a bullet through Travis’s head if she so much as moved.
Travis’s dark brown eyes met hers over his attacker’s shoulder, somehow looking so achingly familiar and yet completely new in ways she didn’t have time to process. And as she read all the conflicting emotions flickering through his gaze, it was as if all the years they’d spent apart were ripped away like unwanted pages from a book.
Somehow she knew exactly what he wanted from her.
Not rescue, but a distraction.
She nodded. I got it.
Don’t blow my cover. His eyes seemed to plead.
I won’t.
“Hey, you! Stop!” She yanked her weapon from her ankle holster and held it up with both hands. “Right now! Drop your gun!”
The gunman glanced toward her and Travis struck, smashing his palm into the side of his face and knocking him sideways. The man stumbled toward her. Something small flickered in his other hand. Then came the light—sharp, bright and blinding—searing her eyes and robbing her of her vision. A fist struck out at her, catching her off guard and sending her stumbling.
“Jess!” She heard Travis’s voice calling her name.
But she couldn’t see where he was. She couldn’t see anything at all.
