Witness Protection Unraveled

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.

TWO

The light was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, blinding her eyes so suddenly and completely that all she wanted to do was press her hands over them. Instead she closed them, tightly. Her heart pounded wildly as, for a moment she stumbled, fighting the urge to drop her weapon in case it misfired.

Then a pair of strong hands grabbed her shoulders and she felt herself being pulled into a muscular chest.

“It’s okay, Jess.” Travis’s voice was in her ear, firm and reassuring. “Just breathe. I know it hurts and it’s scary, but it’ll pass. Now, I’m going to take the gun from you, just for safety’s sake.”

“Thanks.” She let him take it. She didn’t know how he knew that was what she’d been most worried about, only that somehow she knew what he’d be most worried about, too. “Willow and Dominic are safe upstairs with my colleague, Seth.”

The long sigh of relief she felt move through his core told her she’d been right.

Then she heard him pray and thank God. Huh? The Travis she used to know had given up on his faith long ago and used to roll his eyes whenever she’d prayed.

“How do we contact their parents?” she asked.

“Their parents are gone,” Travis said. “They were friends of mine. Geoff and Amber Tatlow. Both cops. Amber went back to work part-time eight weeks after Dominic was born. They were both working at a roadside impaired driving checkpoint on the highway, just pulling drivers over to make sure nobody’s drunk, overtired or impaired, like cops do across the country every long weekend. One drunk driver apparently panicked and tried to drive around the road stop, injuring three people in the process and killing Geoff and Amber.” She felt Travis shrug. “Their grandmother, Patricia, is all they have now.”

And him apparently.

“I saw Patricia being rolled out on a stretcher and into an ambulance,” Jess said. “She looked conscious. I think a man and woman got in the ambulance with her.”

“That was probably Willow’s new kindergarten teacher Alvin and the baker’s daughter Cleo,” Travis said, and there was something both coplike and familiar in how he was giving more detail than was necessary. “One of them will contact me as soon as there’s news. They’ll know I’m with the kids and Kilpatrick is the kind of town where people keep everyone else in the loop.”

She heard him set her gun down on the desk. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. She wasn’t sure if the hug was because she’d been blinded or if he was happy to see her.

“You said there was no active threat against me,” he said, an edge to his voice that belied the softness of his hug. “You said my identity hadn’t been compromised.”

“There wasn’t,” she said. “It hadn’t.”

“Are you sure?” he asked and, even with her eyes closed, she could sense him searching her face.

“Yes.”

“Then how…why are you even here?”

“You weren’t returning my calls,” she said, “so my colleague Seth and I drove out to see you.”

“The same Seth who’s with Willow and Dominic now?” Travis asked.

It was bizarre. He was grilling her and holding her at the same time.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Seth Miles, the hacker. Remember hearing about him? He only hacked criminals, there was a warrant out for his arrest, he got hunted by really bad guys and then ended up in witness protection.”

Travis blew out a long breath. Yeah, she wasn’t surprised Travis remembered the man’s name, considering the stir he’d made a few years back. Not that he probably had any idea who Seth had become since then.

“Now he’s my team’s tech guy,” she said. “He’s like an obsessive savant when it comes to all things online and he picked up a distress signal Willow sent through the baby monitor’s short-wave.”

“Whoa,” Travis said.

She pulled back out of his arms slightly, tried opening her eyes and saw nothing but a wall of white swimming with indistinct dark shapes. She gritted her teeth. So much for hoping she could do anything for a moment other than stand there helplessly and pray Travis was right about the light thing.

“Your turn,” she said. “Who’s the Shiny Man? Where did he go? What does he want? And what did he hit me with?”

“I don’t know who he is or what he wants.” Frustration filled Travis’s voice. “He showed up when Patricia was closing the store, confronted her in some way and then ran upstairs where I found him. He went down the fire escape and he hit us both with some kind of high-brightness tactical flashlight. Illegal, I’m guessing, but temporary. His whole get up, from the reflective gear to the respirator mask, could’ve easily been slapped together from an online tactical gear store.”

“So, probably not a pro. And much sloppier than anyone the Chimera would ever hire, so I expect there’s no connection there.” Jess opened her eyes again, thankful to see less white and more splotches. “But apparently the kind of criminal to plan ahead, considering he was in disguise. Did he steal anything?”

“No.” Worry moved through Travis’s voice. “My laptop and tablet computer are all still here, along with some emergency cash I had in a jar on my desk.”

There was a matter-of-fact dryness to his tone. It was reassuring, and Jess suddenly realized how much she’d missed it. There’d often been a sharpness to his voice, too, that other people had thought of as rude. Maybe it had been a little intense, but she’d liked the fact it was direct and to the point. He’d never been one for compliments or affection. He’d never even hugged her, until now.

Travis stepped even further back, her hands slipping down his arms and coming to rest just below his elbows. She felt the strength of muscles under her fingertips. His chest had been unexpectedly strong, too.

The Travis she’d known hadn’t exactly been weak but, with the exception of his time on undercover assignment, he’d definitely been a desk jockey. But this new Travis felt like he could fell trees with an ax. Her mind flickered back to the sketches of the woman on the kitchen wall. Was he now an artist, too?

She looked up into Travis’s face and blinked as slowly it came into focus. His eyes were worried and his strong jaw was clenched. He reached for her hand and took it in his. While she knew it was only to guide her, somehow that didn’t stop the warmth of his touch from spreading through her limbs. She tapped her earpiece to keep herself from focusing on it.

“Seth, I’ve got Travis. He was attacked by someone who got away by shining a tactical light in my eyes. How are the kids?”

“Good.” Seth’s voice came back in her ear. “I’m sitting in the playhouse, holding Dominic while Willow is telling me about all her favorite books. Apparently one of them has the cover on upside down.”

“Willow really loves books,” Travis said, and Jess realized he was leaning in close enough to pick up Seth’s voice in her earpiece.

“We’re on our way.”

Travis picked up her gun, removed the clip and helped her slide it back into her ankle holster. Then Travis straightened and took her hand. When she pulled it out of his grasp, he didn’t question it. Her vision still wasn’t great, but she’d rather use the walls for guidance if need be than be led around.

They walked out of his study and back into the hallway.

“There’s a lot of people gathered downstairs,” Jess said as they started up the stairs to the third floor. “It’s like the whole block turned out to make sure Patricia was okay.”

Travis paused halfway up the stairs, as if a new thought had just hit him. “Please tell me you didn’t blow my cover.”

Jess shook her head. “No, we came up the fire escape. Though the Shiny Man might’ve heard you call me ‘Jess’ and definitely knows I was carrying a gun.” Although she’d done her best not to sound like a cop when she’d pulled it.

They kept walking, reached the top of the stairs and entered a wide attic that had been converted into a living room with mismatched furniture and slanted ceilings cutting down in corners on all sides. An empty playpen sat beside a large window bow filled with pillows. A large pink-and-purple wooden playhouse, about four feet tall, stood against a wall on the far side of the room. The door was closed, but when Travis crouched in front of the playhouse door and knocked three times, it swung open.

Seth’s six-foot form sat cross-legged and folded sideways on the floor, with a sleeping baby, about eight or nine months old, curled up in his arms. The baby’s eyes were closed and he was sucking on a blue pacifier with a tiny yellow duck on it.

“You must be Seth,” Travis said. “You look nothing like your reputation.”

Seth snorted. “You don’t much look like yours.”

“Uncle Travis!” A small girl with long blond hair and huge green eyes crawled out from around Seth. She slipped from the playhouse and barreled into Travis’s arms. “You escaped the Shiny Man!”

“Of course I did!” Travis swept her up into his arms as she clasped them around his neck. “There is nothing for you to be scared about, Willow. I will always keep you and Dominic safe. I promise. Your nan had a little fall, but she’s going to the doctor’s now and they’ll take good care of her.”

Willow took his face in her hands and turned it until he was looking directly into her eyes.

“I saw the Shiny Man outside my window at night with a flas’light,” she said, seriously.

Travis nodded. “I know. And I’ll make sure he never bothers you again.”

Jess knew as he said the words that he had no idea how he was going to make good on his promise to the little girl, but that he’d do everything in his power to figure it out. She’d heard him make similar promises to victims they’d known only through photos or videos on their screens back when they’d worked special victims cases. And no matter what it had taken, how many hours he’d had to work, or what kind of evidence he’d needed to go through, Travis had always come through for them.

Willow’s face spread into a wide and trusting smile. Unexpected tears rushed to the corners of Jess’s eyes. Was it because she’d never imagined Travis as the kind of man who’d have a family? Or because it was rare in her line of work to see little children being so protected, cared for and loved?

A wail filled the air. The baby was awake. She glanced past Travis to Seth, who still sat holding Dominic like the little boy was a very fragile bomb he was working very hard to keep from exploding. She wondered if the hacker had ever even held a baby before. In a single, smooth and seamless motion, Travis shifted Willow into one arm, bent low and scooped Dominic from Seth’s arms with the other hand. The baby’s tears faded almost as suddenly as they’d started. Then Travis stood, cradling both brother and sister in his arms, bent his head low over theirs and hugged them both for a long moment, prayers of thanksgiving slipping quietly from his lips.

And Jess realized she had no idea who Travis was anymore.

Seth stood slowly and ran his hands down his jeans.

Travis glanced up over the children’s heads, from her to Seth. “Are you both positive my i-d-e-n-t-i-t-y hasn’t been c-o-m-p-r-o-m-i-s-e-d?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Seth said. “I give you my word.”

Willow wriggled in Travis’s arms and, without being asked, he set her down.

“Seth is my new friend,” Willow told Travis, seriously. “He likes books, too. He has a sister work friend who talks in his ear.”

A sister work friend? Yeah, that would do. Her small off-the-grid witness protection team definitely felt like an ad hoc family.

Willow looked up at Jess, her little brows knit. Then she pointed past her and Jess followed her gaze to a colorful painting of a woman. It was the same woman as the one with long, flowing, blond hair she’d seen sketches of in the kitchen. Even with her face turned away from them, the figure was unmistakable.

The little girl asked what Jess was thinking, “Is that you?”

Travis felt heat rise to his face and the fact that Jess wasn’t meeting his gaze made it even worse. What could he say? He’d been a broken man when he’d moved to Kilpatrick, having lost something he couldn’t tell anyone about. It had felt like a death. Only, the one he’d lost was himself.

When after too many nights of not sleeping, he’d then fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed his tree into a car, the children’s dad, Geoff, had suggested he join an art therapy group. Travis hadn’t even known what to draw to represent the aching hole inside him. Somehow in the lines his fingers had sketched across the empty sheets of paper and painted on the canvasses had turned into Jess, again and again, even though he’d never once sketched her face or anything that would identify her, let alone told anyone her name or who she was.

“My name is Jess,” she told Willow, saving him from having to come up with an answer. She crouched down until she was eye level with the girl. “I’m your uncle Travis’s friend, and I’m Seth’s sister work friend.”

“I’m Willow.” The little girl stuck out her hand and Jess shook it. “Dominic’s my brother. He’s a baby.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Dominic,” Jess said. She reached for Dominic’s tiny hand and pretended to lightly shake it, as well.

“Clearly we have a lot to discuss,” Seth said. There was a mildly amused tone to his voice Travis couldn’t quite place. “I want to go over your entire security system, for the bookstore, your apartment and the house where Patricia and the kids live, as well as whatever your internal baby monitor video system has recorded. Everything for the past months.”

“It doesn’t actually record more than twenty-four hours,” Travis said, feeling almost foolish as he did so. “And Patricia’s farmhouse doesn’t have any security.”

He wasn’t even sure she had a front door lock that worked, considering he’d never seen anyone in Kilpatrick lock their doors the whole time he’d lived there. And while Kilpatrick had a district police chief, Gordon Peters, he and Travis had definitely gotten off on the wrong foot, thanks to Travis’s minor car accident. The cop had made no secret of the fact he wasn’t Travis’s biggest fan and wasn’t sure Travis was responsible enough to be a volunteer firefighter. Probably hadn’t helped much that whoever had created Travis’s new identity police file for witness protection had given him more than a few fake traffic tickets and citations. Not that Travis himself hadn’t racked up just as many in his real life.

Travis closed his eyes for a moment and prayed. God, I’m thinking too much like a Kilpatrick resident right now and not a cop. Help me get my head back into the game, without losing my sanity in the process.

He opened his eyes and turned to Seth.

“Obviously, we can all agree I need to keep my c-o-v-e-r,” he said, reminding himself that while a lot would go over Willow’s head, there were certain words he didn’t want her repeating to anyone. “My top priority right now is taking care of these kids and waiting on word about their grandmother. Also, I really need to head downstairs, as there are probably a dozen people inside the bookstore and no one working the counter.”

Not that he expected anyone was about to steal anything. It wasn’t that kind of town. When Cleo Mitchell had come home from college with her foul-mouthed, abusive ex, Braden Garrett, the whole town had practically risen like a wave to repel him and let him know that his kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. When Cleo had asked Patricia for help, the elderly woman hadn’t just called both the police and Travis, she’d also pulled her hunting rifle on Braden and told him she’d shoot if he ever came around pestering the poor girl again. Knowing Patricia, the gun might’ve even had bullets in it.

“Considering your skills, I imagine you know your way around a phone camera,” Travis added and Seth chuckled. “If you don’t mind doubling as our c-r-i-m-e s-c-e-n-e photographer, that would be awesome, as well as gathering whatever you can from the limited camera systems. Not to mention, I’m sure you know how to track online purchases. Every part of the guy’s getup looked like something you could easily buy online. Maybe we’ll be fortunate and you’ll happen upon someone who bought a mask, jumpsuit, tactical flashlight, work gloves and an electronic voice distorter online and had them all shipped here.”