Witness Protection Unraveled

Seth nodded. “On it.”

“Great,” Travis said. “You can use my laptop to access the security camera and baby video monitor footage. It’s clean as a whistle, I have nothing to hide and the password is Tatlow3.”

Travis felt Willow’s hands on his leg. He looked down into the little girl’s huge green eyes.

“The bad man is not a const’uction man, Uncle Travis,” she said. “He’s the Shiny Man.”

Her eyes were so serious, Travis felt the weight of her trust weighing in his chest. She’d gone through so much already. He would not let her down.

“Whoever he is, we’ll stop him,” he told her, mentally kicking himself for not taking the little girl’s fears more seriously earlier. He glanced at Jess and Seth. “Right, guys?”

“Right,” Jess said, her eyes locked on Willow’s face. “We’re really, really good at stuff like this.”

Yeah, she was. Better than he’d ever been.

“Now, can you show Seth how to close the playhouse door and take him downstairs?” Travis asked Willow. “I’ll meet you downstairs in the kitchen in one minute.”

Willow nodded and Travis watched as the little girl walked over to the big hacker and very seriously showed him how to do the three little pink-and-purple flower-shaped latches Travis had built on the outside of the door. Then he stepped back and gestured for Jess to join him.

“I want you to stick with me,” Travis said. “If that’s okay with you? I want someone to have a second pair of eyes on these kids.”

“Absolutely.” She nodded then her arms crossed. “Are other people going to be asking if I’m the woman from the pictures? I saw the sketches in your kitchen, too. Also, your file didn’t mention anything about you having children in your life.”

He wasn’t sure which one was going to be easier to explain, so he started with the first.

“People in this town think she’s my ex-fiancée,” he said. “I’ve never confirmed the gossip or told anyone her name, but rumor is I moved here when she left me at the altar. It’s…it’s very hard to have any kind of secrets in a town where everybody knows everyone else’s business.”

And he’d never done anything to dissuade the rumors or to shoot them down. It was as good a reason as any as to why he walked around like a man whose world had ended. He’d needed a cover story and the town’s rumor mill had created one for him.

Yet, as he watched, shock and confusion filled her eyes. Then her lips twitched slightly and, for a second, he almost thought she was going to laugh.

“You have no idea how devastated I was when I moved here,” Travis said. “I felt like I’d died or that someone I loved had. I was depressed and snapped at everyone. I stopped eating, sleeping at night or showering. I practically lived on coffee. I was basically the worst version of me you’d known dialed up to a hundred. I even fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree.

“But Willow and Dominic’s parents were there for me. They dragged me out to church, board game parties and Bible study with them. Patricia made sure I ate. I needed to come up with something to explain what I’d lost. This mystery woman and the rumors people constructed around how I’d lost her, became like a metaphor for that.”

The hint of a smile dropped from her lips. She wouldn’t understand. How could she when he couldn’t even begin to understand it himself? Yet, as her eyes held his for a long moment, he felt something tighten in his chest.

“Come on! Let’s go!” Willow’s voice tugged his attention away from Jess. Willow was now leading Seth down the stairs, back toward the main floor, holding his hand tightly, and something in Seth’s bewildered gaze left Travis with the sneaking suspicion the hacker had never held a child’s hand before.

Yeah, he remembered that feeling all too well. It hadn’t been that long ago.

“I want to show him my paintings,” Willow called.

“Okay, but then Uncle Seth’s got to go do another job and we’ve got to close the store and go home for supper,” Travis said.

Willow nodded and disappeared down the stairs and Travis was thankful that her skill at finding new friends had temporarily distracted her from the Shiny Man or the fact that her nan was with the doctor.

“She likes people and people like her,” Jess said, only something about the way she’d said it made it sound like a cop observing a target.

He bristled. “You make it sound like that’s a suspicious thing.”

“No, it’s an interesting thing,” Jess said. “Because if the Shiny Man was outside her window, that means there’s someone in this town who’s willing to scare her to get what they want.”

Whatever that was. He paused a second, shifted Dominic higher in his arms and started toward the stairs.

“You had a duty to inform witness protection that you lived with children,” Jess said.

Even though he’d ignored her earlier comment about the kids, she clearly hadn’t forgotten it.

“I don’t live with them,” Travis said. He started down the steps and she followed. “They live with their grandmother at her farmhouse.”

“Don’t play games,” she said. “Not with me. You’ve got a playpen in your office, a second playpen in your living room and both a high chair and a booster seat in your kitchen. You know full well you’re supposed to report any significant relationships including minor children.”

“Need I remind you that my original witness protection officer is dead—” Travis felt his voice sharpen “—after conspiring with criminals at Christmas to steal and sell witness protection identities. So forgive me if I haven’t been in a hurry to return the calls of the next witness protection officer who got my case, especially since all he seems to want to do is convince me to leave this town and this life, and start again somewhere new. Judging by your voice mail, you were apparently so suspicious of the broader RCMP that you and some colleagues created your own little task force that’s been scrambling to pick up the pieces ever since the auction. Right?”

Jess stopped partway down the steps. He turned and looked back. She was almost at his eye level and her lips were pressed together tightly, like she was holding words back to keep from saying them.

“Right,” she said. “Within minutes of the theft, three colleagues, Seth and I met together, in secret, and formed an elite off-the-grid team to stop the criminals, despite the fact they started trying to kill us almost immediately. But we not only stopped the auction of witness protection files, we’ve been working around the clock to locate, protect and resettle every single witness whose identity was compromised. Scoff all you want about the RCMP witness protection program after what happened, but my team and I are very good at what we do.”

He hadn’t exactly been scoffing. But she was talking so quickly now, she wasn’t about to let him point that out.

“What people don’t know, is that when those secret identities went up for auction on the dark web, hundreds of criminals showed up online to bid on them, leaving some of our worst enemies vulnerable and exposed.” Fire flashed in the depths of her eyes, like flint striking against stone. “Because the moment those criminals slipped out of the shadows and showed up online to bid, Seth was able to extract their data and gather a treasure trove of information about them. It’s the kind of vital intel that you and I could’ve done so much good with back in the day and I wasn’t about to let it slip through our fingers. We could use someone with experience dealing with nasty criminal organizations. So I went to bat for the one person I knew had the skills and ability to take these people on and win—you.”

His heart stopped. He might’ve guessed she was calling about more than her message had implied, especially as she’d showed up in person. But was she actually offering him a job to work with her on her team? “I thought you just wanted my advice on a case.”

“Not advice, a partner.” Her arms crossed. “Specifically, I wanted my old partner back. And not a case. The case. The case that ruined your career and got you stuck here in Kilpatrick. Thanks to the secret identities auction, I found the Chimera.

“He’s back in the country and reopening a new operation this summer on the West Coast. It’s under the front of a holiday complex and timed for when school lets out. Summer is a prime hunting time for a criminal like that who presses vulnerable people into illegal work. I’m going in undercover as a hostess. This time, I’m going to be the one who locks eyes on him and identifies the man behind the alias, once and for all. And when I do, I won’t miss my shot.”

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