“Sure you’re okay?” Toby asked.
Alice nodded, starting to shake. She leaned against the wall, arms crossed, breathing in the comfort of feeling safe. It was reassuring to know that two armed men committed to serving and protecting the community were standing between her and the outside.
“The glass in your door was smashed. That’s how they got in,” Dale said.
Alice nodded again.
“They made a bit of a mess. Probably looking for something to steal.” Toby scanned the room around him. His voice was reassuring.
Judging from what she could see up here from the landing, Alice could only imagine what the main floor must look like. But she didn’t think the intruders had been here to steal. Not when she had heard them say they were looking for her. Not when they’d broken in after checking she was home.
Alice was about to explain just that when Toby got a call. He gave a wait signal with his hand to Dale and stepped aside. She and Dale stood, waiting silently. After a few moments, the call ended, and Toby returned to the foot of the stairs. He looked at her apologetically. “That was the acting super,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “He’s on his way here.”
* * *
Ben Parsons steered his vehicle out of town en route to Alice Benoit’s home. As soon as he hit the highway, he turned on the siren. He was anxious. Local cops were treating it as a simple robbery, but Ben knew it could be so much more.
The needle on the speedometer crept to the right as his anxiety worked through to his feet. Fortunately, there hadn’t been snow for a while, and the roads were bare. He knew Mrs. Benoit was with two police officers and the intruders had been scared off. What did he think could happen? After many years as a cop, his imagination could play a chilling reel of highlights.
Most of the people in the office of this rural detachment in Lychford assumed he’d been assigned from Toronto to cover a maternity leave. His numbers were getting up there. At forty-nine, his age plus years of service would soon reach the magic total where he could retire with a full pension. He’d joined the police force right out of school, so he was still relatively young, but he knew some of the higher-ups would expect him to want to retire.
Ben hadn’t denied the retirement rumors circling him, but he didn’t see it happening anytime soon. This wasn’t a job for him. It was a vocation.
He was a good cop. That was all he’d ever wanted to be. He’d spent his career working in Toronto, and while it often hadn’t been easy, he’d tried to make the world a better place each shift he’d pulled.
The real reason Ben had been sent to Lychford was to keep an eye on Alice Benoit on the Q.T. He’d been given the assignment because the pending retirement story was a good cover, and because people in Toronto knew they could depend on him.
Alice didn’t know it, but her son, Chris, wasn’t on a university expedition like she’d been told. He was a witness to a murder perpetrated by a high-level gang member. The whole force was invested in getting a guilty verdict. Alice’s son was in witness protection until the trial.
The trial that began tomorrow.
Alice, the only family or loved one who could be manipulated to influence Chris’s testimony, lived here, just a few miles out of town. She should be safe because the name of their witness had been kept secret, and therefore no one had any reason to know Alice was connected to the case. But Ben had been transferred here to keep an eye on her as an extra precaution.
The phone in his police vehicle rang as he told himself he was worried about nothing. The call wasn’t coming from Alice’s house or from the officers that had been sent out to respond to the call about a break-in. Neither was it coming from the police detachment in Lychford. It was a Toronto number. Ben knew what they were going to say before he even answered.
He listened to the voice on the other end telling him Chris had been shot coming out of a safe house. No one should have known where he was, or when he was leaving. If the gang had discovered that information about Chris, there was a big problem.
“The kid’s all right?”
Getting an affirmative response from the other end, Ben’s shoulders loosened two notches. There was still more than enough tension left.
“I have two of my men at his mom’s house. There was a home invasion reported. The perps were scared off before they could get her. I’m on my way now. I’ll bring her in myself to see the young man. Expect us at the hospital.”
Ben’s instincts were right. Things were happening. This hadn’t been robbery.
* * *
Alice had gone through her story twice with Dale and Toby. They’d written down what she’d said, but she’d seen the skepticism on their faces.
Why would anyone be after her? She wished she knew. Alice offered a suggestion.
“Is there anyone Henry helped put away who could want revenge?”
She couldn’t think of another reason anyone would break into her home to find her. Until this year, she’d been a high school English teacher. She might have pulled her own hair out a few times over some of the essays she’d had to mark, but she couldn’t imagine any of her students coming after her for a poor English grade.
Her husband had been a cop. In movies, that was always a plot point. Had Henry helped put some powerful bad guy away for his crimes, and now they were out for revenge? It could happen in real life, couldn’t it?
Dale and Toby looked at each other and shrugged. She sighed. She hoped the interim supervisor en route might be more inclined to believe her story. She knew the detachment supervisor and had been at the woman’s baby shower, but all she knew about the guy covering her maternity leave was that his name was Ben Parsons.
When Henry was alive, before his heart attack, she’d known every officer in the detachment. Since his death, she’d avoided going into the station. She was out of the loop, and that might not be a good thing now.
The sound of wheels on gravel alerted her to another arrival. She tensed, but Toby looked out the window and announced it was the super. She relaxed again, resigned to the fact she was going to have to repeat the story of her eventful morning. She set down the coffee cup she’d been holding, her hands suddenly shaking again, and drew a long breath.
Toby met the new arrival at the door and gave him a quick update, so she had a chance to watch the man for a minute before he turned his head and met her gaze.
His eyes were a deep brown under frowning brows, and he scanned her quickly, then again more slowly, as if to reassure himself that she was unharmed.
Her first impression of Ben Parsons was that he was big. Not fat, not heavy, not any taller than Henry, but he was solid. Strong. He exuded an aura of calm, and she immediately felt safer having him here.
No wonder he’d been given this job.
For some reason, Alice suspected from his serious expression that he knew something about the morning she’d had. She didn’t know what exactly he knew, but just as she was sure this hadn’t been a simple attempted robbery, she was sure he knew something about why those men had been in her house.
She shivered as a chill dropped down her spine. This man, strong or not, was bringing trouble with him.
* * *
The pictures didn’t do her justice, Ben thought. Standing in the entrance to a hallway covered with broken glass, he had a moment to examine the woman he’d been sent to watch over.
Alice Benoit was good-looking, even mussed up and shocked.
Ben shook himself mentally. Not the time or place. Not ever the time or place.
Toby had given him a quick rundown of Alice’s story. Toby was skeptical, but Ben knew Alice was right. The men had been looking for her.
He could tell Toby the real reason someone was after Alice, but this was still officially a covert operation, despite the obvious leak that had resulted in Chris’s shooting and the break-in here. He needed to keep t
he information as private as possible, and he had no authorization to reveal any of his knowledge to anyone but Alice Benoit.
He glanced back at her. She was watching him, waiting for something from him.
He considered sending Dale and Toby on their way so he could tell her what was going on with her son. Then he could take her in to Lychford, switch vehicles and get her to the hospital in Toronto. He decided against that.
The people who were after her would not give up. They may have been temporarily thwarted, but they’d be waiting for another chance. If they saw Dale and Toby leave, they might return. With reinforcements. That would leave only Ben to protect her, which was not a risk he was willing to take.
He needed to get her to Toronto, ASAP. But he didn’t want to take his cop vehicle. He couldn’t prove it, but he suspected someone in the Toronto Police Department was revealing this information.
If there was a mole, they might have access to information like his plates and possibly even his vehicle’s GPS location. He considered his options.
They needed to take her to the detachment, where Ben could get updated information and they could head to Toronto with proper security. Maybe by that point they’d know for sure if someone on the inside was spilling information.
Now, how best to accomplish this without Dale and Toby getting suspicious? It wasn’t standard operating procedure to take a home-invasion victim in. However...
“Mrs. Benoit, I’m Ben Parsons. Toby told me what happened here and that you think this could be connected to your late husband. Would you mind coming into the detachment with my officers and filling out an official report? Then we can look into some of your husband’s old cases, see if anyone he helped incarcerate might be looking to get some revenge. They might not be aware your husband has passed.”
He could see the surprise on Dale and Toby’s faces and the comprehension on hers.
He felt a surge of admiration for her intelligence. She accepted his suggestion at face value, but he could tell she knew there was more to it. She didn’t say so. That would make this a little easier to pull off.
His phone rang. Toronto again.
He clicked on the call button. “Give me two minutes.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket so no one could see who was calling.
“Officers, you take Mrs. Benoit in your vehicle to the office and get her report. Mrs. Benoit, if you’ll give me your keys, I’ll lock up.”
Alice’s teeth were chewing her bottom lip. “Unfortunately, as I told Toby and Dale when we went through the house, the thieves took my keys, as well as most of the contents of my purse. I don’t think there’s much left for anyone to steal, so if you’ll just close the door?”
Ben nodded, watching her carefully, knowing she was going to be upset by the information he had for her.
Alice asked to go upstairs to get what remained of her purse and its contents. Back on the main floor, she grabbed a jacket and pulled on her boots. Ben noted her pallor. She was in shock.
“Turn the heat up in the car,” he said under his breath to Dale.
Ben watched them get in the cruiser, and after he got in his own vehicle, he put his phone back to his ear. He listened to the caller and pulled out of the driveway a few moments after the officers and Mrs. Benoit.
“Can you repeat that?”
Copyright © 2021 by Kim Findlay
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ISBN-13: 9780369716194
High Stakes Escape
Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth Goddard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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High Stakes Escape Page 19