Undercover Protection

by Maggie K. Black

“Don’t just stand there!” Stan shouted before he could answer. “Find her!”

  Jay’s limbs tensed to run. He pulled himself up onto the balls of his feet like a sprinter ready to bolt.

  “What was she doing in your car?” Stan shouted. A chill cut through his voice.

  “I wanted to question her!” Dunlop yelled.

  “You wanted all the money for yourself!”

  Lightning flashed, swamping the forest in light. Instinctively, Jay glanced up. The two criminals were standing face-to-face beside the car. Each one clutched a gun in their hands. Darkness fell again as the lightning faded, followed by the sound of a gunshot and a flash of light.

  As Jay’s eyes adjusted to the night again, he watched as Dunlop fell to the ground; he’d been shot dead.

  * * *

  The sound of the gunshot rang in Leia’s ears. Fear poured down her spine and she pressed her lips together to keep from crying out. Between the stinging pain in her eyes, the tears still coursing down her face and the storm around her, she still couldn’t see a thing. But as she reached for Jay she could feel the strength of his arm under her fingertips. He took her hand and held it.

  “Come on,” he said. “We have to run while they’re distracted.”

  “Now?” she gasped.

  The ring of the gunshot was fading and being overtaken by the sound of people shouting.

  “Their leader just killed one of the team in front of them,” Jay said. He slid out from under the log and pulled her after him. “It’s terrible but we’ve got to go while they’re distracted. It’s our only hope.”

  “I can’t see,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the farm,” he said. “Somewhere we can hide and regroup.”

  He led her across the ground slowly, both of them staying low and crouching on the balls of their toes. Then he pulled her to her feet and they started running. Voices shouted behind them, but Jay didn’t even falter. She gripped his hand tightly and prayed.

  Help us, Lord. I’m literally running blind.

  There’d been something tentative, almost hesitant, about the Jay who she’d developed feelings for last summer. Yes, he’d seemed so happy to see her every time they snuck away for a walk in the woods or long chat in the dilapidated barn he was repairing. His grin had been infectious, and his dark eyes had shone in a way she didn’t even know eyes could come to life. Yet, for all the hours they’d spent together and despite the furtive kisses he’d brushed across her lips, there’d always been something holding him back. She’d always known somehow that he was keeping something from her. But the man now leading her through the woods in the darkness was someone entirely different. This Jay was confident and self-assured. He was protective. And somehow she trusted him even more than she had when she’d thought his heart might be hers.

  He stopped so suddenly she would’ve collided into him if he hadn’t reached out his other hand to catch her. Jay pulled her to his side and silently pressed a finger to her lips. She froze, snuggled against his chest and feeling the thud of his heartbeat moving through her. Another bullet cracked through the air, the noise seeming to come from all directions at once. Then Jay squeezed her hand firmly, led her away from the tree and they started running again.

  Branches beat against her body. Roots and fallen branches snared her feet.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you.”

  She shook her head. “No, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”

  “We’re about to reach a fairly open patch of ground that’s being patrolled and the thieves are getting trigger-happy,” he said. “My impression is that they’re all in it for the money and there’s really no honor among thieves. It’ll be easiest if I carried you.”

  “I’d rather run on my own two feet,” she said, “and I know this farm better than anyone.”

  “I know,” he said. “But you’re hurt and can’t see. Please don’t take this the wrong way but I’d pick up and carry anyone in your situation—a witness, a fellow officer, even a bad guy. We pick each other up all the time in basic training. It’s not personal.”

  He sounded indignant, almost like she’d insulted him somehow.

  “Got it,” she said. She slid her hands up his arms and onto his shoulders. Her fingers gripped his shoulders. He might be about to carry her, but she wasn’t going to let him just sweep her up into his arms. “Ready?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  Now she could hear something like laughter in his voice. She jumped and he caught her, looping his arms smoothly under her legs and pulling her to his chest so effortlessly it was like he’d been waiting for her. She wrapped both arms around his neck.

  “Don’t let go,” he said.

  Suddenly he was off running again. He sprinted through the forest faster than before, scrambling down slopes and leaping over unseen obstacles. She could hear tree branches breaking against Jay’s strong body. The sound of voices rose and fell around them.

  “Are they chasing us?” she asked.

  “They’re trying to,” he said. “But don’t worry. I won’t let them get you. Now, hold on tight.”

  “I already am!”

  “Then hold on tighter!” He spun around quickly, and she felt her body jolt down half an inch as he pulled his right arm out from under her legs. “And if you can, cover your ears.”

  She buried her face deeper into his neck. She felt him bend down, pull his gun and fire. Then, in an instant, he holstered his weapon and his arm was back under her legs again, supporting her with his strength.

  “Sorry about that,” he called.

  “Tell me you didn’t just shoot someone,” she said.

  “I didn’t shoot someone,” Jay said. “I shot near enough to someone that they got confused, and it bought us a moment of time. I didn’t want to risk them seeing where we were going.”

  “And where are we going?” she asked.

  She knew every corner of her childhood farm like the back of her hand.

  “The barn,” he said.

  The dilapidated building that he’d started working on last summer? The place they used to meet to talk without the family finding out about their relationship?

  “No,” she said. “It’s not secure.”

  “It is now,” he said.

  He dropped one hand from her legs again and she heard the old familiar creak of the barn door opening. They stepped inside out of the rain. The smell of hay filled her senses. She opened her eyes, but saw nothing but indistinct blurs, shapes and shadows.

  Jay leaped up slightly, and she heard a latch open.

  “I reinforced the loft,” he said. “It’s warm, it’s secure and, most importantly, there’s something inside that I want you to see. Now I’m going to lift you up.”

  She reached up and felt the soft wooden ledge of floorboards beneath her fingertips. Instinctively, she heaved herself up through the hatch and into the loft. She pulled herself up to sitting, slid back to make room for Jay and felt a soft, rag-rug carpet under her fingertips.

  He hoisted himself up through the hole, closed the hatch behind them and locked it.

  “I thought you hated heights,” she said, “or did you just tell me that to keep me from coming up here?”

  “No, I really do get vertigo,” Jay said. “Really was born with an inner-ear problem and can’t hear as good out of my left ear as my right. Your eyes keep fluttering open. Can you see?”

  “Not much,” she admitted, “and they still really hurt.”

  “Well, there are a couple of giant pillows behind you,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable and I’ll get you something for your eyes. There’s also a cot if you want to nap and some basic food if you’re hungry.”

 
The giant pillows weren’t much more than large puffy shapes, but they were soft under her touch. She propped one up against the wall and leaned against it. They were surprisingly comfortable.

  “So you built a secret hideaway room in the loft of the old barn?” she asked.

  And here she’d told him that she and Sally had done the same thing when they were twelve and fourteen to escape their younger sisters. Not that it was this comfortable.

  “Pretty much,” Jay said.

  “But I thought you lived in the camper,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “But I needed somewhere secure to make calls and map out all my information about the Phantom Killer case. I’ll show you everything once your eyes are a bit better. And then we’ll figure out where we go from here. The good news is that your sister Sally hasn’t come back early and the farm’s still standing. Nothing’s changed. We just need to find a way to warn your sister, call my colleagues and escape the farm.”

  “Is that all?” She closed her eyes, leaned back and let her body sink into the pillow, suddenly feeling weary. “I heard the criminals arguing that I wasn’t even the woman they were looking for and you told the guy who you jumped outside the garage that he had the wrong place. What happened to him again?”

  “I gently tied him up and left him somewhere dry,” Jay said. “And he said they were here looking for a woman who’d stolen something important from Vamana Enterprises, someone named Ann-Margret Herber.”

  Leia sat up sharply, her heart suddenly pounding as if it was trying to escape her chest.

  “She was my mother.”

  FIVE

  For a moment she just sat in stunned silence. Her mother was the “friend” of her father who’d seen Franklin Vamana kill someone? It answered all the confusing questions she had, while opening so many more to be answered.

  “I thought your mother’s name was Annie,” Jay said. His voice was gentle as he crouched beside her.

  “It was,” she said slowly. “But Ann-Margret was her legal name, the one she was born with. Everyone who knew and loved her called her Annie. So when she married my dad, she didn’t just change her last name, but decided to use her nickname for her first name while she was at it. At least, that’s what my dad told me.”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Jay hesitated for a moment, and even with her eyes closed she could tell he was there almost hovering beside her.

  “I want to get you something for your eyes,” he said. “But not until I know you’re okay.”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Lord, help me see what I need to see. Open my eyes to the truth.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Thank you. In a way, this makes more sense, and I’m relieved that something finally does.”

  “So, you think your mom is who your dad was trying to tell me about?” Jay asked.

  She felt him move away from her slowly and get up.

  “My gut says yes,” she said. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense at all. My mom was my dad’s best friend. She died of cancer when I was six. He loved her more than life and never got over losing her. He’d have done anything for her and for us. But I don’t even know how to begin to process or understand it.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Jay said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jay didn’t speak for a long moment, but she could hear him moving across the floorboards to the other side of the loft. The old barn had been a fixture of her life for as long as she could remember, with its fading gray wood, which she presumed had once been brown, and its sloping roof, which had always seemed ready to drip shingles. She’d never understood why her father had wanted Jay to start repairing it when the house seemed like a much higher priority.

  All her father would say was it had good bones.

  A light switched on somewhere to her right. It was a gentle light, golden and soft. She opened her eyes slowly and looked around, thankful that time, the rain and her tears had lessened the pain in her eyes. Now she could make out the colorful weave of the thick rag rug beneath her and the pattern of the giant pillows leaning against the wall. There was also a single camp chair, a small folding metal table, a simple cot with nothing but a sleeping bag on it and an upside-down crate behind it holding a water bottle, notepad and Bible.

  At the far end of the attic, she could barely make out some kind of huge pattern on the far brick wall made of lines, squares and rectangles. But the actual details of what she was looking at was still shrouded in darkness. Like the mystery surrounding her, she could only see a little, and the more she could see, the more questions it raised. She prayed for wisdom.

  She heard a click. Through her blurry vision, she could see Jay crouching over a small cooler. He sloshed some liquid over a bandana and brought it to her. She reached for it and recognized it from the smell immediately.

  “Milk, right?” she said. Her fingertips brushed his as she pulled it from his hand.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “My dad always said dairy was best for burns,” she said. “Specifically yogurt when you accidentally eat something spicy, like hot peppers, and milk for actual pepper spray. But I’ve never actually tried it. He was pretty daring in what he let us do but actually burning our senses was a step too far.”

  She pressed it against her eyes and immediately felt the cold soothing sensation easing her pain in a way the rain hadn’t. She closed her eyes again and felt Jay sit down beside her.

  “I never thought of my childhood as anything weird, different or out of the ordinary,” she said. “What child does? For all I knew, everyone’s father tucked them into a bed every night with a combination of survival skills, Bible verses and made-up fairy tales.”

  Dad had called the fairy-tale land Cymbafalls. The stories had been about four daring princesses, very obviously based on them, and the various innocents they rescued from a villain called the Shadow through a combination of compassion, skill and wit. She didn’t know how he’d come up with them, but they’d made her feel invincible and like she could change the world. Maybe that’s how she’d ended up working in a legal aid office and wanting to be a lawyer for those who couldn’t afford one. She listened as Jay folded his long legs beneath him until he was sitting cross-legged. His knee bumped lightly against hers. It was comforting to feel him there.

  “So, what did my dad tell you about my mom?” she asked.

  “Walter told me that he’d had a best friend in high school who he was very close to,” Jay started. “Best person he knew. Someone he would’ve done anything for.”

  “That would be my mom,” she said. “There was nobody else who ever fit that bill for him.” Unexpected and hot tears rose to her eyes. She pressed the milk-soaked rag against them. “I’m relieved actually, even though I don’t understand, because at least that makes sense.”

  “He said that when they graduated high school, she had this dream of working in the big city,” Jay went on. “He didn’t think it was a good idea and they quarreled about it, but she was determined, so off she went.”

  She chuckled softly. Yeah, that sounded exactly like how her dad would tell the story.

  “He didn’t hear from her for almost two months, when she called in the middle of the night to say she was in trouble,” Jay said. “She said that Franklin Vamana had taken a liking to her when he’d spotted her waiting tables in one of his nightclubs, started taking her out places and insisted she move into a condo in one of his buildings for a ridiculously good rent. It was like a fairy tale. But then she realized he had a temper and became suspicious of the fact people who Franklin railed against kept disappearing. Then one night she saw him backhand a busboy so hard he fell, hit his head and died. When she insisted they go to the police, Franklin said if she breathed a word to anyone, he’d kill her and her family. None of you
would ever be safe from him.”

  Leia sucked in a painful breath.

  “One of my dad’s bedtime fairy-tale stories went like that,” she said slowly. “A lot like that. Only in his version it was an evil villain who’d captured a brave queen. In his telling, a poor farmer helped her escape.”

  The farmer had been in love with her. He’d married the queen and they’d had the four princess daughters before she died.

  “In this version, too,” Jay said. “She called your dad at three in the morning from a pay phone and told him that she was terrified and couldn’t escape because Franklin had taken her on this trip to Niagara Falls and now she was stranded at this hotel he’d booked with no way to get home. He’d even taken her purse. Your dad dropped everything and drove through the night to find her and bring her home.”

  “When was that?” she asked.

  “August,” he said.

  “And my parents were married in September,” she said, “and I was born almost ten months later.” She blew out a hard breath. “Just like in the fairy tale.”

  “Your dad loved your mom,” Jay said gently. “If he didn’t tell anyone that she’d spent two months working for Franklin Vamana and witnessed him kill someone, he did it to keep you all safe.”

  “But why wasn’t she braver?” Leia asked. She dropped the milk-soaked rag from her eyes and blinked up at Jay. “Why just change her name, make an anonymous call to police and hide evidence of a serial killer in the farmhouse?”

  “I don’t know,” Jay admitted.

  His face swam before hers now as her vision cleared and for a moment the depths of compassion filling his dark eyes was so strong and comforting that she had to grit her teeth to keep from tumbling into his arms and crying.

  “Hey, your eyes are looking a lot better,” he said. “A lot less puffy and red. By the look of things, Dunlop got you with a pretty brutal direct shot.”

  She felt her chin rise.

  “Like I told you before, he didn’t set the pepper spray off. I did—”

  “Yeah, I know a couple of guys on the force who’ve accidentally taken a hit to the face—”