Willow’s lips pursed like she was pondering something serious and Travis found himself bracing for her next question.
“Seth use’ too much shaky cheese,” Willow said seriously.
Jess laughed and raised an eyebrow at Seth. “Did he now?”
“Yes!” Willow nodded vigorously. “I tol’ him he’s only allowed two shakes! He took three!” She held up three fingers to illustrate.
“And I told her that in Seth’s kitchen, Seth’s allowed as many shakes of Parmesan as he wants,” the hacker said, grinning. “Especially on popcorn.”
“Seth puts a lot of cheese on his popcorn,” Jess admitted. She leaned toward Willow conspiratorially. “Then he gets it all over his computer.”
Willow giggled. Jess straightened and turned back to Seth.
“Seth needs to remember that everybody’s family is different,” Jess said with both a gentle smile on her lips and a firmness to her tone. “It’s important to respect the way other families do things and, right now, we’re in Willow and Dominic’s home.”
Travis felt a smile curving on his lips. He watched as she slipped another spoonful of food into Dominic’s mouth, wiped off the overflow that dribbled from his grinning mouth and then deftly slipped a forkful of her own pasta into her own mouth without breaking stride. He wondered if she’d ever wanted to have kids of her own. Or if she, like him, had worried a career as an undercover detective, and the specific type of exhausting and emotionally challenging police work they did, would make it hard to be there for a family.
“This is Nan’s house, too,” Willow said.
“It is,” Jess said. “It’s Nan’s house, too. Will you show me around after dinner? I’d love to see your special storybook.”
Willow smiled and nodded. “The cover is on u’side down!” Then she frowned. Her lip quivered. “I wish Nan was home.”
Travis felt something like pain stab his heart. He’d already fielded a few uncomfortable questions about when Patricia was coming home and was sure he’d be facing more as bedtime grew closer. Help me, Lord. The hardest weight I’ve ever had to bear was being strong for Willow, Dominic and Patricia through everything they’ve lost. Help me be the strength they need right now.
“We can pray for Nan if you want,” Jess said. “Maybe at bedtime?”
“Can we pray right now?” Willow’s chin shook.
“Absolutely,” Jess said. She set the cutlery down. “We can all pray for Nan right now.”
The lump in Travis’s throat grew tighter. He saw Jess glance his way, not asking his permission but still double-checking that he was on board, and for a moment all he could do was nod.
Willow reached across the table and took Travis’s hand on one side and Seth’s on the other. The hacker blinked as if lost and Travis found himself feeling a ping of sympathy for him. Yeah, he remembered how weird his first unexpected Tatlow family prayer circle had been, too.
Jess gently held Dominic’s tiny hand in hers and gestured to Seth to do likewise. Then Jess reached for Travis’s hand and he felt Jess’s fingers slide between his.
Willow’s prayer was short and sweet, with all the earnestness of a five-year-old, partly asking God to heal her Nan and partly some the familiar words she knew from the usual prayers he knew she said at night at bedtime. Then she said “Amen” very loudly and firmly. Everyone followed suit, hands were dropped and he felt Jess slowly pull her hand from his.
Moments later Seth excused himself from the table to make a phone call. Willow asked to be excused and Dominic started fussing. Jess pulled Dominic from his high chair and bounced him on one hip while she cleared the table. Travis joined her at the counter and scraped off the dishes into the compost bin that Patricia kept under the sink. She glanced back over her shoulder and watched as Willow disappeared into the other room.
“Guessing it wasn’t good news from the hospital?” Jess said, bending her head close to Travis’s and keeping her voice low.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “But I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding it.”
“Oh, you were,” Jess said. She turned to face him and something inside him startled to realize how quickly he’d gotten used to having her there. “But a former partner knows things, especially after working over fifty cases together.”
Yeah, he guessed some connections never went away.
“You’re not broadcasting it,” she added. Her voice faltered, like she wasn’t quite sure what to say. “I mean, you’re not making it obvious.”
“Like I used to?” Travis asked. “It’s okay. We can both admit I used to let things get to me and was pretty open about broadcasting my feelings. But that’s the good thing about kids. You can’t be in a miserable mood without them being puzzled and hurt by it. Loving them helped me learn a lot about growing up and parking my own feelings long enough to help someone else.”
He stretched out his hands for Dominic. She eased him into his arms.
“I’m guessing we’ll talk after the kids are asleep,” he said, “and strategize what we’re going to do about both the Shiny Man and the Chimera.” He couldn’t remember the last time he and Jess had tried to strategize solutions for two unconnected criminal investigations at once, let alone ones that were so very different. “I’m guessing you’re going to want to call in your team. And I’m sorry if I seemed dismissive about them earlier, but I admit we need the help. I need your help.”
“Sounds good,” she said, and he was thankful she seemed willing to let his earlier rudeness go. Then again, Jess had always been too forgiving, at least when it came to him.
“Bedtime will take about an hour,” he added. “And since you’ve told Willow you’d like to see her storybook, you’re part of it now. First we’ve got teeth brushing and face washing, then pajamas, then stories, then bedtime songs and finally prayers. It’s an hour-long operation.”
Jess’s nose crinkled in a look he knew all too well. It was the one she got when she was pondering something that didn’t make sense. Only in this case, the thing that didn’t make sense was him.
“What?” he asked.
“You pray,” she said. “You didn’t used to pray.”
In fact, he used to make fun of her for praying, despite the fact he’d found the sound of it comforting.
“Is this something you do for Willow?” she asked. “Or part of your cover?”
“It’s something I do because that’s who I am now,” he said. “It’s something Patricia, Amber and Geoff encouraged me to do. When they saw how jittery I was, and how I relied on caffeine and was constantly stressed out, they encouraged me to join this recovering addicts group at their church. It was alcoholics mostly, but also one woman who was addicted to pills and a couple of men with gambling problems.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Honestly, my addiction had been to my job, not the caffeine,” he admitted. “But the emphasis on prayer really helped. I needed someone who knew who I was—who I really was, my entire past and everything I’d been through. Even if I couldn’t be fully myself with anyone else, God knew me when no one else did, and that helped.”
Jess nodded, and far more understanding than he deserved hovered in the blue depths of her eyes. She had no idea how absolutely beautiful she was in his eyes, inside and out. Just like she’d never know how tempted he’d been to start up a romantic relationship with her and how thankful he remained that he never had.
“I’m not the man I used to be, Jess,” he said. “I’m better now. It took a lot of hard work. Work that I’m very thankful for, I might add. I know I fought coming here and going into witness protection with everything I had. But it made me a man I actually like being and that means everything to me.”
He turned to walk out of the kitchen. Then he stopped, took a deep breath and mustered his courage for what he needed to say.
> “And I’m sorry.” His eyes locked on hers in the old farmhouse kitchen that felt like a second home. “Because no matter how you remember us, I know for a fact that you deserved a far better partner and friend than me.”
* * *
He said the words kindly, but still they hit her like the slap of a cold wave striking her face. He turned and walked out of the room while she stood there, not even knowing or understanding why his words had struck her the way they had.
There was a rhythmic knock on the door. She looked up. Seth was leaning against the door frame.
“Crazy day, huh?” the hacker said.
“Has it only been a day?” she asked.
“Actually, it hasn’t even been half a day,” Seth noted. “You know, I never thought I liked kids. And maybe I still don’t. I mean two aren’t exactly that big a sample size. But, wow, I do like those two.”
“Yeah, so do I,” Jess said. “They’re pretty amazing.”
And it was clear that they adored Travis just as much as he loved them, which made everything even more difficult and complicated than it already was.
“I went ahead, called the hotel and canceled our rooms,” Seth went on. “Travis invited us to bunk here and I figure you wouldn’t want to leave him and the kids.” His shoulders rose and fell. “And I’m way too curious about this whole mess to leave without finding out how it all ends.”
She felt a weak smile cross her lips. “Thanks. We’ll have a team meeting once the kids are asleep. Call in Liam. Maybe Noah.”
The fifth member of their team, Mack Gray, was on some well-deserved time off helping his social worker fiancée, Iris, rebuild her life after leaving witness protection.
“Yay, we’re getting the band back together.” One eyebrow rose. “Are you okay, though? You look like something rattled you.”
Jess sighed, turned back to the sink and pressed her hands against the edge of the counter.
“Travis just apologized to me for not being a better person back in the day,” she admitted. The nice thing about Seth being the kind of guy who just randomly blurted out what he was thinking was that it gave her the leeway to do the same. “He said he was sorry he wasn’t a better partner and a better friend, because I’d deserved far better than him. I’m not even sure what he means by that, and it makes no sense, because he was the best guy I knew.”
Which Seth, out of everyone, knew, considering how much she’d blathered on about Travis on the drive up.
“Okay, so maybe Travis was the best man you’d ever known and worked with,” Seth said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
She blinked. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“Are you sure you don’t?” Seth asked. He paused a moment as if waiting for her to admit something, but she wasn’t sure what. Then he shrugged. “Look, I’m not proud to admit this, but I’ve had a pretty rocky ride through life so far. I was a bully and jerk in high school. I always had technical know-how, but instead of using it to get a Ph.D., build something awesome and change the world, I became a hacker—a criminal hacker—who tried to stop really bad guys by breaking the law. Then our friend Noah saved my life. Literally pulled me out of the trunk of a car and got me through a hail of bullets.”
He blew out a hard breath.
“I ended up in witness protection,” he went on, “then the huge data hack happened, you all landed on my front door and invited me to join your team. That was the first time I even started believing I could be one of the good guys and use my skills to be part of something... Which is probably the most I’ve ever told you about myself, despite the fact we’ve been working together since Christmas.”
It was, which made it all the worse to admit she still didn’t get his point.
“I appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me that, but...” she started.
“But you don’t get why I told you?” Seth asked. “It’s like this. I had teachers telling me to join the police or military when I was sixteen. But I didn’t believe I belonged with the good guys. In fact, when I thought I was going to die in that criminal’s trunk, part of me believed I didn’t deserve to be rescued.”
He looked down at the floor for a moment and ran his hand across the back of his head.
“People can be really bad at knowing what they deserve,” Seth said. “Some think they deserve way too much and others think they deserve too little. I believe you when you say Travis was the best guy you knew and the best cop you ever worked with. In fact, I think you had a major crush on him. Maybe you still do. But I also believe him when he said he wasn’t the best guy back then and you deserved better. Both things can be true at once and, like I said, I read his file.” He turned and headed back into the living room, throwing one more sentence at her back over his shoulder as he went. “Those kids are definitely special, though.”
The hacker disappeared through the doorway before Jess could say anything more or even think up a response. Seth was wrong. Travis had been an excellent detective. Sure, he’d been temperamental and grouchy sometimes, especially when he hadn’t eaten or slept. And yes, she’d always found him attractive, in a whole host of ways from his lazy smile, to his chocolate-brown eyes, to his wry sense of humor, to the blunt way he talked that helped her mind focus, to the way he threw himself into his work.
She hadn’t had a crush on him. Or, if she had, it didn’t mean that was the only reason she’d wanted him to join the team, was it?
Yet, the question still rattled in her head as she went upstairs and joined him in getting the kids ready for bed. She moved through the evening routine, reading stories from Willow’s old and faded storybook with its hard cover sewed on upside down, learning the songs and joining in the prayers. She enjoyed every moment and her heart swelled to see how well Travis cared for the kids. But still what Travis and Seth had said, along with her own memories, rattled faintly in the back of her mind. And the more she saw the man he was now, the more she realized just how much happier and calmer he was than the man he’d been.
It was an hour and fifteen minutes before the children were asleep and she and Travis went downstairs to join Seth at the dining room table. Seth’s laptop was open in front of them. Liam and Noah sat in two different boxes on the camera screen. She made introductions as they sat.
“Travis, meet detectives Noah Wilder and Liam Bearsmith,” she said.
“Nice to meet you,” Travis said.
“Likewise,” Liam replied.
“Noah and his fiancée, Corporal Holly Asher, were on the front lines when the computer hack of witness protection files happened,” she said. “They were the ones who ultimately took the hackers down and stopped the auction.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Seth raise his hand, as if wanting to point out he’d had a major role in stopping the auction, too. “With Seth, of course,” she added. “Liam is one of the best undercover detectives in the country, especially in terms of organized crime, and has been coordinating the relocation of witnesses whose identities were stolen. Our fifth member, Mack Gray, is taking some well-deserved time off.”
“Small team,” Travis noted.
“A small team, but the right team,” Liam said. His voice was usually serious, but now, for some reason, it was almost stern. “Considering the fact we had every reason to suspect the theft of the witness protection files was facilitated by someone inside the RCMP and that law enforcement had been infiltrated, we decided it was best to keep it tight and off the grid.”
“Why you five?” Travis asked.
Jess took a breath and went for brutal honesty. “All four of us detectives were on some form of probation at the time.”
“And I was just sitting around bored in witness protection,” Seth interjected, “with all my talents sadly wasted.”
“It enabled us to work off the grid,” Jess continued, “outside the usual chain of
command.”
“And highly effectively,” Liam added firmly.
But in her peripheral vision, she saw Travis’s eyes widen. “What kind of probation?”
“I had a family issue holding up my security clearance,” Noah offered.
“And I was on medical leave,” Liam said. He grimaced as if the memory had left him with a bad taste in his mouth. “Crooked cop blew my cover to some criminals I was targeting, and they weren’t too happy. They jumped me, knocked me around a bit and I ended up in a coma. Thankfully, another cop closed the case I was working on and I pulled through with nothing worse than recurring headaches.”
Truth was Liam had nearly lost his life, but he brushed it off like it was nothing.
Travis turned to Jess. “You never told me that you’d ever been on probation.”
“Well, I was.” She said the words directly and without smiling, feeling herself slide back into full detective mode. Seth had all but accused her of letting her personal feelings for Travis cloud her professional judgment. She wasn’t about to be accused of being emotional now.
“As you well know, I put up with a lot of harassing comments and sexist remarks during my career, people belittling me and thinking I didn’t know my stuff because of how I looked. When I was on undercover assignment last summer, a fellow detective got a bit fresh with me and grabbed me, so I gave him a quick jab to the gut to get him to let me go.”
“What happened?” Travis asked.
“I winded him,” she said, “and he went down hard.”
Seth snorted and a slight smile turned on Noah and Liam’s lips, too, and she realized that in all the time they’d worked together, this might’ve been the first time she’d told the story.
“I didn’t hit him that hard. Just four knuckles, not even a punch.” She held up her hand, fingers folded over, and tapped her knuckles as if to demonstrate. “No injury. Just left him gasping for breath. But I caught him before he could exhale, so he went down like a sack of potatoes.”
Liam barked out a laugh. It was so sudden and unexpected that it sent Seth and Noah chuckling.
Witness Protection Unraveled (Protected Identities Book 3) Page 7