“You, too,” Alvin said. “Hope to see you at the school concert later. And if there’s anything I can do to help out Patricia and the kids, let me know. Some of us were talking about having a community cleanup effort tomorrow, or maybe holding a big book sale at the store later this month and bringing the whole town together for a fund-raising flea market.” Alvin half jogged, half ran back to the classroom.
Jess and Travis went to his truck, left the parking lot and started off on the road that led out of town. First the buildings and then the Welcome to Kilpatrick sign disappeared behind them.
“You’ve been quietly stewing to yourself for the past ten minutes,” Jess said.
“I didn’t think it was that long.”
“It’s been ever since Alvin talked to us,” Jess said. “It’s like you’re judging him for not being a better whatever to Cleo, but at least he’s not on his cell phone at work. I checked his wrist when he shook my hand and he doesn’t have any bite marks. But, on the plus side, Seth has eyes on him, so if he suddenly decides to throw on a Shiny Man suit and run out to go do crimes, Seth will definitely notice.”
“Funny,” Travis said. “He has an alibi for Patricia’s accident and the attack in my study. Not that there can’t be more than one Shiny Man on the loose or a future copycat.”
They passed a couple of mailboxes and then the last vestiges of town disappeared completely. Forest surrounded them. Towering trees and rocks lined the narrow rural highway.
“He was flirting with you,” Travis added. “Even though he’s got a thing going with Cleo and, as far as everyone in this town knows, you’re my ex-fiancée.”
“I’m your pretend ex-fiancée,” Jess corrected, “and I don’t get why you’re so rattled by this.”
“You never really noticed just how much guys flirted with you,” Travis said. “Women usually don’t.”
Jess snorted. “You serious? Of course we notice! We just don’t always like it and learn to tune it out, because most of the time it doesn’t mean anything and a lot of the time it’s insulting.”
“Insulting?” Travis repeated. “How was it insulting to be constantly barraged by colleagues wanting to talk you out of whatever undercover case you were working on with me to go work with them?”
“Travis!” Her hands flew into the air and she was thankful he was the one driving. How could he be so obtuse? “You were always blunt with me, so I’m going to be really blunt with you.
“I’m a woman, in a male-dominated field, who’s five foot two with naturally blond hair and blue eyes, who, because of my build and how much I exercise, am in relatively healthy shape. That means, to some guys, I fit into some idea of what they think of as ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’ or an accessory they can picture on their arm. None of that has anything to do with who I am as a person. It’s insulting to me, to every woman who doesn’t look like me, and to my badge.”
Plus it had riled her up enough she’d been willing to go on probation over it. Travis eased the truck off the rural highway onto an even narrower road, with ragged edges. And she was thankful she hadn’t tried to do the drive alone.
“But maybe you don’t get it, because you were never like that,” she added. “And I wasn’t your type, so you didn’t see me like that.”
Now it was Travis’s turn to snort.
“What do you mean, you weren’t my type?” he asked. “What do you think my type is? You think I don’t like strong, talented and intelligent women? Of course I found you attractive, very much so, but I also really respected you and didn’t want to wreck our working relationship by putting you in an awkward position or coming across as a creep.”
“Oh.” She sat back against the seat, suddenly feeling the wind knocked from her. “Well, then, thank you for that.”
He grinned. “No problem.”
They hit a long, dirt and gravel road, wet with mud and dotted with puddles from rain that had fallen in the night. He eased up on the speed as a house appeared ahead, or rather, the remains of what had once been a house or even a converted barn.
She couldn’t imagine what color the wood had been once, but now it was grayed from weather and disrepair. It’s peaked, two-story roof caved in slightly on one side. Boards covered the broken windows. There wasn’t another person or vehicle in sight.
“The Shiny Man’s been getting his packages delivered here?” Jess asked.
“Apparently,” Travis said. “If Seth is right.”
“He almost always is.”
He stopped the truck and they got out. Faint imprints of what had once been tire tracks streaked across the muddy ground. The long, wet grass that grew around the building was slightly flattened in a line leading to the front of the house.
“Either way, someone’s been here recently,” Jess added.
She made a quick call to Seth, checking that the kids were fine and confirming he had her and Travis’s location on GPS, too, thanks to the trackers they had on their phones. Then she and Travis stood there for a long moment and stared at the house. The smell of impending rain filled the air. The farmhouse door hung ajar on broken hinges.
“So, we’re going to go in there,” Jess said.
“Apparently so.” He glanced her way, and somehow, despite everything, she felt her chin rise and a determined grin cross her lips. There was something about having him there that always made her feel better, stronger, straightening her spine and filling her lungs with fresh air.
Travis reached into his pocket and pulled on a pair of gloves, waited until she put on hers, too, and then he reached across the gap between them and squeezed her hand. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
Yeah, so was she.
They approached the house slowly and cautiously. The damp wood of the front steps, sloped from decay, was soft underfoot.
Travis knocked twice on the door and it swung open to his touch. “Hello?”
There was no answer. They stepped into the gloom of what she guessed had once been a living room and the smell of damp wood and decay intensified. Thin, weak streams of light filtered in through the boarded-up windows.
Jess bent and brushed her hand across the floor.
“No dust,” she noted. She stood. “Someone’s been here.”
But who and why?
They crossed the floor, moving deeper into the dark and empty room. Travis took a step forward and something clicked under his foot.
Sudden light flashed behind them, filling the empty room with blinding light.
Jess felt the air shift behind them and glanced back.
A shape clad in orange swung forward, flying at them seemingly from out of nowhere. She barely had a glimpse of a silver respirator mask and reflective jumpsuit as the figure barreled into her, knocking her backward. She felt Travis catch her against his chest, his strong arms tightening around her.
Then Travis fell backward, taking Jess with him. They hit the floor and then fell through it, tumbling into darkness as a trap door opened up beneath them.
NINE
Darkness filled her eyes as they fell backward into cold, damp air. For a moment, Jess could feel Travis’s arms around her. Then she fell from his grasp and there was nothing but the feeling of her body in free fall as the rectangular light of the trap door above them grew farther and farther away.
She heard the thud and grunt of Travis hitting the floor. Then a jarring jolt of pain shot through her as her own body hit the ground. She lay there for a moment, her winded lungs gasping. The faint sound of a rhythmic creak filtered down from above them as the silhouetted shape of a man moved back and forth in the light above them. The last glimmer of light disappeared in a crash as the trap door closed. There was nothing but pitch-black around her, the sound of her ragged breath escaping her lips and the smell of dirt filling her nostrils.
Help us, God! she prayed, battling the panic that
threatened to overwhelm her. Her fingers brushed against first the phone in her pocket and then the weapon at her side. Were they alone? Was it safe to move? Would it be safe to yell? Then she heard Travis groan softly.
“Travis!” She gasped his name and rolled toward the sound.
“Jess,” Travis’s disembodied whisper echoed around her and filled her chest with hope.
“You okay?” she whispered back.
“Yeah.” He groaned again. “Just sore all over. You?”
“Everything hurts, but I’m okay.”
“Thank God,” he said.
She felt her body bump against his. His warm breath brushed her face. Even in the darkness, she knew the scent of him anywhere, a mingling of pine deodorant, coffee and something else that was all him and felt like home. Her forehead bumped against his. “Do you think we’re alone?”
He paused a long moment. “I think so, I can’t hear anyone else or anything else really.”
She closed her eyes and listened. Yeah, neither could she. But she’d still give it a moment before she raised her voice, switched on her phone’s flashlight, or did anything other than lie there in pain, on the off chance somebody was listening or surveying them.
“Well, on the plus side,” Travis said softly, “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be trapped in a cellar with.”
“You think it’s a cellar?” she asked.
“Smells more musty than a basement, and I’m hoping calling it a dungeon would be oversell.” His breath tickled her face. Travis’s fingers looped through hers and they lay there a moment, side by side, waiting to catch their breaths.
“Trap door, huh?” Travis recovered first. “Haven’t seen one of those since the raid on the tattoo parlor in Kingston.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but it’s a whole lot different when you’re staring at it from the other side.”
“Have I told you how amazing it’s been to have someone around who knows about that side of my life?” he asked. “As much as I’ve loved my life in Kilpatrick, parts of it have been incredibly lonely. Now, if we’ve gone this long with no one barging in or attacking us, I’m going to risk moving.” She felt him pull away from her in the darkness.
“Good news is, it seems safe to sit up,” he said. There was another shuffling noise. “And stand,” he added.
She felt his hand reach for hers again. She took it and let him help pull her to her feet.
“Now,” Travis said, “let’s hope at least one of our phones survived the fall.”
Agreed. As she was pulling her phone from her pocket, she saw a light flicker to her right. She looked over. Travis’s face glanced back at her, illuminated in the pale glow of his cell phone screen.
“More good news, we’ve got light,” he said.
“Is there more bad news?” she asked.
“Yup, no phone signal.”
She turned her phone on and found it was the same on both counts.
Travis waved his phone’s flashlight around the room, if they could call it that. It was barely ten feet wide and roughly square. The walls were made of old, red brick that was faded and chipped in the corners. The ground was packed dark earth. The ceiling above was low, barely inches above Travis’s head, which was surprising and far lower than she’d have expected considering how far the fall had seemed.
“I’m guessing this is a subbasement,” she said.
One with no exits, no windows and no doors, besides the narrow chute they’d fallen through.
She steeled a breath and kept looking. “So, we’re agreed that this was a trap, right?” Jess asked.
“Afraid so,” Travis said.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember what she’d seen.
“I didn’t even see where he came from,” she said eventually, opening her eyes. “Did you?”
“No.”
Fear pounded in her chest as they searched the exit-less room. What was this criminal’s plan? To kill them? To leave them there and let them starve? But she knew, even as she thought the questions, that she didn’t need to speak them. Travis would be thinking them, too, chasing question after question down even worse rabbit holes than she could imagine, until one of them finally spoke the words they both needed to hear.
“It doesn’t matter what he wants with us,” Jess said. “All that matters is getting out alive.”
“I was just thinking that,” Travis said.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.
“Well, presumably this room was originally built with some kind of entrance and exit before the trap door was installed,” he said, “and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to try climbing up that chute.”
Not even if there hadn’t been a closed trap door and the potential of whoever trapped them waiting at the top. “Me neither.”
“Didn’t think so,” he said, turning toward the walls. “I’m going to figure out where there might have been an exit. Can you hold both phones for maximum light?”
“Absolutely.”
She took his phone and held one in each hand, then stood back and watched as he methodically searched the walls, feeling the bricks, pulling at them, and tapping the walls with his knuckles, until finally he found a patch that seemed newer than the rest. Then he pulled his knife from his pocket, slid it between the bricks and started prying. And so began the very long and tedious job of slowly digging their way out of captivity.
Travis and Jess went back and forth, between one prying the bricks out inch by inch, while the other held the light, eventually cutting down to just one phone and switching each one off in turn to preserve the battery life.
In an odd way, it was like a physical representation of the work they’d done back at their desks, side by side, in near silence, taking down criminals. They’d spent hours and hours each day, for days, weeks and even months, combing over evidence, websites, phone records, photographs and videos, slowly compiling the data needed to track criminals and bring them to justice. Like prying bricks free from the cement holding them together to form a wall, it was painstaking and exhausting work.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize how bad a toll the job used to take on you,” Jess said. “Now that I’m reminded of it, I remember how irritable, overtired and jumpy you used to be. Guess I’d forgotten all that.”
“Guess there’s nothing wrong with remembering the best side of someone,” Travis said. The tip of his knife moved slowly around the edge of the next brick.
“It’s just...if I’d known, maybe I could’ve done something to help,” Jess said.
Travis paused and looked at her over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Jess,” he said. “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that you would’ve been the first person in my corner helping me.” He turned back. “You’d have tried to do everything the Tatlow family did for me and more. But how were you supposed to help me with something when I didn’t even realize there was a problem? You can’t be expected to help save someone who doesn’t even know he needs saving.”
Travis’s knife scraped over the cement with an eerie, high-pitched sound that seemed to echo through the prison they were trapped in. How long would the Shiny Man leave them there? What would they face when they escaped?
“The kids are okay,” she said after a long moment. “I’m sure of it. Seth has eyes on them in person, Liam is monitoring them remotely, and they’re in an environment where they’re surrounded by people in the community who know them. If anyone so much as slams a door too loudly or knocks over a stack of books near those kids, my team will spring into action.”
“I know,” Travis said. There was a weariness to his voice tinged with worry. And she suspected he’d been praying for Willow and Dominic just as much and as relentlessly as she had been.
“I read through your entire case file on the Chimera last night,” he
added, “and the details of your upcoming undercover operation.”
“And?” she asked.
He paused longer than she would’ve liked and then, when he started talking again, he did so without meeting her eyes.
“It’s solid,” Travis said. “Really solid. Not that I’m surprised. You’ve always been an incredible cop. I can’t think of a single thing you could improve on it. I just wish you wouldn’t do it.”
“Because you think it’s too risky,” Jess pressed.
“Because I don’t want to lose you again.” Travis’s voice rose, only slightly, but enough that the sound seemed to echo around her. “The only way the Chimera is going to let you get close enough to see his face is if he thinks he can hurt you and use you. And once you get inside his web, it won’t be easy to escape. Losing you the first time hurt too much and while I get that this is your job and you’re really good at it, I don’t want to lose you again. Especially like this.”
There was a clink as another piece of brick broke off in front of him. Travis tossed it aside and then slid his hand through the hole. The wall was at least three bricks thick, but it seemed like they’d finally broken through. Jess felt a breath of relief leave her lungs. But an odd tightness still filled her chest that had nothing to do with the subbasement they were trapped in.
Travis reached for the cell phone. She handed it to him and he shone the light through the opening.
“Okay, we’ve got an empty room, with a window.” He let out a sigh that matched hers. “We’re going to get out.”
He handed back the phone and started working on making the hole bigger.
“I really wish I had a better option for taking down the Chimera,” Travis said. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to find one and I have to admit I think your approach is smart. If not you, then we’d have to find somebody else to go in undercover, and there’s no time to get someone up to speed on all the Chimera’s operations. The only other person who could do it would be me, and my cover’s already blown. It would make more sense to leak my location and wait for his henchmen to come find me.”
Witness Protection Unraveled (Protected Identities Book 3) Page 11