Witness Protection Unraveled (Protected Identities Book 3)

by Maggie K. Black

  “As for Travis and the kids, we’re going to get an extraction team to pick you guys up and take you to a safe house in Sudbury to be near Patricia in the hospital. My first choice will be to send a helicopter, but we might need to send a van depending who’s available. We’ll loop social services in to meet you at the hospital. Give me an hour.”

  Travis’s head shot up. “You’re going to extract the children from their home in the middle of the night?”

  “Do you have a better option?” Liam asked. “I can push it to just before dawn so that they get some sleep but leave under cover of darkness. The most important thing we can do right now is to make sure the children are taken care of.”

  “I will find a better option,” Travis said. “I’ll take care of them.”

  “With all due respect, you don’t exist!” Liam said, and for the first time since Travis had met the steady and solid man on video screen, the detective’s voice rose. “You’re an imaginary person whose identity was created by a very dedicated team of Witness Protection agents—including myself. And I get it.” Liam let out a long breath and his voice dropped just as suddenly as it had risen. “Trust me, I’m not unsympathetic. In fact, as someone who has been undercover many, many times, I know what it’s like to lose yourself inside another identity and begin to think that’s who you are.”

  Unexpected pain flashed in Liam’s eyes, like something long deeply hidden had floated to the surface.

  “But you have to remember that isn’t really you,” Liam continued. “And, again, as much as I hate to say this, you weren’t supposed to get as close to that family as you did. These people you care about don’t know who you really are.”

  Okay, but maybe Travis had no idea who he was anymore, either. He wasn’t the man he’d been when he’d first entered Witness Protection. He wasn’t the man who’d driven himself to exhaustion, living on caffeine with no real relationships and no peace in his heart. And while Travis Stone of Kilpatrick, Ontario, with friends, community and an unexpected family, wasn’t him, either, it was the happiest and closest to being real he’d ever been.

  And with him gone, and all that gone, who was he now?

  ELEVEN

  Jess wasn’t surprised when Travis slipped away upstairs as they wrapped up the conversation. She could hardly blame him for wanting to spend as much time as he could with the children. Seth ended the video call and went back to whatever he was searching for on his computer. She stretched out on the pullout couch in the study, still dressed in her T-shirt and jeans, and tried in vain to sleep. Finally, just after five in the morning, she gave up and walked back to the living room. Seth was still at the laptop.

  “None of this is your fault,” Seth said. “In case that’s what was making you toss and turn in there. You’ve done nothing wrong. You do know that, right?”

  Did she? Intellectually she knew she’d done everything by the book and that things would probably have been far worse if she hadn’t come to Kilpatrick. But that didn’t stop the ache in her chest.

  Seth turned back to the screen and the sound of his fingers moving on the keys started up again. “Besides, Travis knew the risks when he formed emotional connections.”

  Was that fair? Yes, he’d know all the restrictions and conditions of life in Witness Protection. But that didn’t mean his heart had been able to stop itself from caring about those little children. Any more than her heart had been able to stop caring about him.

  The sound of typing stopped suddenly.

  “Jess? We got a problem.” Seth’s face was ashen in the pale glow of the laptop screen. “Someone is fishing for information about you on the dark web.”

  Fear poured cold over her shoulders.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Seth said. “It’s bouncing off servers and IP addresses, masking sites all over the world. I’m barely able to identify the messages before they disappear. They just flash online with a secure reply link and then are taken down again. Then another one blips on another site. I have no way of knowing how many of these there’ve been and then they’re gone. Think of it like online fly-fishing. Dipping the lure in the water and then quickly disappearing.”

  The shivers ran colder, and Jess found herself wrapping her arms protectively around her.

  “And I’m on the end of that lure?” she asked.

  “Yup,” Seth confirmed. “Your photo, your name, both the undercover last name you gave when we first came to town and your real name, along with the fact you’re an RCMP detective.”

  Help me, Lord.

  “I can trace it and find the source.” Seth ran his hand through his already disheveled hair. “But it’s not an instantaneous process. It could take me hours. A lot of hours. Maybe even a day or more.”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” she said and patted his shoulder. “You’re doing the best you can. We all are.”

  “I wish I could do more and faster.” Seth rubbed his hands over his face. “You don’t get how frustrating it is to be sitting here, watching these things happen, knowing that sometimes you can catch it and sometimes you can’t. No one’s ever gotten away from me yet. But sometimes it’s taken me weeks or even months to find someone. Even for the best hacker, things take time, and we don’t have time.”

  No, they really didn’t.

  “Message Liam, Mack and Noah to let them know,” Jess said. She didn’t know if her entire team would still be awake, but time had seemed to have lost all meaning since the data breach. “Maybe they can speed up that helicopter. I’ll go tell Travis.”

  “What do you want me to tell them?” Seth asked.

  “Tell them that my identity has been compromised online, my personal identification has been posted on the dark web, and I need to be pulled from all undercover assignments, including the Chimera,” Jess said.

  It was as simple as that. It was over. No more undercover assignments. She was not going to be the one to see the Chimera’s face, get a positive identification and finally get a warrant issued in his name.

  It was over. It was done. And now she had to go tell Travis that the last shred of hope they’d had that she’d be able to take down the Chimera was gone. She walked up the stairs, feeling her feet drag with every step.

  The children’s bedroom door was open a crack. She stood there for a moment and looked in. Travis was lying on the floor between Willow and Dominic, his eyes closed and one hand stretched out, touching each of their beds, like he was trying to protect them against anything that might harm them.

  Her heart lurched. There was something both so soft and strong about him. Something that made her wish she could lie down beside him, on the old farmhouse floor, and join him in keeping the children safe. Instead she prayed, feeling something deep and indefinable break inside her chest.

  As if sensing her gaze on him, Travis opened his eyes and smiled with that lazy, unguarded grin of someone who’d just woken up from a happy and pleasant dream and hadn’t yet remembered that it’s not real.

  “Hey,” Travis whispered. “Give me a second.”

  She watched as he slowly unfurled and stood. Then he paused and searched her face, as if finally fully waking and seeing her for real. His forehead creased. “What’s wrong?”

  So very much. Tears filled her eyes and threatened to fall. “We need to talk.”

  He nodded then slowly brushed a hand over each sleeping child’s form in turn, as if in prayer. He turned and followed her out into the hallway, leaving the door open a crack.

  “Can we go somewhere?” she asked softly. “Maybe the front porch?”

  “I don’t want to be that far away from the kids,” he said. “But Patricia’s room has a balcony. We can go talk there.”

  She nodded and followed as he lead the way down the hall and through a door. Patricia’s room was large, with an old antique dresser with pictures on
it.

  “That’s Patricia and her husband, Joe,” Travis said, pointing to a black-and-white picture of a young couple who didn’t look much older than teenagers. Then he pointed to a square, colored picture of the same couple with a young boy. “They were both first-generation Canadians and met at college. That’s them again with Geoff, when he was a little boy.”

  He pointed to colorful glossy pictures of two laughing teenagers.

  “And that’s Geoff and Amber,” he said. “They were high school sweethearts. Joe died two years after they were married.”

  She glanced at a picture of Geoff, Amber and Travis sitting on a log, with a toddler in Travis’s arms she recognized as Willow.

  “That was us one Thanksgiving,” he said. “Patricia called me her ‘found son.’ She said there were two types of family in the world. Those you were born into and those that you found.”

  Travis turned to Jess. Pain brimmed his eyes. Something tightened in her throat as he searched her face. Then he led her through the large double doors and out onto a balcony. The June night sky lay dark blue and fathomless above them, and for a long moment neither of them said anything.

  “I have something to tell you,” Jess said finally.

  “Your cover’s been properly blown, right?” he asked.

  Travis reached for both of her hands and took them in his.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Whoever this petty, evil little Shiny Man is, he’s been sending out feelers about me all over the dark web and Seth hasn’t been able to locate the source yet. But it doesn’t matter. It just means it’s all over for me. I won’t be able to go undercover against the Chimera. I can’t risk any undercover missions anymore.” Frustrated tears pushed to the corners of her eyes.

  Travis squeezed her hands. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “How?” she asked. “Criminals have destroyed both your life and mine. I’ll never be able to risk going undercover again. We failed to stop the Chimera. We failed to stop one Shiny Man before someone murdered him and haven’t caught the Shiny Man who grabbed Willow.”

  “There’s always hope,” Travis said. “You know that. I was always the cynic and you were the optimist, remember? You believed in me way more than I ever believed in myself.”

  “I might never see you again,” she said. “As long as you’re living under a secret identity, it’s too risky.”

  “I know,” Travis said. Something choked in his voice. He pulled her hands to his chest and brought her closer to him. “And yeah, the loss of your ability to go undercover ever again is a huge blow. I know how hard that is. But you’ll make it through. You still have your team. You’ll reshape and rebuild your career in a new way.”

  “But we won’t have each other,” she said.

  “No.” His voice dropped. “We won’t.”

  When she’d come to Kilpatrick, Jess hadn’t known why she’d been so focused on seeing Travis and recruiting him. But now she did. She’d missed him. She’d cared about him. And now the thought of losing him again cut deep inside her.

  “If we went back in time, five years ago, and I’d asked you out for coffee, would you have gone?” Travis asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, I would’ve.”

  “What if I’d asked you out for dinner?’ he queried. “On an actual romantic date?”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  “And if I’d told you that I’d had feelings for you?”

  “I would’ve told you I had feelings for you, too.” Somehow in the sadness of knowing they had so little time together, she felt a fresh courage fill her core. “I would’ve told you that I admired you, I liked how your mind worked and how dedicated you were to your job. I would’ve admitted you were the only man I’d ever really liked the idea of having a future with. And that I liked that idea very much.”

  There was a very faint roar in the distance, like the threat of thunder, only without even the hint of rain. The rumbling grew louder, and she recognized what it was. A helicopter was approaching.

  “I wanted a future with you, too,” Travis said. Then he stepped back, and his hands dropped from hers. “But if you’d asked me out on a date, I would’ve said no. I wasn’t the man you deserved back then. I wasn’t ready for a family or for you. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be, more than anything. But I think I knew that God had more work to do in my heart before then. And now...” His voice trailed off.

  The noise of the helicopter grew louder. She could see it as a small dot of light against the deep blue sky.

  And now it was too late, for both of them. But even if they hadn’t had the past, and they didn’t have the future, at least they had right now. She stepped forward boldly and slid her hands up around his neck. His arms wrapped around her waist and he pulled her into him.

  “I wish I’d grown with you,” she said. “When you did all that work to become a man you’re proud of being, I wish I’d been right there alongside you, watching it happen. So that on the day you felt ready to be with someone, you’d have looked over and seen me there.” She swallowed hard. “Travis, I—”

  He kissed her before she could finish the sentence.

  They stood there holding each other while the helicopter roared and rumbled closer. It wasn’t until she felt the wind of the helicopter landing on the lawn that they pulled out of each other’s arms. Then, without a word, Travis went back to the children and Jess ran downstairs.

  A cold breeze whipped up the stairs toward her, but it wasn’t until she reached the living room that she realized why. The front door was open.

  Seth’s laptop sat on the table. The screen was black with small green text scrolling across it at a pace she’d never seen before, like all the words it contained were pouring themselves out at a dizzying speed. Then suddenly the screen went black.

  Her phone buzzed and she glanced at it. The screen was black, except for a single word flashing red on the screen. Run!

  And suddenly she realized that Seth had activated his computer’s auto destruct and set their phones to wipe themselves clean. Then what had happened to him? Had he been kidnapped? Killed? There’s no way Seth would’ve just run and left them all behind.

  “Travis!” she shouted. “We’ve got hostiles!”

  She turned toward the stairs. But it was too late as a large man in black fatigues stepped out from the kitchen with an automatic weapon, blocking her way. She froze and her hands rose as he aimed the weapon between her eyes.

  “Detective Jessica Eddington!” The voice was cold, cruel and had a heavy Eastern European accent. “The Chimera would like to see you.”

  TWELVE

  The Chimera’s henchman relieved her of her cell phone and gun. He ordered her to place her hands on her head and marched her out the front door, away from the house and down the driveway. Then he made her stand, the barrel of a gun to her back, and face the farmhouse.

  She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. She knew his type. The Chimera liked to staff his operations with interchangeable and dangerous criminal mercenaries, mostly from Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries. He’d fly them in and out of the country before law enforcement could catch them. She also knew, without a doubt, that unlike Travis, this man holding her and the others storming the farmhouse had never seen the Chimera’s face. Even if her team arrived now, in all its glory and might, and rescued them, grounded the helicopter and took the Chimera’s henchmen into custody, they’d still be no closer to discovering his true identity and stopping his evil operation.

  Lord, I’m so terrified right now, I don’t even know how or what to pray. Show me the way out. Tell me what to do. Please, please save us now.

  Instead, all she could do was watch from a distance, helpless as two more masked men marched Seth, Travis and the children from the farmhouse at gunpoint, with Dominic in his safety harness on Travis�
�s chest and Willow in Seth’s arms. She prayed, with all her heart, that the children’s half-awake and sleepy state, and the comfort of Travis’s strength, would keep them from absorbing the fear of what was happening.

  In vain, she looked to the sky, searching for hope in the darkness above as it slowly began to turn to gold at the edges of the horizon. She strained her ears, listening hard, hoping against hope for the sound of rescue coming. But all she could hear was the noise of the rotors and the shaking of the leaves. Travis, Seth and the children disappeared into the helicopter. Then she felt the gun at her back as the large, masked man nudged her forward.

  Desperation and despair poured over Jess, flooding her emotions so deeply that for a moment she couldn’t move or breathe. Whoever the Chimera was, whatever he was up to, and wherever they were being taken, the most dangerous international criminal she knew had now kidnapped two veteran RCMP detectives, who’d been directly involved in taking down his past operation, along with the country’s most elite and skilled hacker, who himself had to disappear into Witness Protection. The havoc the Chimera could now wreak and the damage he could now do was incalculable.

  Not to mention he also had two vulnerable children in his grasp as leverage.

  The gunman jabbed her with the barrel of his weapon. Her chin rose. Whatever happened next, the people she cared about were not going to face it alone. Tears of desperation filled her eyes. She grit her teeth and stumbled forward, praying with every breath. There had to be a way out of this.

  Travis’s words from the balcony just moments before echoed in her mind. There had to be hope. Even if she didn’t see it. Come on, Jess. Think! Travis and Seth would fight with their last breath to save the children, escape and stop the Chimera. Liam and the rest of her team would never give up until they were found and rescued. There were only three mercenaries. They weren’t outmanned. But they were outgunned, and by killers who wouldn’t think twice about taking them down.