Runaway Witness

by Maggie K. Black

  Mack took her hand in his and pulled her away from the window.

  “That might actually work—for you,” he whispered. “You’ve got this really sweet but no-nonsense way about you that makes people want to give you a break. No matter how criminal someone is, they’re still human. But I’ve tangled with one of those two men before. His name is Eddie Paul, and he was betrayed once by one of my cover identities named Graves.”

  Graves was a particularly unpleasant person whom Mack had hated assuming and been very thankful to “kill off” a year ago.

  “The only reason Eddie hasn’t tried to kill Graves,” he added, “is that he thinks I’m already dead.”

  The good news was that Eddie was savvy enough to prefer threats and very targeted attacks over murder. He was unlikely to kill Iris unless ordered to by whomever he was working for now. The bad news was that Eddie wasn’t the kind to let her go without first searching her camper, and when he suddenly came face-to-face with Mack, it wasn’t going to go well.

  “I said, open up!” Now the shouting was accompanied by a loud rap on the camper door.

  Iris darted forward, pulling out of his grasp and stepping toward the door. “One moment!” she shouted back. “Just give me a second!”

  “What are you doing?” Mack whispered. He reached for her arm to pull her back and missed.

  She stepped close to him and kept her voice low. “I’m stalling them.”

  She was what? His jaw dropped. He was the cop, she was the civilian and it was his job to get her out of there alive. “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t do anything,” he whispered. Another burst of knocking erupted on the door outside. “You may have stumbled through any number of incredibly dangerous situations in your life and made it out alive. But right now, it’s my job to keep you safe.”

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I’m listening. What do you need to do that?”

  A moment to think, information about what kind of operation he’d stumbled into and to somehow stop the erratic pounding in his heart that seemed to happen whenever Iris was near.

  Iris’s chin rose. Her face was pale, but defiance and strength filled her eyes. He couldn’t imagine how hard she was working to hold her tongue and let him think. She was one of the most genuine, compassionate and well-meaning people he knew. She also always wanted to talk.

  Silence had fallen outside the camper. Her stalling tactic seemed to have bought them a moment. But he needed far more than that. They were worse off than fish in a barrel.

  “Well, what do you want to do?” she asked.

  Scoop you up into my arms and run to safety. “I want to talk to my team,” Mack said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then how about I walk out there, apologize very profoundly and loudly and distract them for you while you talk to your team?”

  “No. Because they might hurt you,” he whispered as loudly as he dared.

  “Not immediately,” she said. “It’s not like they want to kill me, they just want to scare us off. And if bad things start to go down, you can jump out and have my back. It’s also possible they’ll just yell at me and let me go.”

  He hated every single thing about that plan, including the fact it was exactly the kind of thing he’d have come up with if Iris had actually been a member of his team and his chest didn’t ache at the thought of her being in danger.

  The banging started up again, followed by the rattling of someone shaking the door.

  “What’s going to be worse for me?” she asked. “If I go out there and stall them while you make a plan? Or if they burst in here and shoot us both?”

  He took a deep breath and prayed. He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

  “Go,” he whispered. “Quickly, before I change my mind. Talk up a storm. Be loud and dramatic. Distract them as long as you can, and if they agree to let you drive off, all the better. But whatever you do, don’t lie to them. I know you probably think people have been believing whatever cover story you’ve been giving them so far. But I’m guessing they just thought you’re a really nice person in trouble and they wanted to help you. Trust me. You’re a terrible liar.”

  Her eyes opened wide. In a life full of fake people and criminals, Iris was the most real person he’d ever met.

  “If anything happens I’m coming out, guns blazing,” he added. “If they so much as lay a hand on you or try to take you anywhere, I’m throwing the plan out the window and coming after you. You’re not alone. You got that? Not even for a second. I’ve got your back.”

  “Enough stalling!” Eddie’s fist banged the door. “I’m counting to ten and then I’m shooting the lock off the door! One. Two—”

  “I’m coming!” Iris flung the door open and stepped out so quickly Mack barely had time to press back against the wall. The door clicked shut behind her. “Hello, hey, guys! Wow, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I got all turned around looking for a place to stop. Are those guns real?”

  Nice. He couldn’t have thought of a stronger opening. She sounded confused, apologetic and eager to resolve this whole thing as quickly as possible.

  He dropped to the floor, pulled out his phone, clipped an earpiece into his ear and activated the encrypted video messaging system that Seth had set up for them.

  “Hey.” Liam Bearsmith’s deep voice filled his ear. Mack glanced down at the video on his phone. The relentless, broad-shouldered undercover detective was crammed at a small desk, just to the right of spiky-haired hacker Seth. “Did you find Iris?”

  “Does she like your beard?” Seth asked.

  “See, I’m driving across Canada...” Iris’s voice filtered through the door “... I didn’t really have a plan...”

  Iris was still talking and not letting either of the gun-toting men get a word in edgewise.

  Found her. Mack typed his response into the video’s chat feature. What can you tell me about a place called Crow’s Farm and why a criminal like Eddie Paul would be patrolling the perimeter?

  Liam didn’t even pause. “Crow’s Farm is the code name of Alexis Corvus’s new drug operation. That is if the chatter I’ve been chasing is to be believed, but my sources tend to be solid. It’s off the grid. No one knows where it is or what exactly he’s cooking. Just that he either paid or killed off everyone involved with taking down his last operation.”

  Whoa. Alexis Corvus was a medium-size shark in North America’s drug operations. Mack had tangled with him a couple of times in the past as Graves. As far as Corvus was concerned, he’d successfully had Graves killed. Looked like Mack was about to disappoint.

  “Who’s in the camper?” Eddie barked at Iris.

  Yeah, the stall tactics weren’t going to last much longer. Time for a new plan and fast.

  “Why?” Liam asked.

  I think I’m accidentally there now, Mack typed.

  Liam whistled under his breath.

  Iris created this giant roadmap, Mack went on, of hundreds of purported safe places in the country that she heard homeless street youth talk about.

  “And how many are criminal organizations?” Seth asked.

  Mack didn’t know. But he did know that a criminal like Eddie seeing the map could put Iris’s life in even more peril.

  “Locking onto your GPS coordinates,” Seth said. “Locating you on satellite. Downloading everything.”

  “I asked you who’s in the camper!” Eddie’s voice rose outside.

  “You know what?” Iris still sounded confused. “To be completely honest, I don’t really know. You’d think I would. But he’s given me two completely different stories so far. He collapsed in a parking lot, I felt bad just leaving him there and since then, pretty much all he’s done is sleep.”

  Mack’s eyes cut to the door. There was only one good way out of this. And it meant sh
owing Iris a side of himself that he really didn’t want her to see. Once he showed her, there’d be no going back.

  But if her life was on the line...

  Mack snapped a picture of the map, including the pictures from the homeless center surrounding it, sent it to Seth, then ran his sleeve across the laminated map, reducing her hard work to nothing but smears.

  “Open the door!” Eddie barked.

  “Wait!” Iris said. “You can’t!”

  “Get out of the way,” he snapped. “Bud, if she moves shoot her.”

  “Pray for me, guys,” Mack said. “I’m going in.”

  He grabbed the door handle. Here goes nothing. He prayed, swallowed hard and felt his cover identity click into place.

  “Hold your horses, dude!” he bellowed. “I’m coming.”

  * * *

  Iris’s frantic heart beat through her chest so hard it hurt to breathe. For an instant, she thought she’d seen something—like a mixture of amusement and pity—flicker in the face of the silent, bald, tattooed young man called Bud that made her think they might just let her go. But the ugly, scarred brute who was now practically shoving her out of his way was a whole other story.

  Eddie yanked at the door. It didn’t open. Mack must’ve locked it from the inside.

  “Enough stalling.” Eddie turned and aimed his weapon between Iris’s eyes. “Everybody inside that camper better get out here now or I’m shooting your lady.”

  The door flung open with such force that it smashed back against the camper wall. A gasp fell from Iris’s lips, barely more than a whimper, as she saw the hulking man who stood there, defiant and scowling. He filled the doorway of her little camper.

  Mack?

  “What’s your problem?” growled the man who was Mack and yet nothing like Mack. “I told you I was coming. The lady told you I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent. And yet you kept on banging.”

  “Graves...” Eddie uttered the name like it was something even worse than a swear word and his face went white. Iris couldn’t tell if he was more angry or terrified to see Mack standing there.

  A snarl curled Mack’s lips. Dark circles under narrowed eyes crowded out the blue of his irises, his hair was disheveled, and the jagged edges left by the prosthetics glue were somehow even dirtier than before and looked like scars. He strode out of the camper and that’s when she noticed... Thick black smudges ran down his right sleeve and over the fingers of his left hand.

  The camper door swung shut, but not before she saw the black and blue smears that were all that remained of her map of safe places.

  What had he done?

  Mack cut his eyes to the guns Eddie and Bud were pointing at her head and groaned. “Are you kidding me with this?” he said. “She’s not my lady. She’d just a nice person who went out of her way to help a guy in trouble.”

  How could Mack—or anyone, for that matter—just switch their demeanor and identity like that? Yes, earlier in the camper when they’d been arguing, it was like he’d suddenly straightened his back and draped the mantle of being a cop around his shoulders. But this new identity wasn’t an addition. It was more like he had somehow squelched all his soft, compassionate parts, leaving nothing but this surly stranger behind.

  For a long moment Eddie just stood there, gaping at him, like someone had put him on pause. Then he stepped back like he’d just been punched. He glanced at Bud and both of their guns swung around and pointed at Mack.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me with this,” Eddie said. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  Mack raised his hands half-heartedly and laughed. “If it helps any, I was legally dead for a couple minutes, but it didn’t take.”

  It was funny how tone could change everything. When Mack had said almost the exact same words to her earlier, there’d been something almost endearing about them, like he’d was trying to make a joke to be reassuring. Now they were laced with a defiance that was anything but.

  “And please tell Corvus I don’t think much of his welcome.”

  “He’s expecting you?” Eddie asked.

  “No.” Mack shrugged. “I just heard about your little drug operation a few minutes ago and decided to come for a visit.”

  Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Because you’re so well hidden no one can find you?” Mack crossed his arms. “I’m done talking until you take me to Corvus.”

  What did he mean, take him to Corvus? No, they were leaving. Now. And together.

  “Thanks for the ride.” Mack waved the back of his hand at her like she was nothing but a buzzing fly. “But I can take it from here. You can go.”

  The barrel of Eddie’s gun swung toward her. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Oh, really?” Mack stepped forward until his chest was bumping against the weapon in Eddie’s hand. “’Cause you want to sour my meeting with Corvus right off the bat by making problems for me? Or are you going to skip the meeting so you can teach Bud here just how hard it is to make a woman’s body, a big truck and a camper disappear so nobody’s ever going to find it? Think!” His voice grew to a frustrated roar. “A person like her has dozens of people who’ll plaster her face all over TV if she goes missing. You really think she’s gonna drive two hours to town and convince a bunch of cops to come back here just because a couple of big scary men got into a yelling match about things she don’t understand?”

  He brushed past Eddie and Bud as if their weapons weren’t pointed at him and walked over to her, placing himself between her and them. He looked down at her. Something soft she couldn’t place pooled in the blue of his eyes. His hand landed on her shoulder and gently squeezed twice. Her chest tightened around her heart until she was unable to breathe. While Mack’s words were directed to the criminals around them, his eyes were locked on hers and hers alone.

  “Nah, see, this is just a really sweet girl,” Mack said. “The kind every man hopes to meet but never really expects to find. She just made the mistake of trusting a man she doesn’t know. She told me all about her life, her parents, her three older siblings and her nieces and nephews, and how she’d do anything to keep them safe.”

  She opened her mouth, but no words came out. His fingers brushed the side of her face until they rested under her chin. He tilted her face up until she was looking right into his eyes.

  “Now, look,” he said, “you’re going to get into your truck, right now, and drive. You’re not going to stop. You’re not going to look back. You’re not going to ever come back here. Got it? You’re going to forget you ever met me. If I want to find you, I will.”

  She knew his words probably sounded like a threat to the criminals. Yet as she looked in his eyes, she heard something else. An apology? A final goodbye? But he didn’t mean what he was saying, right? He wasn’t really asking her to leave him there, with criminals who wanted to kill him, take off running and never see him again. There had to be another way. Still, she couldn’t help but hear the undeniable ring of truth.

  “I don’t understand...” she whispered, so softly she could barely hear her own words.

  “You don’t need to understand, you just need to do what I say.” Mack’s voice rose. “Got it?”

  She nodded as sudden tears filled her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah... I got it.”

  He was putting his life on the line to save hers, knowing it might mean they never saw each other again.

  “Good.” He stepped back. “Get out of here. Don’t make me regret my decision.” His hand slid to the small of her back, lingered there for a moment, and then he pushed her toward the truck so sharply her knees almost buckled. “Don’t look back.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Eddie’s voice came from somewhere behind her.

  “Of course I do,” Mack snapped. “I’m getting rid of a problem the smart way. There’s a reason I got hire
d on the Quebec job, not you. I don’t go around creating unnecessary messes.”

  She stumbled to the truck. Unshed tears clouded her vision. Her limbs trembled as she climbed into the driver’s seat, her keys shaking so hard in her hands she could barely slide them into the ignition. The truck purred to life. The headlights cut a path in the darkness. She glanced in the side mirror. They were already leading Mack away.

  She drove, pushing through the trees and pulling the camper behind her.

  This couldn’t be happening. Jumbled prayers poured through her heart, begging God to save Mack. He’d searched for her and found her. He’d been shot trying to save her life twice; first when he’d been undercover as a volunteer and just tonight with a tranquilizer dart back in an empty gas station parking lot. How could she just leave him, alone and helpless with criminals who wanted him dead, knowing she might never see him again?

  Something buzzed in her jacket pocket and then an unfamiliar ringing filled the truck. She pulled over near the complex wall and searched for the source of the sound.

  There was an unfamiliar, slim, silver phone in her right pocket. She yanked it out and answered the video call.

  A thin man with messy hair appeared, sitting at a keyboard. A petite and smiling blonde woman flanked him on one side, and a large, stern-looking man sat on the other.

  “Iris James?” The intimidating man spoke first. “I’m RCMP Detective Liam Bearsmith. This is Detective Jessica Eddington and computer expert Seth Miles. Welcome to the team.”

  FIVE

  What team? Mack’s team? When had Mack slipped a phone in her pocket? She cut the engine so there would be no interior or headlights to draw unwanted attention and let the falling snow beat unabated against the windshield.

  “Well, you clearly know who I am,” she said, feeling her chin rise. “I’m guessing you’re that special detective team that’s going around finding people who might not actually want to be found and trying to talk them into letting you protect them.”