Runaway Witness

by Maggie K. Black

  Seth snorted, and Jessica hid a smile behind her hand. Only Liam’s mouth didn’t twitch.

  “Pretty much,” Liam said. “Although we wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

  “I like her description better,” Seth interjected.

  “So I guess that means you know I’m outside Crow’s Farm,” Iris went on, “a place run by some guy called Corvus with henchmen named Eddie Paul and Bud, who I’m pretty sure want to kill Mack. Well, they’ve got Mack and we need to rescue him.”

  None of them looked the slightest bit surprised by this.

  “Got it,” Liam said. “Right now, we need you to get out of there as quickly as you can and make it to a safe house. Seth is searching for the coordinates of one now and will get them to you in a moment. From there, we’ll arrange for an officer to extract you and take you back into witness protection.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Didn’t you hear me? Very bad people have Mack. I’m not just going to drive off and leave him to fend for himself.” Even if that was exactly what he’d told her to do.

  “I understand—” Liam began.

  “Do you?” Iris demanded. “Because a member of your team has just walked inside a very scary-looking walled complex. And you’re sitting there like that just happens every day.”

  Liam leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “I promise you that Mack means a lot to all of us, and we’re every bit as worried about him as you are. But going into very scary-looking places at gunpoint with really bad people who want to kill him is kind of Mack’s specialty,” he said. “And right now, my first priority is making sure you live to testify against Oscar Underwood.”

  “How did he walk in there?” Jess asked.

  “He was pretending to be an arrogant, snarly man—”

  “Graves?” Jess interjected.

  “Yeah.” Iris nodded. Mack had told her she wouldn’t like the kind of man he’d pretended to be. He wasn’t wrong. “He told Eddie he wanted a meeting with Corvus.”

  Liam and Jess exchanged a look. It spoke volumes from a library she was locked out of. Seth was still typing, but it didn’t matter what address he found. She wasn’t about to run anywhere and leave Mack behind until she was convinced it was the right thing to do.

  “Don’t worry,” Seth said. Something in his tone made her think he was trying to take his own advice. “Mack is really hard to kill. He’ll be back, sooner or later. I’m sure of it.”

  Easy for him to say.

  “Who exactly is Graves?” Iris asked.

  “Max Graves is one of Mack Gray’s cover identities,” Liam answered. “Mack used him to infiltrate and take down several criminal enterprises over the years before we arranged to have him killed off.”

  Iris took a deep breath and asked the question she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer to. “Is Graves a killer?”

  “No.” There was a weight to the single word Liam said. “Graves was a middleman and security expert who specialized in getting hard-to-obtain things, especially information. But the most important thing to know is that no matter what cover identity Mack took on, he was always still a good man at heart. He always held on to his faith in God, looked out for the underdog and did whatever it took to see justice done and protect those in need.”

  “And,” Jess added, “for whatever it’s worth, you should know he really cared about you.”

  Iris wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Then how about we stop talking about my running away to a safe house, and you tell me how we’re going to save his life.”

  Seth’s computer pinged. “Got it!” he said. “I’m sending you the coordinates now.”

  Almost immediately a link to a map popped up on the phone screen. She swiped it away. “I’m telling you, I’m not just running away, bailing on Mack and leaving him here to die.”

  “Look.” Something hardened in Liam’s eyes. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “First off, we’ve been saving each other’s lives from far more difficult and dangerous situations long before you even met Mack and we’re not about to abandon him now. And second, this is who Mack is. This is what Mack does. He wears the identity of a criminal in order to infiltrate really bad places and get information to other cops who sweep in, take down the bad guys, get the limelight and the praise.”

  Iris suspected that description applied to Liam and the rest of them, too.

  “Whatever he’s doing inside Crow’s Farm,” Liam said, “he’ll also believe God led him there and that he has a job to do. Good will come of this.”

  If he survived. “But this wasn’t a planned operation,” she said. “He pretended to be Graves and let himself be taken at gunpoint to meet with Corvus in order to protect me.”

  “I get that,” Liam said, “and sometimes in this business, we wing it. In fact, we wing it a lot.” He closed his eyes and she had the suspicion he was praying.

  When he opened his eyes, he said, “Okay, here’s how this is going to go down. We’re going to send someone we trust to camp outside Crow’s Farm, to be there to pick Mack up when he inevitably finds a way to escape on his own. While they’re there, they’ll also do a surveillance of the property—its security measures, entrances and exits, all that stuff—in case we need to arrange an extraction.”

  Iris closed her own eyes a moment and prayed. She didn’t know what it was inside her that was so determined not to just run, save herself and leave Mack behind—especially after seeing the kind of man he pretended to be and discovering their past friendship had been nothing but a cover story. Maybe it was just the inbuilt thing inside her that made it impossible to turn away from anyone in trouble. But it felt like something else, something stronger, and whatever it was, she wasn’t about to ignore it now.

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” Iris said. “I’ll stick around here a little while, just in case Mack manages to escape. While I’m at it, I’ll send you some intel about the place to help you plan an extraction.”

  She didn’t know exactly how long or short a time that was going to be, or what she was going to do if Mack didn’t come out running. But she’d cross those bridges when she came to them.

  “I can’t authorize that,” Liam said.

  “I know,” Iris said, “and I’m not asking you to. But it’s my life and I’d rather take it into my own hands to help someone...” who matters to me in a way I can’t begin to explain “...than just run away without at least trying to help him.” She unbuckled her seat belt. “I can take pictures by clicking the picture icon on the bottom of my screen and the pictures will show up at your end, right?”

  “Yup,” Seth said.

  “I’m going to climb a tree and take some pictures of the complex.” Just sitting in the truck doing nothing was going to make her absolutely stir-crazy. Sitting still had never been one of her strong suits. She whispered another prayer, took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Stay in the vehicle, Miss James.” Liam’s tone was stern, but still there was something reassuring about his voice that she liked. In a different time and place, she’d have probably been happy to follow his direction and been glad to be on this team. “Please leave the area, head to the location you’ve been sent and we’ll send an RCMP officer to rendezvous with you. Now, confirm you’ve heard me.”

  “Yup, I’ve heard you, but I’m not changing my mind.” She leaped out of the truck and into the snow. “Worst-case scenario, if something goes incredibly wrong, how long will it take to scramble a team, or whatever it is you do, to extract me?”

  “Don’t answer that—” Liam started.

  “Forty-eight minutes,” Seth said, “and that’s a long time to stay alive if they take you hostage.”

  “Good thing I’m not going to get captured then,” she said. “I’m just going to stay outside the complex, take a few pictures of the place to help you get the intel you
need to rescue Mack, and then I’m getting out of here.” Hopefully with Mack. She slid the phone into her breast pocket. “Back in a second.”

  “I like her,” Seth said, seemingly to no one in particular. “She’s got spunk.”

  She reached into her pocket and muted the volume, leaving the video chat open. Then she started along the wall, looking for a solid tree to climb or a gap to look inside.

  Yeah, she’d been accused of having “spunk” before, along with being labeled stubborn, difficult, strong willed and even a brat when she was younger. Her mother liked to joke that her first “word” had been “No-I-do-it-myself!” Iris preferred to think of it as determination, as well as an unrelenting inability to ever turn her back on an underdog.

  Okay, sure, maybe hanging around in the woods outside the complex where Mack had been taken was a bad idea. But it’s not like she had any really good options, was it? She didn’t exactly trust the cops to protect her from Underwood’s Jackals, Mack had erased her map of potential safe places and she couldn’t contact anyone from her past or family for their safety.

  Not to mention something in her heart wouldn’t let her run without at least trying to help Mack.

  A tree loomed ahead, thick, broad and growing close to the wall. Its branches were so heavy with snow they pressed down on the barbed wire on top of the wall, like a natural bridge. She pushed through the needles and sharp empty twigs that lay closest to the trunk and started climbing, staying close to the trunk as she grabbed branch after branch. Seemed some childhood skills never left a person.

  It wasn’t until she was in social work that she’d realized just how much she’d taken for granted. Not everyone got nothing but a stern talking to when they’d cut class to help out a friend in need, raided the food that was supposed to be for dinner to give to someone who was angry or scaled a farm fence to try to rescue a chained-up dog. As a teenager, her inability to let even the smallest injustice go by without confronting it had led to her getting fired from job after job, and one of her older brothers and his wife had taken her in to live on their farm over a summer and hired her to take care of their kids. She’d been surrounded by love, understanding, grace and forgiveness. As she’d told Mack when they’d compared childhood stories, there was more than one way to be rich.

  If Mack hadn’t warned his team that she wasn’t the type to stay put and do what she was told when someone she cared about was in danger, then he didn’t know who he was dealing with.

  She reached the top of the wall. It was about ten feet tall, she guessed, but seemed shorter thanks to the several feet of soft snow that had fallen on both sides. She could probably leap down and land safely inside the complex, if she’d wanted to. Thick branches bent low over the top, flattening the thick barbed wire. But she wouldn’t be much of a farm girl if she didn’t know how to handle a barbed wire fence. She stepped forward, keeping one foot on the tree and placing the other one on the wall, knocking the snow off the branch as she went.

  A smattering of buildings lay inside the complex. There was a large brick building that seemed to be part greenhouse to her right. Through the foggy glass she caught glimpses of red and pink. Then she saw him.

  Mack was down on his knees. A thin, bearded elderly man, who she guessed was Corvus, stood in front of him. Eddie stood behind him, his gun aimed at the back of Mack’s head.

  Her mouth went dry. Her legs shook. There was no time for the RCMP to mount a rescue. Corvus’s men were going to execute him. They were going to kill him, and there was nothing she could do to save him.

  Holding tight to the tree with one hand, she wordlessly eased her phone out of her pocket and pointed it toward the scene, praying that somehow, Mack’s team would see something that would help them save his life.

  Lord, please, don’t let Mack die like this.

  She stepped forward, crouching low and letting go of the tree, as she braced herself against the wall. The branch snapped back, lifting off the wire now that it was no longer weighed down by either her foot or the snow.

  Sudden sirens filled the air. Spotlights spun. Electricity shot through her feet, immobilizing them and filling her body with pain. Her knees buckled, and a scream tore from her lips as she pitched forward and fell into the complex.

  * * *

  Mack thought he’d heard a scream, a singular noise that somehow rose above the wailing of the sirens. But right now all that mattered was the gun to his head and the fact he suddenly had a very handy distraction.

  He barely had time to drop before he heard the deafening blast of a gunshot split the air where his head had just been. He reared up and threw himself at Eddie, knocking him to the ground, and grabbed for the gun. He wrestled the weapon from the criminal’s hands, then ducked the desperate sucker punch Eddie threw at his head. Mack rolled, kicking Eddie’s feet out from under him before he even had the chance to stand. Mack had always been the stronger fighter. He’d had to be. It took a lot more skill and ability to avoid seriously hurting a person and yet still subdue them than it would take to actually do damage.

  Sirens and lights were still blaring. As thankful as he was for the distraction, Mack prayed that it hadn’t been Iris who’d tripped the security alarm or her that he’d heard scream.

  He hadn’t exactly had a plan for escaping when he’d decided the only way to save Iris’s life had been to let Corvus capture him. He’d stashed his own gun in the camper, knowing that Eddie would search him and take it anyway. But he’d always been good at improvising. Not that he hadn’t been hoping he’d be able to somehow talk his way out of the situation, instead of Corvus deciding a quick and simple execution was how he wanted to deal with Graves.

  Now, Corvus had disappeared, having taken off running as soon as the alarm had sounded. And Eddie, now without his weapon, was stumbling to his feet in the snow, ready to take another try at bringing Mack down.

  Mack took a step back and pointed Eddie’s own weapon at him. “Don’t be an idiot, man!” Mack shouted above the wailing sirens, in a tone that sounded like Graves and yet a sentiment he genuinely meant. “I don’t want to hurt you, let alone kill you. I just want to get out of here! And you clearly got another situation you gotta go deal with.”

  Eddie snarled and charged.

  Mack sighed and fired, clipping Eddie in the shin. The criminal bellowed in pain and dropped to the ground.

  “Put some pressure on it!” Mack shouted and ran for the perimeter wall. “It’s just a graze. The snow should help with the pain. You’ll be fine.”

  Mack pelted through the snow toward the wall. Ironically the glaring spotlights would actually make him harder to see as long as he stayed in the shadows. He ran in a zigzag, staying low, keeping close to the edges of the maze of buildings and using the distraction of the security alarms and the lights to his advantage. Every investigative bone in his body wanted to search each and every corner of the complex to find out what kind of operation Corvus was running. But the part of him that wanted to live to fight another day was stronger.

  Even stronger than that was the drive to see Iris again.

  Her face filled his mind so suddenly he almost stumbled. The way she’d looked at him when he’d pretended to be Graves... He’d never wanted her to see that side of him. Graves was the personification of Mack’s arrogance and anger. He was a reminder of who Mack would’ve become if he’d followed in his father’s footsteps and not been found by God’s love, forgiveness and grace. Would Iris ever look at him the same way now?

  Just in front of the wall, a figure rose before him out of the snow. The indistinct form seemed squat and broad one moment and as tall and thin as a waif the next as the lights shifted over it. He raised Eddie’s weapon, praying he wouldn’t have to shoot. The figure’s hands rose, empty and high.

  “Mack! It’s me!”

  “Iris?”

  He shifted his gun to the side and he reached
for her, catching her around the waist with his empty arm and pulling her into his side. For a split second, Iris filled his senses and an odd warmth spread through his body. His heart beat faster and his lungs breathed deeper than they ever had before. Then he led her into the shadow of the nearest building and turned to face her.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “How did you get in?”

  “I fell off the wall! I think I set off the alarm by kicking off a branch that had disrupted the circuit.”

  “What were you doing on the wall?”

  “Just standing on it.”

  “But why?”

  “To see into the courtyard. So I could show your team what was going on.”

  He doubted his team would have asked a civilian to do that kind of surveillance and was incredibly certain they would have told her to head to a safe house. Mack himself had very directly told her to run and not look back. Instead she’d climbed the wall?

  “What were you thinking?” he asked.

  But she wasn’t listening. She pulled away, dropped down onto her hands and knees and crawled back out into the snow.

  “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t respond, and he wondered if she’d even heard him above the sirens.

  He crouched down beside her in the snow. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”

  “I dropped your cell phone when I fell,” she said. “I have to find it.”

  “It’s okay.” He reached for her hand but failed to catch it. “It’s just a dummy device. It doesn’t have any data on it.”

  “But your team called me on it,” she said.

  “Because I instructed them to!”

  “I was shooting video for them,” she told him, “so they could help you.”

  “Did they ask you to?” he asked.

  She shook her head. He watched for a long moment as she searched the snow, listening to the sound of people shouting in the distance. The door of the closest building flew open with a bang. He flattened his body in the snow and prayed, pushing her down beside him and sheltering her with his arm as people ran past.