Runaway Witness

by Maggie K. Black

  Guilt stabbed his heart. Even now, Seth was pouring over it and would soon have an idea of which places were actually safe and which ones were criminal. Then Mack would have to figure out what to do with that information. He couldn’t just let Iris keep running. It was too dangerous and there was just too high a risk of her being hurt.

  But he couldn’t just not tell her that he had a copy of her map. The only thing he could do was stall her just a little while longer while they regrouped with his team and he tried to make his case. If by sunrise he and his team hadn’t managed to convince her, he’d give her Seth’s annotated version of the map, free of possible criminal enterprises and traps, and let her go.

  “I noticed you have pictures from the homeless center taped up in your camper,” he said, extending the words like an olive branch. “You circled the faces of street youth we think the Jackals took but weren’t found in the raids. If you’d like, I can ask Seth to run facial recognition software on your pictures of them. He might be able to tell you where they are now and even give you some peace of mind that they’re safe.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot. I honestly don’t know what to think of the fact that we stumbled upon a major crime operation and you just happened to know someone there.”

  He ran one hand over his head. “It would be stranger if I hadn’t. It’s like this. If I’d been a pro athlete for over a decade, I could probably walk into any major stadium in the country and run into someone that either myself, or someone I know, has played with or against. In every line of work, if you stay in it long enough and go deep enough, you keep running into the same people, or people you’ve at least heard of. I expect if I ever saw the green-masked Jackal without his mask on, I’d recognize him from some other past undercover case. Like my dad says, everything in life depends on networks.”

  “Your dad who was so poor that he emptied your bank account and stole your car and sold it?”

  She shot the question at him so quickly he didn’t have time to think up a deflection.

  When he’d first been researching Iris, everything about her had made him think that the only child of a multimillionaire wasn’t exactly the kind of person she’d naturally make friends with. Not that he’d ever asked his father for a single cent. She always said there was more than one way to be rich. Well, if growing up with his father had taught him anything, it was that there was more than one way to be poor.

  A long pause spread thorough the truck. The windshield wipers beat against the snow. He braced himself for more questions about his father while he tried to figure out how best to tell her the truth about the huge house he’d been raised in that had never quite felt like a home.

  Instead she asked, “Is Mack Gray even your real name?”

  He blinked. “That’s the name all my friends and fellow cops call me.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think to ask before,” she said. “But until I saw ‘Max Graves,’ I didn’t even think about the fact Mack might not be your real name.”

  Well, it wasn’t the name he’d been born with. But Mackenzie Gravenhurst had been Mack to his friends ever since he was a teenager.

  “Well, it is—”

  “Why did you tell me your real name if we met while you were undercover?”

  The force of her question struck him in the solar plexus and made him pause a moment.

  “Mack Gray is a pretty generic name,” he said. “There are dozens of Mack Grays in Canada and I’m not even the only one working for the RCMP. It was supposed to be a very low-profile assignment, and I didn’t think there was much risk of you doing any kind of in-depth research into me and discovering I was a cop.”

  That was the answer he’d always given and the one that sprang immediately to his tongue. But was it the whole truth? Or had there been something else there, something about her, that had made him want to let her get to know the real him as much as he possibly could?

  “Was everything about our friendship a fake from the very beginning?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Like, we met at City Hall,” she said. “I was camped outside Mayor Lisa Kats’s office trying to get her to take action against Underwood. Her chief of security was practically trying to shove me out of the building and you stepped in. Was that staged?”

  “His name was Travis Otis,” Mack said, “and no, it was not staged. I looked in to him afterward and found out he’d violated parole conditions for a past aggravated assault and also had restraining order violations, as well. I tipped off a buddy about him, which got him arrested, which of course got him fired. But I’d been watching you for days, trying to find the right time to approach you. Travis was a brute and completely out of line, which gave me an opportunity to step in and help you.”

  And fake an accidental meeting.

  The phone mounted on his dashboard started to ring. He’d logged off with his team after a quick check-in to let them know they’d made it safely to the truck. There were things his team had to do like search for data, and certain conversations they’d want to have without Iris listening in.

  He answered the call. “Hello?”

  “Hey.” Seth sat alone at the desk now. There was a slight tightness to his smile. “So, I’ve found a new location to send you guys to. It’s not a safe house, it’s a camping site. It’s called Stannum Campgrounds and I think you’ll both be good with it.”

  “Really?” Iris asked. She glanced to Mack. “I think that placed was on my map.”

  “Mm hm.” Seth nodded noncommittally, neither confirming or denying he’d ever heard anything about her having a map. “Yeah. It’s got hills and a lake. It’s remote, but good lines of sight. You guys can set up camp there and regroup.”

  It was a setup. Mack didn’t have a moment’s doubt about that. It was his team’s way of giving him an opportunity to talk to Iris in private and figure out what to do from there. Most important, it would also at some point hopefully let Mack talk to them without Iris or anyone else listening in. As long as they were stuck together in the truck, she’d hear anything he said. And this way he could hopefully talk some sense into her before the next team call.

  “I’m sending you the coordinates now,” Seth added. “The campsite’s very easy to get out of in an emergency and this way you can take turns getting some sleep while one of you keeps guard.”

  “Thanks,” Mack said. “I really appreciate it. Just send me the coordinates, and I’ll take it from there.”

  Seth had been a vigilante hacker, lurking behind a screen and taking down bad guys for years before he’d crossed the wrong criminal, ended up in witness protection and finally joined Mack’s team. But he wasn’t all that good at bluffing.

  “Cool, will do,” Seth said.

  His finger reached to disconnect the call.

  “Wait!” Iris said. “Seth! Can you do something for me?”

  Seth paused and his eyebrow rose.

  “I wasn’t allowed to contact anyone from my life while I was in witness protection,” she said. She glanced quickly to Mack and then back to the screen. “And I’m still completely respecting that. My family, friends and people who are running the homeless center agreed to respect that and not try to contact me, unless there was a really major emergency. Like a death or an illness. Would you be able to check my email inbox and let me know if there’s anything important I need to know?”

  Seth looked at Mack, who nodded. If Iris had stayed within witness protection—and hopefully when she went back into it—the officer assigned to her case would have helped create a safe conduit for her to find out significant information like that. Iris rattled off her email address and password.

  “I’ll give you a shout in a bit,” Seth said. He disconnected.

  “I don’t mind if he reads my emails,” Iris said, glancing at Mack. “I don’t have any secrets
and as for my personal life, I haven’t been on so much as a coffee date since...”

  She caught her words before she spoke them. But still he felt the end of the sentence floating in the air.

  Since him and all the countless coffees, lunches and dinners they’d spent together. He’d come over to her apartment one afternoon and cooked her chimichangas, and they got brunch together so often their regular waitress had assumed they were married.

  “How do you feel about the campsite idea?” Mack asked.

  “There are a whole bunch of factors that come into play when I’m assessing the security of a place,” Iris said. “I haven’t just been running around willy-nilly into hotbeds of crime—”

  “I never implied you had—”

  “Like, was the location public enough that a Jackal wouldn’t try to make an attempt on my life?” she went on, like he hadn’t spoken. He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of the edge to her voice, but it was growing stronger with every word. “And how easy would it be to escape? Stuff like that. And I figure as long as we don’t allow us both to get trapped in the camper again, we should be okay. And I have no choice but to trust you until I sit down with my map and see how many places I can remember.”

  He turned toward her, but her eyes were fixed on the darkness outside.

  “Look, I’m really sorry I wiped it like that,” he said. “But like you guessed, I knew that if Eddie saw it, there was no way he’d believe you were just some random woman I ran across and let you go alive. Even at a glance, I could tell there were at least half a dozen criminal hot spots on it—”

  “Out of hundreds of places—”

  “One of which was an opium farm!”

  “But they weren’t all criminal organizations!” She turned back toward him, and something like defiance flashed in her eyes and spread through her voice. “Some were homeless shelters. Some were churches. Yes, I’m sure a few were guilty of paying people cash under the table. But it’s just a coincidence that you were with me when I stumbled upon one that was an actual criminal enterprise.”

  He wasn’t sure it was a coincidence though. He didn’t believe in coincidences and something tingling at the back of his neck told him there was something else going on he couldn’t see. Had it been God who’d led them there or something else entirely?

  “I know you’ve spent your entire career dealing with criminals,” she added. “But there are a lot of kind and decent people out there. People who gave me good honest work and others who let me camp on their property or gave me directions. Sure, some turned me away. But in my experience most people are good at their core and even those who are broken still have goodness in them.”

  He felt his hands want to rise defensively off the steering wheel. “I promise I’m really not attacking you.”

  “You heard what Bud said to me,” Iris said. “He accused me of being naive and foolish and said that people like me got ourselves killed.”

  “Yeah,” Mack said, “He said something like that. But he’s clearly chosen a really bad path. So why care what he thinks? I don’t believe any of that of you.”

  “How can you say that?” Iris asked incredulously. “You and I only know each other because you were undercover and I was your mark! You spent four months fooling me into thinking you were my friend, that you liked my company and wanted to be in my life.”

  Her words stung deeper than any bullet wound ever could.

  “Is that what you honestly think?” he asked. “Seriously? I told you, over and over again, that I had a really hard time opening up to people and that I really liked spending time with you. Do you think those were all lies? Do you think I get super close to all my targets? Do you think I cook them dinner, stay late doing dishes with them, take them out for countless coffees and then chase them down across the country for weeks if they slip from witness protection? Because you’re not the first pretty or interesting woman I’ve ever met while undercover. And you’re not the first person to slip from witness protection under my watch. But you’re the only one I put my life on the line to find.”

  Her mouth opened, and he could tell she was probably gearing up to say something. But this time, he didn’t let her. He had something to get off his chest, even if he didn’t quite understand why.

  “I spent all that time with you and told you all those stories about my childhood because I liked you.” His voice seemed to fill the truck despite his best efforts. “I liked spending time with you. I liked talking to you. You’re interesting and funny and kind and sweet, and I couldn’t get enough of your company. When you disappeared, I couldn’t sleep without knowing you were okay. So yeah, I was undercover when we met. And yeah, when I told you stories about my life, I changed around a few names and places and disguised the specifics. But I opened up to you more than I’ve ever opened up to anyone, and I got closer to you than I’ve ever gotten to anyone, because I liked you and I liked spending time with you.”

  He stopped. He wasn’t sure where all that had come from. Or what it was about what Iris had just said that had driven him so crazy. But the idea that she didn’t get just how much she meant to him hurt, even if he didn’t understand it himself.

  He braced himself for her response, but for a long moment she didn’t say anything. She just sat there in the truck, her eyes searching his face, and he had the unsettling feeling that somewhere in that whole avalanche of words he might’ve said something out of turn that he should be apologizing for.

  The phone began to ring and he reached for it, thankful for the distraction. Seth’s face appeared on the screen and somehow his smile was even tighter than it had been before.

  “Hey, Iris,” Seth said. “I checked your emails. Mostly coupons. Good news is your sister Alice is having a new baby in eight months, and your dad had a minor health scare but he’s doing great now. Also, Mayor Lisa Kats of Toronto has been apparently trying to reach you to see if you wanted to hold a fund-raiser for your homeless center on her yacht.”

  Mack frowned. Mayor Kats was known for her lavish generosity to her own causes and also holding fund-raisers for others’ charities on her expansive yacht. She had given dozens of young people full university scholarships and jobs training as part of her own program. It was one of the main selling points that had gotten her elected mayor and catapulted her to being seen as such a voice for helping the less fortunate.

  “She’s due to receive the Order of Canada from the prime minister next week,” Mack told Iris. “Mostly for her personal charity work and scholarships, but also for what she’s done for the city. Considering how many times you tried to meet with her about Underwood and the Jackals and she blew you off, I’m guessing she feels really foolish and wants to make it up to you.”

  “Or she feels guilty,” Seth said. “The bad news is that three Jackals vandalized your homeless center last night.”

  She gasped. Mack felt his hand reach across the center of the cab and grab hers.

  “No one was hurt,” Seth said quickly. “They came in when it was empty. I only know they were Jackals because I saw the security footage.”

  “What did they destroy?” Iris asked.

  “Everything.” Seth swallowed. “It’s all gone. They vandalized the entire place and then set the building on fire.”

  SEVEN

  Mack watched as conflicting emotions flooded Iris’s face. For a long moment she just sat there, with her hand in his and her lips slightly parted, until Seth awkwardly ended the call and said he’d talk to them later. Then she rolled down the window, stuck her head out into the cold, wintery night and screamed a long, loud warrior’s yell, equal parts angry and defiant. When she stopped, she rolled the window back up, pulled her hand away from his and ran her fingers over her eyes.

  He watched as prayers crossed her lips, asking God for wisdom and help. Finally she dropped her hands and turned to him.

  “I�
�m sorry,” she said. “But it was either that or burst into tears. And I was afraid that if I started crying I might never stop.”

  “Oh, Iris,” Mack said. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too. I worked so hard to build that place up as a safe space and now it’s gone. I tried everything I could to get people to believe Oscar Underwood’s Jackals were real and kidnapping people, and now they’ve destroyed the homeless center. Not to mention how hard I fought to get the mayor to hear what I was saying about Underwood and the Jackals. And now that she finally wants to help, I’m not even allowed to contact her.”

  “Well, there’s still hope, right?” Mack said. “After Underwood goes to trial and you testify, you might be able to go back to your normal life and rebuild the center the way you’ve always wanted.”

  “Can I?” Iris asked. “We assume that when Underwood goes to prison, his Jackals will stop working for him and stop trying to destroy my life. But what if they don’t?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  The sign for the Stannum Campground loomed ahead in the headlight beams. The buildings at the front were closed for the off-season, and the entrance barrier was locked up in the open position.

  Mack drove through, weaving his way through the campsites until he came to the one Seth had indicated. It was a wide, flat space, big enough for half a dozen tents or campers, with thick trees hemming it in on two sides. A steep hill flanked the other side, and faced a wide expanse of frozen lake. Perfect for a stealth aerial rescue if that’s what he and the team decided on.

  Mack parked the camper in the center. He busied himself building a fire in the firepit while Iris went inside the camper. He debated telling her that she should probably try to lie down and have a nap if she could, considering how late it was and that she must be exhausted. But knowing her she’d just insist she was fine.

  He waited until the battery-powered lamp switched on inside before sending a quick message to his team, letting them know they were in position. He promised to call as soon as he knew that Iris had settled in for a while and he had time to talk uninterrupted.