Runaway Witness

by Maggie K. Black

  He nodded. “With my life.”

  A knock came on the door.

  “Hey!” The voice was Noel’s and uncertain. “Can you open up? Just checking in to see how you’re finding things?”

  She heard the fiddle of keys in the lock. Any second now, he’d realize she’d also locked the deadbolt.

  “I know you will,” she said. Her lips quickly darted over Mack’s cheek. “And even though I don’t know what to think right now, I’d rather trust my life with you than with anyone else. Now go!”

  TEN

  “You’re incredible,” Mack said softly as he turned and dashed for the window. “When we get out of here—”

  But she never heard how he was going to end the sentence. His words were swallowed up by more knocking on the door.

  “Hello?” Noel called. “Are you there?”

  Cold air brushed the back of her neck. She turned from the door. The window behind her was open and Mack was gone.

  “Hello!” Noel’s voice grew louder. “I need you to open the door.”

  And she needed to distract him long enough to enable Mack to sort their escape.

  “Hey!” she called back. “I’m here. Just give me a minute. I was watching TV.”

  Silence fell. All right, she seemed to have bought herself a moment at least. She tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. Noel definitely looked worried. He was flanked by two male uniformed police officers, one on either side. Falling snow whipped sideways at them, flying in and out of the yellow light and the darkness beyond.

  She walked backward across the room and looked out the opposite window, to where freshly falling snow had already begun to erase the line of footprints leading around the side of the building. Mack was gone. She breathed another prayer for his safety.

  Then she turned again to the door. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Oh, oh yeah, everything’s fine,” Noel said.

  “So, what is all this about?”

  “Nothing,” Noel lied. “Just checking in to see if you have enough towels and stuff.”

  She glanced through the peephole again.

  Am I making the right decision, Lord? Should I just let Mack go and open the door?

  “Who all’s out there?” she asked. “What is this really about?”

  As she watched, the police officer to Noel’s right shook his head. Both cops pulled their weapons. Then Noel slid his hand over the peephole, blocking her view. Whatever they were going to do, they were going to do it now.

  “Uh, no one,” Noel said. The tone of his voice reminded her of every desperate, lying person she’d had to turn away from the homeless center’s doors for trying to smuggle in weapons, drugs or alcohol. “Just me. All alone. Can you open the door now?”

  No. Not for a man blatantly lying to her. A suspicion rose up the back of her spine that if they opened the door and found Mack gone, they’d arrest her for aiding and abetting him.

  “I need to get dressed,” she called.

  And hopefully once she was done, her ride would be there.

  She did up the zipper of her coat, pulled her hat down over her head and then silently walked into the adjoining room, locking both doors behind her. A crash sounded from the other room. The cops were done asking. They were breaking down the door.

  She glanced from the door that led to the adjoining room to the door that led outside. How long until they broke through? And which door would they break through first? Then came another crash, loud and deafening, shaking the air like a detonation. Voices shouted from the room she’d left just moments ago.

  “Police! Come out with your hands up!”

  It was too late to change her mind. She shoved the window open and looked outside. A tall, white police SUV was parked just outside the window. Mack jumped out and ran around to her side, standing in the space between the vehicle and wall.

  “Come on!” He reached up both arms toward her. “Time to go.”

  Iris didn’t hesitate. She swung her legs through the window, sat on the ledge, took a deep breath, said a silent prayer and let her body drop. For a moment she tumbled through empty air. Then she landed against Mack’s chest and his arms tightened around her.

  “Gotcha,” he said softly. He set her down on the snowy ground. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

  “You stole a police car.” And I’m trusting you on that, just like I am on everything else.

  He didn’t answer, just opened the passenger door for her. She slid inside and buckled her seat belt. He shut the door for her and ran around to the other side.

  “Hey, welcome back. It’s nice to see you again.” Seth’s voice came from her left.

  “Seth!” She turned.

  The hacker’s face filled a small computer screen nestled within the complicated electronics system between the two front seats. She guessed Mack still hadn’t gotten the phone working, so had found a way to call Seth using the police car’s built-in computer.

  “Live and in color.” Seth beamed.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Iris asked.

  “Less than you’d think.”

  Mack jumped into the driver’s side, buckled his seat belt and pulled the car off the road and into the trees, keeping the headlights off.

  “Have they noticed you’re gone?” Seth asked.

  Iris glanced behind her. “Not yet, I don’t think. They might still be breaking through doors in the hotel room trying to find us.”

  Mack nodded. He pulled the car onto a small service road that ran barely more than a car’s width behind the motel and gunned the engine. “Any idea who set me up for the murder of Oscar Underwood?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Seth said and frowned. “And I am sorry. Because one criminal bribing another to do a bad thing and frame a good guy for it is the kind of transaction that usually leaves some kind of trail somewhere, even if it’s just rumors on the dark web.”

  “How about what the news was saying about Oscar Underwood?” Iris asked.

  “You mean is he actually dead?” Seth asked. “Yeah, that’s irrefutable. It’s not impossible to fake the death of a high-profile person in a hospital, but it’s unbelievably difficult and takes a lot of work and coordination. In this case, I can’t find a single indication that any part of his shooting, transporting him to hospital and being pronounced dead was faked. We have multiple eye witnesses at every step of the process. I know we might be looking for a bigger conspiracy, but I can say confidently it’s not a faked death. Oscar Underwood was definitely murdered.”

  Iris let out a long breath and leaned back against the seat. “So, he’s really dead,” she said.

  “Very,” Seth said. “Now, I’ve scrambled the car’s tracker, so it can’t be traced electronically. But I can’t do anything about anyone who actually spots and chases you in real life.”

  “Understood,” Mack said. “I found an unused burner phone in the car, but it’s locked.”

  “I’ll see if I can access it,” Seth said. “But it might take a while.”

  “Well, hopefully we won’t need it,” Mack said. “We should be back at my vehicle before too long.”

  “Hold on one second, Seth,” Iris said. “Can I mute you for a moment?”

  “Actually, how about you hang up and call back?” Seth said. “I need to coordinate with Liam and Jess and figure out a new pickup location. Also, I’m thirty-five percent through that other data project you’ve got me working on.”

  “What data project?” Iris asked.

  Neither man answered.

  “Call me as soon as you’ve got a location for us,” Mack said and ended the call.

  “Please tell me why stealing a cop car wasn’t an unbelievably dumb move,” Iris said, turning to Mack, “and why I should still trust you.”

  “Well,” Mack sa
id, blowing out a hard breath, “let’s start with the fact I’m only borrowing it just long enough to reach my truck and will definitely ensure that it’s returned to the RCMP. The fact the cops at the motel will have backup coming means I didn’t leave anyone stranded. It matches hundreds of identical cop cars, which means there’ll be a lot of false sightings and people will also be more likely to not even notice it, since seeing a police vehicle is an everyday occurrence. And of course, because my phone still isn’t working and this way I can talk to Seth and coordinate with my team. But the main reason I’d always go for hot-wiring a cop car over a civilian’s vehicle is so no civilian ever has to face the panic of losing their personal property. I know what that feels like.”

  “Because your car was stolen by your father when you were a teenager?” she asked, feeling the bite in her voice. “Like you had to hitchhike across the country to get home from camp because your father emptied your bank account? I don’t care that you’re rich, but I don’t get why you made up those stories and then told them to me so many times.”

  Mack’s jaw set. He glanced at the screen as if double-checking they’d really ended the call with Seth. Then he stared straight ahead at the windshield and something seemed to tighten in the air until it almost hurt to breathe.

  “Why did you tell me you grew up poor?” she asked.

  “Why did you tell me you grew up rich?”

  He shot the words back so quickly it stunned her. How dare he ask her that right now? Especially when he knew the answer to that question and how she’d meant it.

  “Every single member of your extended family is living near or just below the poverty line,” Mack said. “No one owns their own house, except for your parents and they’re still heavily mortgaged, even though they’re in their seventies. You’re the only one who has more than a high school education. You grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck. You got food boxes from your church at Christmas and never had new clothes, as far as I know, until you were twenty-three. And yet I’ve heard you, over and over again, tell me that grew up blessed and rich, so much richer than so many other people—”

  “Because, like I’ve said a million times, there’s more than one way of being rich!”

  “Right,” he said. “And there’s more than one way of being poor. There’s being starved of love, acceptance and attention. There’s not being allowed to be yourself and growing up in a world where positive reinforcement is so rare, you’re starving for someone, anyone, to tell you that they notice you or think you’re okay.”

  “You told me you literally went to bed hungry,” she said.

  “And I did,” Mack said, “over and over again. Because even though my mom did the best she could, she never stood up to my father. And my dad is...” He floundered a moment as if trying to find the right word. “My dad is a jerk, Iris, who used to send me to bed hungry all the time for failing to meet his standards.”

  Her chest tightened around her heart, and she found herself wanting to reach her hand across the darkened vehicle to take his. Instead she twisted the edges of her scarf in her fingers and his hands stayed white-knuckle on the steering wheel.

  “All the stories I told you about being bullied in school until I figured out how to fit in and become invisible were also true,” he added. “I grew up going to private schools full of wealthy people, but they’re just the same as everyone else. They have the same types of problems. They just try to solve them differently than the people you grew up with. And not always in better ways. Sometimes worse. My dad really did take my car when I was sixteen and sell it, as punishment for some imagined offense I don’t even remember. He really did empty my bank account when I told him I was leaving the really strict military-style summer camp he sent me to and I really did try to hitchhike across the country to get home. I have never asked my father for anything in my entire life. Not a single favor and not a single cent. And I never will.”

  He took a deep breath and Iris found herself both wanting to do something to help the boy he’d once been and praying for the man he was now.

  “But how exactly do I explain a life like that to people like those in the homeless center?” he asked. “I’m asking that for real. When I was talking to all those kids who’d lost everything, how was I supposed to tell them that I’d grown up unbelievably rich, yet in a world where everything was uncomfortable, nothing was ever really mine and I had to pretend to be someone else to survive?”

  He ran his hand over his head, and his voice dropped.

  “How could I ever explain that to you?” he asked. “I’m embarrassed by it. It cuts me off from people and keeps them from seeing the truth about who I am and what I’ve lived. We met while you were camped outside Mayor Lisa Kats’s office. What would you have thought if I’d strode up there and told you that I was the son of a millionaire, not a laid-off dishwasher? What if I’d shown up to volunteer at your homeless center as the man who was born Mackenzie Gravenhurst, the estranged son of a very wealthy couple who might or might not bequeath me millions depending on what mood my father was in when he wrote their wills? How could I have a real relationship with anyone who knew that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t. I can’t relate to anything you’ve been through. So I can’t say how I’d handle it. I want to tell you that it wouldn’t have made any difference to our friendship, but in reality I have no way to know how I would’ve reacted.” She took a deep breath and held it a long moment. There was one story she hadn’t had the courage to ask him about yet, and it was the one she wanted to know the truth of most of all.

  “I heard you tell some people at the homeless center that you’d never had a girlfriend,” she said. “Not for real and not in a way that mattered. Because the only time you ever caught feelings for someone, you never got up the courage to do anything about it because they were so rich and you were so poor.”

  He didn’t even hesitate.

  “Yeah,” Mack said. “That was you, Iris. Even back then, I had major feelings for you.”

  * * *

  I had major feelings for you. Had he really just said that? Blurting the words out to her like a teenager?

  He’d never said anything like that to a woman before. Not even close. After a lifetime of not letting anyone in, Iris had gotten the closest that anyone ever had to seeing the man he was inside. And once he’d opened up his heart to her, he’d never quite been the same.

  She still hadn’t said anything, and he kept driving, hearing the winter wind blowing around them. He pulled onto a main road and turned the headlights on. They were far enough away from the motel that he’d look more suspicious driving with his lights off. He didn’t dare glance at Iris, the beautiful, inspiring and challenging woman he still had feelings for and was on the cusp of losing again. How could he risk looking into her eyes when he knew she deserved so much better than a man like him?

  “I could’ve wrapped up my undercover assignment with you in a couple of hours a day,” he admitted. Now that he’d cracked his heart open, he might as well tell her everything. “That was what I thought the assignment would be, just hanging around during community meals and drop-in activities, and trying to gather intel. Instead, there was just something about you, Iris. I found myself staying late to clean up and coming in early and finding every possible excuse to see you both inside and outside of the center.”

  He swallowed hard. “I was put on probation after the shooting because there were concerns that maybe my cover had been blown because I’d gotten too close to you emotionally. I’d violated orders by confronting and chasing down the green-masked Jackal. That led to my superior officers discovering just how much time I’d been spending with you and that I’d admitted to Liam that I thought I was catching feelings for you—which I definitely was.”

  His eyes rose to the dark sky ahead. Lord, I feel like I’ve messed everything up. I don’t know what’
s going on or what to do. I just know that I want Iris to be safe and happy.

  He wasn’t sure why it had taken him until now to even admit it to himself. But the fact he cared about her in a way he’d never cared for anyone else ever before was undeniable. He knew that right here and right now, in this car, speeding through the frozen dark, he’d been the most real and honest he’d ever been in his life. No matter how long he lived or what happened next, he’d never regret having gotten up the courage to tell her that.

  Then he felt her hand brush his arm and slowly tug it toward her across the crowded front seat. Her fingers slid down his arm to his hand and linked through his fingers.

  “Well, I had serious feelings for you, too,” she said. “You were the first person I ever really wanted to be more than friends with and thought I could be.”

  Something swelled inside him, like a deflated hot air balloon filling with fresh air or an orchestra springing to life. His eyes met hers in the darkened vehicle, he saw the nervous smile on her lips, and he realized what this feeling was that he’d never felt before.

  Hope.

  “I can forgive a lot,” Iris said, “and I can understand, some, that you were walking this tightrope of trying to let me in without telling me too much. But that was then and this is now. Just promise me that you’ll never hide anything from me ever again.”

  “I—”

  The screen began to ring. Seth must have found a location to meet up with his team and was back. Mack reached forward with their linked hands and pressed the button. Seth glanced down at their hands and his eyebrows rose.

  “Uh, hey,” Seth said. “I’ve got good, good and good news. Liam and Jess are less than three hours away, and I’ve found a really solid safe house. It’s actually from the data I was analyzing, which is almost sixty percent done. As for the locked burner phone, I’ve located the serial number and have a plan to call it remotely, but it might take time. Although, so far, the photographic evidence you asked me to analyze—”