Christmas Witness Conspiracy

by Maggie K. Black

  No, I don’t! He bristled. Look, kid, I’ve been fooling criminals into believing I was one of them since before you were alive.

  Kelly didn’t answer. Instead, her gaze just ping-ponged back and forth between them and she had an inscrutable look on her face. The baby began to fuss. Kelly rocked the car seat gently and the baby stopped.

  “And if your husband had stepped up and been there for you last year,” Liam said sharply, “instead of disappearing into the ether with his decipher key, or told the truth about how he’d hacked the code, then maybe none of this would’ve happened.”

  Any worry he’d pushed the young woman too far evaporated as he saw the fire flash in her dark eyes.

  “My husband did what he did to protect me,” Hannah said. “If he’d come forward after that bombing, my daughter and I probably wouldn’t even be alive right now.”

  She couldn’t possibly know that. But something pinged loudly before he could answer. She spun the laptop toward him.

  “And apparently you’re not above working with criminals,” Hannah said. “You’ve got an incoming call from hacker Seth Miles.”

  Liam had no idea how Seth had breached the Imposters’s cyberbubble and located Hannah’s laptop. But he’d long stopped being surprised by what Seth could do.

  “He’s reformed,” Liam said. He crossed the floor in three strides and Hannah moved out of the way to let him take her place behind the desk. He glanced at the screen. Seth’s surprised face looked up at him.

  “Seth, you’re a genius,” Liam said.

  “I know,” Seth said. The hacker looked every bit as confused as Liam had been feeling. The two women seemed to be fussing over the baby. Liam dropped into a chair and rolled it into the far corner of the room holding the laptop in one hand. “So you found Hannah Phillips?”

  “Yup.” Though she wasn’t anything like what he’d expected and he still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of Kelly’s connection to all of this. “What’s new?”

  “No casualties or major injuries that we know of,” Seth said. “Law enforcement’s still trying to figure out who’s even negotiating for the Imposters. What I want to know is how you managed to call me on a dark-web channel when I thought all connections in and out of the boat were down.”

  Liam froze.

  Seth hadn’t called Liam on Hannah’s computer?

  Hannah had called him?

  A gust of cold air swept in to his right. Liam leaped to his feet. But it was too late. The women were gone. No, this wasn’t happening. He hadn’t been played. Not by such a basic distraction. He yanked back the door, but it caught after an inch. Seemed one of them had tied it shut with a baby blanket. His late father’s tactical tip that everything was a potential weapon flickered unhelpfully in his mind. Dad had also been big on strategic distractions. Was Kelly going to use everything he’d taught her against him? He gritted his teeth and pulled harder. He could hear Seth’s voice yelling behind him.

  “Call you back!” Liam shouted. The fabric ripped and the door flew open. He ran out onto the deck and saw them. Hannah had climbed over the ledge and was lowering herself down by a ladder into a small speedboat below, which he guessed was one of the boats the Imposters had used to board the cruise ship. Kelly stood at the top of the ladder with the diaper bag over one shoulder and the car seat over the other.

  Liam yanked his gun from its holster.

  “Kelly!” he shouted as he ran to her side. “Step away from the ladder.”

  Kelly turned. He looked over the ledge. Hannah had reached the boat and her weapon was pointed right at him. He raised the weapon toward her. “Please, don’t make me shoot you!”

  “Liam! Stop!” Kelly shouted. She dropped the diaper bag and threw her arm between him and the boat. “Hannah is your daughter!”

  My daughter?

  His head swam, and he suddenly felt worse than he’d felt with any concussion he’d ever had. He had a daughter? Hannah Phillips was his daughter? The baby Kelly held was his granddaughter?

  “She’s your daughter,” Kelly said again. “Our daughter. Our girl. I was pregnant when you dropped me off. I wrote and told you. I thought you knew. I always thought you knew.”

  He turned to her. His mouth opened but no words came out.

  “Please, Liam.” Pleading filled her gorgeous green eyes. “Come with us. Meet Renner and talk to him yourself. Consider it an undercover mission to meet a source. I don’t care. Just, please, get on this boat and we can all leave together.”

  His heart stopped beating.

  Help me, Lord. Please. Tell me what to do.

  Gunfire sounded beneath them, mingled with the sound of Hannah screaming. He looked down to see two masked men, who it seemed had been hiding in the boat to ambush her, now holding Hannah at gunpoint.

  “It’s not Renner’s boat!” Hannah cried in a panic. “They’re Imposters!”

  FOUR

  Liam didn’t have time to think. Maybe if he had, everything would’ve gone differently. But as the speedboat motor roared, he knew that within seconds Hannah would be kidnapped. Taken. Gone. And sometimes a person only got one chance do the right thing.

  He leaped, launching himself overboard, then yanked out his weapon and fired on the way down. A bullet struck the controls. So far the goal was to stop them, nothing more. A man on the boat returned fire. Liam hit the boat and landed on the balls of his feet, just in time to note one of the Imposters throwing a fist toward his head. He blocked the blow and knocked the man back with one of his own.

  The motorboat gunned beneath him, throwing him off balance.

  “Don’t move!” The man at the helm yanked Hannah against his chest and pressed a gun against her head. “Down on your knees, now! Or I’m shooting her!”

  Liam paused a moment and prayed, as he analyzed the situation before him like an athlete would choreograph an upcoming play. First, he’d take out the man who was trying to punch him. Then, he’d turn the man’s weapon on the criminal at the helm who was holding Hannah. Then, he’d turn the speedboat around.

  But as he ran the plan through his head, the sound of angry shouting floated over the waters from the cruise ship behind him. Then he heard a plaintive and terrified sound fill the air. The baby was crying. He glanced back. The Imposters had captured Kelly.

  “Save them!” Hannah begged, her voice rising above the noise of the boat’s motor and the voices shouting. He turned to her. Panic flooded her face. “Please, Liam! If you’re really who my mother says you are, go rescue my mother and daughter! Please!”

  And leave her to be kidnapped?

  But before he could move, he heard a gunshot crack from the boat behind him and felt a bullet smack against the small of his back, wedging itself in his bulletproof vest and knocking him off balance. The engine gunned. He stumbled and fell, pitching against the side of the tiny boat as it swerved hard to the right. Then he fell overboard and into the dark waters below. Instantly the freezing water yanked him under, knocking his breath from his lungs. Help me, God! Inky blackness surrounded him on all sides. His gun had fallen from his grasp and he was sinking fast. He gritted his teeth and shed his jacket and sweater, then freed himself from the weight of his bulletproof vest, letting it sink down into the waters beneath him. Then he grabbed his jacket in one hand and forced his body to swim, the cold numbness in his limbs battling the burning pain in his lungs. He broke through the surface and gasped a breath. Chaos reigned around him.

  The tiny speedboat was gone, taking Hannah with it and leaving nothing but the faint sound of a motor in its wake. On the cruise ship, masked Imposters surrounded Kelly. The lights of distant helicopters and rescue boats still hovered on the horizon, no doubt waiting for the signal from whoever was heading up the operation to board, and that person was probably waiting for some assurance of being able to keep the hostages safe. And somehow, through it all, one
sound seemed to rise above it all. The tiny baby was crying out in fear.

  And I will save her, so help me, God.

  Still clenching his jacket in his freezing fingers, he swam, his aching body cutting through the dark waters toward the anchored boat. Thankfully, whoever had fired at him from the boat had stopped. He reached the rope ladder, forced his arms back through the sleeves of his sopping leather jacket and then began to climb, rung after rung, until he reached the top. Then he heard Kelly gasp his name. He surveyed the scene, his numb fingers still clutching the ladder’s rungs. Four Imposter pirates greeted him. One with a yellow eye patch had his weapon pointed at Kelly. Green-and blue-eye-patched ones pointed their weapons at him. A red-eye-patched one held a camera phone. Looked like the new Imposters were filming the hijacking from multiple locations.

  Out of all the bad options he had, his gut and his experience said the least bad one was to let himself get taken hostage. That way he could get back inside, warm up, dry off and catch his breath, and most importantly not start a firefight around a baby. Yet, as his eyes glanced at Kelly’s face, he knew if she hadn’t been there in the line of fire, and holding a child—my grandchild—that even battered, bruised and freezing numb, he’d have fought back, relying on the fact he knew how to fire, evade and disarm weapons like these better than these complete amateurs did.

  He might’ve even won.

  Instead, he slid his body over the edge. His knees hit the deck and stayed there, as the man in the green eye patch pressed his weapon against Liam’s forehead.

  “I’m detective Liam Bearsmith, RCMP,” he said, “and I’m surrendering.”

  * * *

  Kelly clutched the handle of Pip’s car seat and she watched as Liam kneeled on the cruise boat’s deck in the darkness with the barrel of a gun between his eyes. Maybe it was the cold, the darkness or the fact he was shivering, but the lines of his rugged jawline seemed even deeper than they had before. He’d gotten older, just like she had, and was no longer the seemingly indestructible young man he once was. And for the first time since he’d accosted her back on shore, she had the overwhelming urge to just throw her arms around him and keep him safe.

  And maybe, if it hadn’t been for little Pip, she would’ve.

  Instead, she held her breath and prayed, for the baby beside her, the man at her feet and the daughter now being abducted by people willing to hurt her to get their hands on something that didn’t even exist.

  Help me, Lord. Tell me what to say. Show me what to do. Liam wasn’t fighting back—he was surrendering. And somehow she knew it was because he wanted to keep her and Pip safe. Is it my fault he’s in danger?

  Maybe. Either way, she didn’t just have to save Liam, she also had to get herself and the baby out of there. The Imposters were discussing what to do with Liam, debating whether or not to kill him. Apparently getting revenge on Liam’s team for taking out the original Imposters was big on their to-do list. But that didn’t mean they were in agreement about how to go about it. At least two of them thought they should just shoot Liam on the spot.

  Despite slight variations in height and weight, there was something ubiquitous about them. As if these Imposters weren’t individuals, but were just parts of an anonymous swarm. Maybe the anonymity emboldened them. Maybe it made this bunch of insecure, angry and violent young men feel important. The thought of begging, pleading and even bargaining with her own life to save Liam’s crossed her mind. But two of Liam’s tactical tips appeared in her memory as if with one voice. The first: know the enemy’s weakness and use it against them. And the second: when facing the barrel of a gun, do whatever it takes to buy time.

  “Are you a bunch of total amateurs?” she snapped, straightening to her full height like a mother scolding a group of rowdy teens. “You don’t want to shoot him here! First of all, you’re all about publicity and the lighting is terrible. Nobody will be able to see anything. Secondly, nobody will be able to hear anything properly with a baby crying. At least let me take the baby inside. Unless you want to sabotage your image by having every internet chat board discussing whether or not you’re monsters for terrorizing a baby! Is that really the publicity you want?”

  An odd strangled noise slipped from Liam’s throat.

  All four masked men turned to face her. She glanced past them to the rescue vehicles on the horizon, silently urging them to hurry up. Then she glanced back at the masked men.

  “Thirdly, you guys are all in this for the attention, right?” she said. Her chin rose. “Well, you’ve got Canada’s most significant, prolific and successful RCMP officer in your grasp, and you’re debating whether or not to shoot him right here, right now? What’s that going to accomplish? At least use him as a bargaining chip to get those helicopters and rescue boats out there to give you what you want. So get him back inside. Somewhere lit, where he can warm up and dry off enough to look threatening. Because right now he looks like a poor and feeble old man. With how bad the video will be out here, nobody will ever believe you four actually managed to capture the one and only Detective Liam Bearsmith.”

  A ripple seemed to move through the men as if each was imagining how it would look if they got the credit for ending Liam’s life.

  Then the man with the green eye patch ordered Liam to stand. Blue eye patch took Liam’s cell phone, wallet and phone. Yellow eye patch hesitated for a moment, as if wondering what to do, and then took Kelly’s diaper bag. The one with the red eye patch told them to move. They walked single file back inside the boat, with two men leading the way and two taking up the rear. Pip’s cries fell silent, probably from a combination of movement and warmth. Kelly could feel Liam, just one step behind her. His hand brushed hers for a nanosecond, filling her with reassurance and strength. They walked down a hallway, climbed stairs, went down another hallway to another flight of stairs and then reached the third-level ballroom again. A man in a purple eye patch escorted them inside.

  A couple hundred people sat on the floor in the large room, huddled together in clumps and talking to each other in whispers, while armed and masked men guarded them. She couldn’t help but notice several passengers were recording video on their cell phones, although presumably none of them were online.

  “Sit,” the man with the red eye patch barked in her ear, so she did.

  “I’ll need my diaper bag back,” she said, fixing her eyes on the man in the yellow eye patch and realizing he no longer had it. “So wherever you dropped it you’d better go get it.”

  His whole body flinched, as if he wasn’t expecting a hostage to talk to him that way. He slipped out the door, as another one of the Imposters practically shoved Liam to sit.

  For a moment Liam didn’t even budge. Then he slowly sat down beside her. Liam waited until the guards moved back, then he leaned in and whispered, “Poor and feeble old man? Really?”

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?” she whispered back.

  He didn’t answer and instead scanned the room. “Approximately a hundred and ninety hostages, give or take, and only four guards. Which puts them at a definite numbers disadvantage if it wasn’t for how many rounds one of those weapons can get off in a minute.”

  “How’s your back?” she asked. “Looked like you took a direct hit.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Bit bruised but vest absorbed most of the impact. I’ve seen worse.”

  Somehow she suspected “I’ve seen worse” was his answer to a lot of things.

  He glanced at her sideways. “Exactly what were you trying to accomplish with that speech?”

  Seemed he wasn’t about to let that go. “I was trying to buy you time, get us inside and use their obvious weaknesses against them.”

  “I had the situation under control.”

  Had he now? She felt her eyes roll and turned away to hide it. The baby cried softly. Not a full-out wail, just the kind of whimpering that meant she was looking for at
tention. Kelly rocked the car seat gently and prayed that rescue was imminent. Then she leaned down, brushed her lips over the soft top of the baby’s head and prayed.

  “To be honest, my biggest worry was something happening to you and the baby,” he said. “When you’ve faced down as many evil amateurs with weapons as I have, you get a fairly good sense of how to get out of a situation like that with the minimum number of bullet holes. Turns out it’s a whole different situation when you’ve got someone else to worry about.” His hand reached out as if wanting to brush Pip’s face and then stopped, like he was worried of accidentally breaking her. “Sorry, you never told me her name.”

  “We call her Pip.”

  “Seriously?” He quirked an eyebrow. “Pip Phillips?”

  “It’s a nickname,” Kelly explained. “Renner’s family tradition is you don’t name a baby until both her parents have held her and Renner hasn’t seen her yet. In Alberta, they have a year to register her name before it becomes a problem.”

  Liam nodded slowly and for a long moment he didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save Hannah,” he said softly. “But we’ll find her. I promise.” Then his dark and soulful eyes turned back to her face. “So Hannah’s our daughter?”

  He whispered the last word so quietly it almost moved silently over his lips.

  “Yeah.” She nodded and something in his gaze was so intense she couldn’t hold it any longer and instead looked down at the baby. “And this is really your granddaughter.”

  She looked around at the room again with its huddled groups of whispering and terrified people intent on recording every moment until their phone batteries died, even though their internet had been cut off. The jittery guards seemed to be growing more agitated and nervous by the second. “Although this really isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”