The lock was lighter than the other ones, flimsy even, but his swings felt slower, heavier and sluggish. The door fell open and there stood Kelly.
His heart caught in his throat.
Had she always been this beautiful? Dark hair fell around her face in waves. Her green eyes sparkled with a warmth that made him think of happiness and home. Her gorgeous lips parted slightly in the smile that had never once, in over twenty years, left the edges of his heart.
“Liam!” Her voice was sharp, almost worried. Her hand brushed his face. “Are you okay? You look dazed.”
He was fine. He was just sleepy, his head was woozy and things weren’t quite looking right.
She slung the diaper bag determinedly over her shoulder and picked up the car seat. There was a small baby in a pink knit hat inside.
Oh, right... Pip. I—I have a granddaughter.
Kelly’s other hand grabbed his and squeezed it so tightly he almost winced.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re getting you out of here before you pass out.”
She ran down the hallway, carrying the baby’s car seat in one hand and pulling him after her with the other. Stairs seemed to rise and fall beneath him as he stumbled down them like he was in a fun house. They pushed through a door and stepped out onto the deck. Cold winter night air filled his lungs. Noise and lights assailed his senses. Law enforcement had arrived, and the boat was being evacuated.
“This way.” Kelly grabbed his arm and pulled him down the deck, away from the rescue operations. “We have to try and get Hannah’s laptop. I’m sure she wiped it clean but maybe we can find a way to use it to track her. I just hope it’s still there.”
“Stop!” a voice barked. Liam turned to see a young man in a black-blue Toronto police uniform. “Police! Drop your weapon!”
What? What weapon?
It was only then Liam realized he was still clutching the piece of broken table leg he’d used to break open the doors. He let it fall to the deck with a clatter, yanked his badge and held it up.
“De Tec’ive Leeyam Bears-s-smith,” he called, his words slurring. “Rrrr. Cee. Em’p.”
The cop swore at him. “Get down!” he barked. “Now!”
Who was the cop talking to? Liam turned and looked behind him, feeling the world spin out of focus. There was no one there.
“Duuuuude,” Liam shouted. “Chilllll!”
But it was like the cop didn’t even hear him.
“Ma’am!” he shouted. “Step away from the suspect.”
What suspect? What was going on?
“Get down!” The cop’s voice rose. “Now!”
Liam didn’t understand. None of this was making sense. “Look, kid, I’m detective Liam Bearsmith...”
His words felt thick and mushy on his tongue.
“Stop lying!” the cop shouted. “You keep that name out of your filthy mouth. You hear me? You don’t get to lie about something like that. It’s disrespecting the uniform and everyone who wears it.” The cop was definitely getting heated.
“Hey, buddy,” Liam said, as firmly as he could muster. “Cool it.”
“You get down and stop talking,” the cop said. “Now, or I’ll shoot!”
Shoot him? For what? For saying his own name? For holding his badge?
Was this really happening? Was he hallucinating all this?
The cop rushed toward him with his weapon raised. Liam’s knees began to buckle beneath him. Then he felt Kelly pull away from his grasp. Liam stumbled. His knees hit the deck.
“I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder and impersonating a police officer—”
He felt a hand on the back of his head shoving him against the deck. His hands were wrenched behind his back. Pain shot through his injured back. A handcuff clicked over his right wrist. The cop struggled to secure the second.
Help me, Lord! What’s happening to me?
Something crackled loudly by his face and flashed like bright blue lightning. Something thudded to the deck beside him. A hand grabbed his and pulled him up.
“Come on!” Kelly’s voice swam somewhere around the edges of his mind. “You can still run, right?”
He didn’t know if he could. He didn’t know if he could even walk, or how long he’d be able to outrun the unconsciousness threatening to pull him under. He’d inhaled so much gas that he should be out cold by now. His feet stumbled beneath him, and he was barely able to complete each step he took. Lights and noise seemed to screech at the corners of his barely conscious mind. Then it was like the sky above him was exploding in a bright, wild and inexplicable array of popping sounds and dazzling color. Fireworks? How? He felt something bash into his stomach so hard it winded him. He pitched forward.
And the last thing Liam Bearsmith knew was that he was falling.
SIX
Air rushed past him. He was tumbling and falling into darkness. Something cold and hard smacked against his body. Pain shot through him. Unconsciousness swept over him. He tried to fight it, willing himself to move, only to feel his body collapse beneath him. Then he felt the vibrations of an engine seemingly rumbling around him and heard Kelly’s reassuring voice promising him that everything was going to be okay. Something warm fell over his body. And then there was nothing but sleep.
He had no idea how long he’d been out when he felt something jolt him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes. The sky was still dark, but now the world had fallen silent. He was lying on the floor of a small motorboat. Stars peeked through the moving clouds above. Water lapped gently against ice. A blanket was over his body, and what looked like an empty water bottle and empty bag of animal crackers were on the floor by his face.
A light flickered on ahead of him, shining over his face.
He sat up, his hands shielding his face from the light, and he felt the weight of a handcuff dangling from one wrist.
“I’m—”
“Detective Liam Bearsmith,” Kelly said. “I know. You say that a lot. But this is one problem just shouting your name won’t solve.”
Oh, ha ha. The light moved from his face down to his feet. He was sitting in the back of a small speedboat that was docked at what looked like a tiny island no bigger than the size of one of those large backyards in the suburbs. Kelly was standing on the shore. A small cabin, not much more than a shack, sat behind her. Dim light flickered in a window.
“Welcome back,” she said. “You finally going to stay awake on me this time?”
Yeah, he had the vague sense he’d woken up before, but couldn’t really remember it.
“Where’s Pip?” he asked.
“Safe in the cabin.” She swung her light to the building only a few feet behind her. “I built a little nest out of blankets and pillows for her on the floor. She’s excited to wriggle and move. But she’ll start crying for me if I’m gone more than two minutes. No electricity, but there is well water coming out of the tap. I was able to light a lamp and there’s a gas heater I can use to heat Pip’s bottle. She was getting tired of drinking it cold.”
“You broke into a cottage?” he asked.
“The key was on a hook under a welcome sign beside the front door,” she said. “It wasn’t exactly hidden.”
And that wasn’t exactly a denial.
“How did we get here?” he asked. “How did we even get off the boat?”
“Renner’s original plan was to dock a small and undetectable motorboat off the port side of the cruise ship,” she said. “Hannah and I were supposed to wait for a big distraction and take off during the confusion. I was steering you, trying to find Renner’s boat, when a whole lot of fireworks went off at once. It was utter chaos. You fell and landed in the boat. We took off. Sure enough, the fireworks and general mayhem provided enough distraction for us to escape without being caught. No one was chasing after one tiny speedboat in all t
hat. Plus, I kept the lights completely off until we cleared Lake Ontario, so we’d have been pretty hard to spot, especially when people had their hands full of a boat full of Imposters and rescued hostages.”
He frowned.
“That whole explanation is ridiculous,” he said. “If Renner set up fireworks to help Hannah escape wouldn’t they have gone off earlier? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Imposters to have set them off to make a giant spectacle or give them cover for escaping? And driving off in a speedboat like that with the lights off was risky. You had no way of knowing you’d evade detection.”
She crossed her arms. “Well apparently it worked because we weren’t captured and we’re here now.”
“Where are we anyway?” he asked.
“On one of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River,” she said. She swung the light up a flagpole by the cottage to where an American flag hung limp. “We’re on US soil,” she added. “So you’ve got no jurisdiction to arrest me.”
He snorted. The Thousand Islands were a stretch of small islands in the St. Lawrence River between Canada and the United States. Some had houses on them and others had cabins or cottages. Many were nothing more than a rock. There was often no way to tell which side of the border each one was on if it wasn’t for the flags, and some even spanned the border.
It wasn’t a half-bad place to hide. Not that she hadn’t been completely wrong to run from the authorities.
“We’ve had this exact same conversation before,” she added. “But you kept falling back asleep. We don’t have a lot of gas left in the tank, Renner still hasn’t responded to any of my messages and my phone is almost dead. This seemed like a good place to stop and regroup.”
Maybe, but they shouldn’t have to stop and regroup. She should be back in Toronto, fast asleep in a well-guarded safe house or hotel room, while he figured out this whole thing with the police.
“I only have a few minutes of battery left on my phone,” she said, “but is there anyone you need to contact? Any family or friends who’ll be worried about you or wonder why you didn’t come home?”
“Told you, I have no family,” Liam said. There’d just been Dad and he’d died four years ago. “Or friends like that, really. What I need to do is contact my team and come up with a strategy to handle this.”
She pressed her lips together. “Then let me talk to Renner first. The phone is very close to dying and I need to tell him what happened to Hannah. Then you can have it to call whoever you need.”
“If the Imposters have Hannah they’ll have posted about it on the dark web,” Liam said. “Whether they’ll be bragging about it or just putting out feelers trying to attract Renner’s attention, either way, they definitely won’t keep quiet about it. That means Seth will spot it, know what’s happened immediately and alert my team. Law enforcement will already be looking for her. They won’t hurt her, I’m sure of it. Based on my experience and what we’ve seen, they like chaos, not cruelty.”
At least for now. It had only been a few hours, but who knew what would happen if the situation dragged on.
“You told me all that before, too,” Kelly said, “and hearing it helped keep me sane. So, thank you. Also, we need to get online as soon as possible.”
“I really don’t think surfing the web is a priority,” he said.
“Anything could have happened while we were off-line,” she said. “The whole world could be different.”
Not that different. She turned to go back to the cabin.
“We shouldn’t even be here,” he said. “Just because your plan apparently worked doesn’t mean it wasn’t completely wrong, risky and ridiculous. We shouldn’t have left the boat. We should have gone with the police.”
She stopped and turned back. Her hands snapped to her hips, sending the light to her feet. “One, we’ve already talked about this, every single time you’ve woken up, even if you keep forgetting. Two, I saved your life. And three, that police offer wanted to arrest you for murder.”
Yeah, but that was the part that hadn’t made any sense.
“Look, that was obviously a misunderstanding that would’ve been cleared up immediately,” he said.
“And I think that you’re wrong and I made the right call,” she said. “But I don’t really care if you believe me right now. I’ve got to get back to Pip and keep trying to reach Renner.”
Before he could splutter another word, she turned and walked back to the cabin, taking the light with her. Frustration burned in the back of his throat. Who did this woman think she was? If she’d been anyone else, he might’ve actually thought she’d kidnapped him. That idea was almost enough to make him chuckle. But, no, this whole situation was not happening this way.
Lord, help me handle this mess the right way. And help her listen to me.
He glanced around the boat. Thankfully, he couldn’t see any form of tracking device and the boat wasn’t fancy enough for an onboard computer. So she was probably right no one had tracked them. The keys weren’t in the ignition, but it would be easy enough to hot-wire if he needed to. He couldn’t tell how low they were on gas. But the river was narrow enough that he could probably make it to shore on fumes. If need be, he could swim back to Canada.
He headed for the cottage, knocked twice on the door and then pushed it open. Warmth swept around him. Kelly looked up from where she sat cross-legged on a blanket on the floor. Pip was lying on her back, with her eyes seemingly locked on Kelly’s face. She was waving all four limbs at once and making this cute little cooing sound Liam had never heard before. It was like Pip was trying to talk. A light filled Kelly’s face as she looked down at the tiny child, and as frustrated as he was with her, something about it still took his breath away. When he’d been a much younger man he’d thought Kelly Marshall was the most attractive woman he’d ever seen. But now, two decades later, there was something so much deeper and richer to her beauty that defied description.
She looked up at him.
“I know it’s not much,” she said. “But I figured it was safer that we stop somewhere and get warm than just keep going in below-freezing temperatures until the gas ran out.”
It was only then he looked away, long enough to look around. The cabin was one large room. There was a couch with a mattress wedged upright behind it, a small table with two chairs and a kitchen counter with a bucket sitting under the open pipe of the sink. A small array of candles of different sizes and shapes flickered from various surfaces. The gas heater was at least fifty years old and the small fire burning within it was warming a battered pot of water she’d placed on top of it.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll lock the door before I leave and leave more than enough cash to cover what I used. I have a couple thousand dollars in emergency money in the diaper bag. Hannah and I emptied our bank accounts.”
Defiance rumbled in her voice. The flames around them reflected in her eyes. He opened a drawer and rooted around until he found a paper clip. Then he picked the handcuff lock and took it off.
“You’ve gotten better at picking handcuffs,” she said. “Used to take you a lot longer than that.”
“I’ve gotten a lot of practice,” he said. He noticed her phone was sitting beside her on the floor. “Have you heard from Renner?”
“No,” she said.
Worry washed over her features, wiping the smile from her face. Should he feel guilty about that? She was the one who’d made wrong call after wrong call.
“We’re not staying here,” Liam said and sat down on the carpet opposite her.
“Do whatever you want,” she said. “But I’m going to wait for a message from Renner and figure out how I’m going to find my daughter.”
Considering the depth of pain and worry in her eyes, he decided not to read anything into the fact she’d said “my” instead of “ours.”
“Look,” Liam
said, “as romantic as it might be to paint Hannah and Renner as just two foolish kids in love, who were trying to run off into the sunset together, law enforcement exists for a reason.”
“Says the man who—”
“Who broke all the rules and was willing to throw his entire career away to be with you some twenty years ago?” Liam interrupted her, completing the sentence. “I know, foolish kids in love don’t always make the best decisions, Kelly. Believe me, I get the irony.”
Her mouth set in a thin line.
“Actually,” she said, “I was going to say ‘the man who is willing to have a criminal hacker like Seth Miles on his team.’ I know Seth’s reputation. I know what he’s done. He broke the law, repeatedly, which is more than you can say for Renner or Hannah.”
Yes, but Seth had turned his life around and had believed he was doing the right thing at the time when he’d hacked criminals and worked outside the law to bring down bad guys. But if Liam pointed that out, Kelly would only counter that Hannah and Renner thought they were doing the right thing, too. Liam had perused Seth’s file enough to know that unlike Liam’s father—who’d done his best in his own faulty way to protect him—Seth’s high-ranking military father had been downright abusive, which had instilled in him a deep distrust of anything law enforcement. The steps Seth had made to help his team in the past year had been a series of huge steps of personal growth.
Seth’s past choices weren’t right, but they were forgivable.
Pip squealed loudly. Liam looked down. She seemed to be trying to figure out how to twist and turn her body around to face him.
“She wants you to pick her up,” Kelly said.
He’d take her word for it. He didn’t pick up the baby, but he did shift his body around the carpet so that she could look up at him. Pip smiled, and he found himself smiling back.
Christmas Witness Conspiracy Page 7
