Christmas Witness Conspiracy

by Maggie K. Black

  Liam ran his hand over his face and wished he was more surprised by this. “So, you’ve been talking to a wanted man online?”

  “Our team wasn’t investigating him,” Seth said. His chin rose. “And considering my own past, I really related to his decision to drop off-the-grid. I thought maybe I could talk him into trusting us. Besides, I didn’t know where in the world he was and we never met in person or had a real conversation until Hannah was kidnapped and he asked me for my help.”

  Renner nodded, confirming Seth’s account. Liam didn’t like it. But he believed it.

  Then again, if Liam himself hadn’t been so stubbornly independent, would Seth have trusted him with this earlier?

  “Okay, and why do people think you’re an Imposter?” Liam asked.

  To his surprise, Seth blushed slightly. “Because I am. Sort of.”

  “You’re what?” Liam felt his voice rise to a roar. Of all the possible answers, he hadn’t been expecting that one. Other patrons swiveled their eyes their way for an instant, and then back to their own business. Liam forced his voice to drop. “Care to explain?”

  “I went undercover,” Seth said. “Without authorization. But I’m a hacker, right? Not a cop. I told you these new Imposters are decentralized. They have no leader. Nobody is in charge. I was monitoring their group, saw the opportunity and I took it. But that still doesn’t mean I know what’s going on more than any other person on that site. I found out about the attack on the boat about two minutes before it went down. It’s all splinter cells.”

  Liam ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Does this mean you can shut them down?”

  “Hypothetically,” Seth said. “But it would take some serious computer power, a way to get into the code behind their main system and at least three of me.”

  So that would be a no.

  “Why did you sell Kelly and I out at the church?” Liam asked.

  “Because somebody tracked you to Tatlow’s Used Books when Kelly’s phone came online,” Seth said. “I was in the area. I wanted to catch a glimpse of the family from afar, even if I couldn’t be there. I saw you leave a baby in the apartment with Mack and Iris. Then I saw the Imposters show up. They were going to storm the building and put the kid in danger. More importantly, there was no indication the Imposters even knew about the baby. It seemed like the smartest way to rescue her. I figured there wouldn’t be that many of them, I could lure them to the church, get there first and then you’d do your thing and take them down. When we were outnumbered, I improvised, did what I had to do to maintain my cover and then took the car you were in out remotely. Which, unfortunately, took a lot longer than I expected.”

  “Which is why people shouldn’t go off-the-grid and try to take the law into their own hands,” Liam said. He felt his eyes narrow. “They paid you off.”

  “You think I cared about the money?” Seth said. “I wanted the electronic transfer to back-channel into the cell phone of whoever took the money. I’ve managed to pinpoint it down to a general geographic area near Lake Simcoe, which tells us practically nothing.”

  “Which tells us a lot,” Liam said. “Because Noah and Holly, who fired the shots that took down the original Imposters, are getting married in that area tomorrow. Might give these new Imposters a nice opportunity to achieve both their goals of getting Renner to hand over the nonexistent decryption key and get revenge on my team on Christmas Eve.”

  So Seth had slid backward and foolishly tried to solve crime his old, independent and vigilante way. And Renner was so focused on protecting the woman and child he loved he went off-the-grid and let his emotion overwhelm his judgment.

  But there was still one piece of the picture he didn’t have.

  Liam leaned his elbows on the table and fixed his eyes on Renner.

  “I believe you love my daughter and my granddaughter,” Liam said. “I believe you’d do anything to protect them. So I’ll ask you, one more time, man to man—if there was never a master-key decoding device, how did you break that code?”

  Something hardened in Renner’s face, like an invisible steel trap dropping over his eyes, locking Liam out.

  Something jangled behind him. Liam turned and glanced down the back hallway. There stood Iris, half-hidden in the shadows and yet with an unmistakable smile on her face.

  “Come on,” Liam said softly, gesturing for Renner to follow him. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

  The three of them stood and walked through the diner and out into the back hallway. There by the open back door stood Mack, with baby Pip in his arms.

  Her little eyes opened wide. Her arms stretched out toward them as a happy squeal slipped from her lips. He heard a sob escape from the back of Renner’s throat and for the first time since they’d met, Liam watched all bravado fall from Renner’s eyes.

  “Is that...” Two words were all Renner got out before emotion swallowed up the rest.

  “Your daughter?” Liam said softly, feeling something well up in his own voice. “Yeah, that’s your little girl.”

  He watched as Renner ran down the hallway, swept the baby up into his arms and cradled her to his chest. Prayers of thanks poured from the man’s lips as he held his baby girl for the very first time.

  Liam turned away, feeling tears brush the corners of his own eyes.

  He looked at Seth, Mack and Iris.

  “Renner’s telling the truth when he says he doesn’t have a master-key decryption device,” Liam said. “I wasn’t sure what I believed about that. But that man would give absolutely anything for his wife and baby.”

  “What does that mean?” Seth asked.

  “We have to get creative if we want to get Hannah and Kelly back alive.” Liam stretched out his hand for Seth’s cell phone, and when the hacker gave it to him, Liam opened a new message and typed.

  It’s me, Liam. I’m alive. I need your help. I need a team.

  He needed a family.

  * * *

  Kelly was lying on the cold concrete floor in the darkness, surrounded by the smell of hay and earth, feeling the warmth of Hannah leaning against her back. She had no idea how many hours it had been since she’d been kidnapped in the park. They’d been in the car for at least four, she guessed, before the vehicle had pulled up outside what appeared to be large abandoned stables in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but snow and trees.

  Then they’d been shoved into a narrow stall where they were lying on the floor, napping in fits and starts, slowly working their gags away from their mouths and pulling at the bonds holding each other’s hands whenever whatever Imposter was on sentry duty walked out of view. Although clenching her jaw had helped Kelly some, it’d still taken her a long time to work it free enough to speak, especially as they were being watched.

  Mostly she’d prayed. She prayed for her and Hannah’s safety, and for Renner and Pip. She prayed that every single Imposter would be stopped and caught, no matter where they were in the world.

  And she prayed for Liam, asking God to clear his name, guard his life and give him an amazing future.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Hannah’s muffled voice behind her let her know her daughter was awake. “This is all my fault.”

  “Stop saying that,” Kelly whispered firmly. Hannah had been trying to apologize ever since she’d been able to speak. But between the gag still in her mouth and the tiny windows of time they had to talk, Kelly still didn’t know why. “None of this is your fault.”

  Footsteps drew nearer as their latest guard grew closer. Kelly was still. Her fingers squeezed Hannah’s. The guard passed. The women went back to trying to loosen each other’s bonds. She’d searched the floor the best she could for anything sharp she could loop the bonds around to rip them free but hadn’t found anything yet. When Liam had told her how to break free from gags and bonds, he hadn’t explained just how long it coul
d take.

  “Listen, I’m sorry I never told you that Liam was your father,” Kelly said. “He’s a good man. He took care of Pip and me. He would’ve loved you.”

  “Did he love you?” Hannah asked.

  Kelly swallowed hard and sudden tears rushed to her eyes, as she finally let her heart acknowledge the truth she hadn’t for far too long. “He did. The very best he could.”

  And I loved him. Liam had been the love of her life.

  Voices rose from elsewhere in the stables. Footsteps stomped down the floor toward them. Something crashed. She looked up. Three masked Imposters stood in front of them. Two held guns. The third grabbed them each by an arm and yanked them up.

  “Come on.” The voice was male and young. “Time for a show.”

  They were marched down the hall into a large room with a huge double door. In the middle of the room sat a folding table with a couple of chairs and multiple laptops. She counted about a dozen masked and armed men standing around it, but it wasn’t until the crowd parted that she saw the one unmasked man standing in their midst.

  It was Seth.

  “Hey.” Seth waved nervously in their direction. There was a small bright red and cylindrical memory drive in his hand. “So, funny story. I managed to track Renner down and get my hands on Renner’s supersecret master-key decryption device. Figured out where these guys were holding you, based on some pretty savvy old-school detective work, came here and offered to trade your lives for the decipher key. Turns out this disorganized gang isn’t big on making deals or loyalty. Mob rule, eh?”

  Old-school detective work. The words jolted Kelly’s heart, sending hope beating through it. Did that mean Liam had helped him? Was Liam there?

  One man ordered Seth into a chair. Another held a gun to the back of his head. Voices rose as Imposters argued amongst themselves. It sounded as if they’d agreed on forcing Seth to hack into the Bank of Canada to prove his decipher key was legit and would shoot Kelly, Hannah and Seth himself if he couldn’t. Specifically, they wanted him to go after the $888 million that the bank had collected from closed and unclaimed bank accounts across the country and was now holding in reserve as it awaited the rightful heirs and owners of that money to come claim it. Although, the Imposters couldn’t quite agree on how much of those millions he should steal or how many accounts that money should be transferred into. Seth looked down at the laptop and sighed. A weary look crossed his face.

  “Believe it or not,” he said, “this is not the first or even fourth time I’ve been stuck in a chair, in front of a laptop, at gunpoint. Twice, I’ve even had a bomb strapped to me.” The hacker’s eyes closed. “God, this has gotta be the last time I go through this,” he prayed out loud. “I’m sorry for all the stupid choices that led me here. So if You’re there, and I get out of this alive, please help me make whatever changes I need to to make sure this never happens to me again.”

  The honesty and simplicity of his prayer made something catch in her throat.

  “You have fifteen minutes to break in,” an Imposter said, jabbing his finger at the screen. “After that, I start shooting hostages.”

  Kelly’s eyes scanned the barn, looking at one Imposter after another, hoping against hope to spot Liam’s strong form under one of the masks. She couldn’t see him anywhere. And yet somehow she knew, with every beat of her heart, that Liam was close, and one way or another he would find her.

  Help us, Lord! Please get us out of this alive!

  Then she saw the rough metal hook behind her on the wall, bent and rusty with age. She backed up toward it. Seth stuck the memory drive into one of the laptops and started typing. His hands shook and his face was pale, and suddenly she realized Seth didn’t actually have the decoding device. The hacker had been faking it and now he was going to die for it. Kelly’s bound hands snagged on the hook. Desperate prayers poured through her.

  “No! It was me!” The muffled words ripped through Hannah’s gag in a panicked cry. “It was me! It was me!”

  What was she doing? Instinctively Kelly started toward her daughter, but her snagged hands held her back. A masked Imposter grabbed Hannah with one hand and yanked the gag from her mouth.

  “It was me!” Hannah shouted. “It was me. There was no master-key decryption device. There never was. I hacked the code.”

  Hannah gasped a panicked breath. The Imposters’s voices moved in a babble of confusion around her.

  “Stop this now,” Hannah said. “Please. Let him go. There was no decipher key. It was only me.” Hannah spun back and her eyes met Kelly’s. “I’ve been hacking codes for Renner for a long time, even though I didn’t have security clearance. I didn’t want to have to work a high-pressure government-contractor job like that. I saw what it did to Renner. So I thought he could sneak me codes every now and then and I’d decode them, and no one would have to know. But then it got too big and things went wrong. I’m so sorry, Mom. Renner was trying to protect me.”

  Hannah’s chin rose. Pride mingled with the fear in her gaze. And Kelly saw what her heart had been hiding from her all this time. Liam’s voice floated in the back of her mind.

  Foolish kids in love don’t always make the best decisions.

  “Stop!” Kelly called through her gag. “Please!”

  But it was too late. The masked men were already forcing Hannah into another chair and turning another laptop toward her. Arguments rose among the masked men about their new plan. Some decided they’d shoot whichever one didn’t break into the Bank of Canada first. Others thought they should both be shot if they didn’t start the online heist within fifteen minutes.

  The metal hook pressed against Kelly’s fingers. Absolutely no one was looking at her and again Liam’s voice hovered in the back of her mind, reminding her to never miss an opportunity to use distraction.

  She gritted her teeth and prayed that she was physically and emotionally strong enough to do what she was about to do. Then she lunged forward, pain shooting through her arms as she felt the already weakened bonds rip away from her wrists. Her hands fell free. She turned and ran, bolting back down the hallway.

  A doorway loomed ahead, showing a glimmer of pale gray morning light. Shouting sounded behind her. She didn’t let herself look back. Instead, she burst through the barn door and out into the snow, and ran up the hill in front of her.

  Fields of white filled her vision on all sides. There was no Liam, no rescue, no buildings, nothing but endless snow with a fringe of trees on the horizon. She was all alone. Liam wasn’t there. He hadn’t come to save her.

  Then she saw the truck, white and dingy with snow, sitting at the crest of the hill, half-hidden in the trees. She ran for it.

  THIRTEEN

  “I think maybe we’ve got a runner,” Renner said. He leaned on the steering wheel with one hand and peered through the binoculars. Seth had pointed out that the same kind of electronic tracking methods he’d used to locate the stables could be used against them in reverse. So they hadn’t so much as used a cell phone since reaching the location, let alone any high-tech tracking devices. It had been ten long hours since Kelly had been kidnapped and Liam still wasn’t sure what he thought of his newfound son-in-law. Renner was reckless, selfish and stubborn. When Liam had finally gotten Renner to confess that Hannah had broken the code, that he’d been secretly passing her codes for months and he’d let rumors of some magical decoding device proliferate to keep from putting a target on her back, Liam suddenly felt the desire to knock Renner and Hannah’s heads together for being so reckless, along with the competing urge to hug them and tell them that he understood. Maybe that was what being a father was like. Also, Liam kind of liked him.

  “Maybe?” Liam asked.

  “Definitely,” Renner said. “Headed straight at us.”

  “Let me see.” Liam stuck out his hand, Renner passed him the binoculars and in a single glance, Liam knew what
he was looking at. “It’s Kelly!”

  He tossed the binoculars at Renner and leaped out. “Cover me!”

  “Cover you?” Renner shouted. “You’re out in the open running through an open field! If someone comes after you, you’re a sitting duck!”

  Yeah, but so was Kelly. And he was going to be her cover and protection.

  Liam raced down the hill, running toward Kelly with all his might. Yes, he knew that running right into danger was breaking one of his father’s most important rules of staying alive. But for the first time since he’d first kissed Kelly’s lips and asked her to marry him, over twenty years ago, Liam knew he was heading in the right direction with nothing holding him back. He raced through the snow, pushing his body toward her, as he watched her run for him.

  “Liam!” Her voice called for him, the sound muffled—he could see she was gagged.

  “Kelly!” He felt her name explode through his core, like it was coming from somewhere deeper than the breath in his lungs. “I’m coming!”

  They pressed closer. His heart ached with each step. Then he reached her and swept her up into his arms. He ripped the gag free from her mouth and kissed her, feeling her arms lock around his neck.

  “I love you.” The words flew from Liam’s lips the moment their kiss ended. “I’m in love with you, Kelly, and I have been forever.”

  “I know,” Kelly said. “Because I love you, too.”

  “Incoming!” Renner shouted.

  Liam swung Kelly behind him, positioning himself between her and the approaching Imposter. Liam fired, catching the man in the arm and robbing his ability to aim and fire back. The Imposter fell into the snow.

  Then Liam wrapped one arm around her shoulders and ran with her back to the truck.

  “Hannah’s in the barn,” she shouted to Renner as Liam yanked open the door and they tumbled into the passenger seat, and he pulled Kelly onto his lap. “She and Seth are both hacking.” She glanced at Liam. “Did you know?”