His hand flitted from face to face, introducing each missing person like an old friend. Jonathan, who was a busboy and who they now assumed Leia’s mother had seen murdered. He had a criminal record for petty theft. Nathaniel worked as a cook at the homeless shelter where he lived, and Calvin sold drugs on the street corner. Electra and Marissa were both struggling dancers in their twenties who also waited tables. Janet was raising her four grandkids while running a kiosk cart selling plastic trinkets to tourists.
“Each dot on this map,” he said, pointing, “indicates a place where one of the victims was last seen. As you’ll see they’re all south of Bloor, east of Yonge and west of Bayview. That whole area just north of Lake Ontario is home to several Vamana Enterprise properties. I know there’s no obvious surface pattern to the victims at first, as they’re all different ages, body types and ethnic backgrounds. But they were all living close to the poverty line and struggling to make it economically. It made them vulnerable. It meant police were more likely to overlook or excuse away their disappearances.”
Had the Phantom Killer stolen something from each of them to commemorate his crime? If so, did he now have that evidence stashed away somewhere?
“The least of these,” she murmured. She turned to Jay. A warm light shone in her violet eyes. “That’s what my dad would call them. He always reminded us of what Jesus said in the Book of Matthew that how we treat the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned and those in need was a reflection of how we treated Him. Dad worked that message into a lot of his fairy tales actually. I... I can see why this case mattered so much to him. I don’t get why he hid it from us, but I get why he contacted you. He’d never be able to get over knowing someone had gotten away on preying on people like this.”
Something warmed in his heart. Yes! That’s exactly how he felt, too. If only she knew just how long he’d wanted to share this with her.
“If we’re right about your mother being his secret friend, she couldn’t, either,” Jay said. “She made him promise on her deathbed that when God told him the timing was right he’d do whatever he could to ensure Franklin got justice.”
“She made him promise to protect my sisters and me, too,” Leia said. Then her gaze flitted to the solitary picture of a man in his late-thirties with round glasses, a trim beard and a goofy smile. Her eyes widened. “That’s Jayce Starling, the journalist.”
“You know him?” Jay asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “My dad was a huge fan of his books of essays on homelessness, affordable housing and veterans. I’ve read them all more than once.”
“He was my dad,” Jay said. His voice caught in his throat as a wave of unwanted emotions surged in his chest. “I was named Jayce after him. With the CE. It’s an old family name he wanted passed down. My mom called me Jay. My middle name was Brock. I changed it when I left home.”
Her eyes widened. “I had no idea.”
Jay found himself choosing his words carefully. “Did you know he was an alcoholic?”
“I did.” She nodded. “He wrote a lot about how struggling with his own addiction brought him closer to God and opened his hearts to the needs of others.”
“He walked out the door when I was four and never came back,” Jay said. “Police were convinced he’d just relapsed, walked out on his family and left my mom for another woman. The newspaper ran stories with headlines like Alcoholic Writer Vanishes. But my mom was convinced that he loved us and the Phantom Killer took him out because he was researching the missing people of Toronto who nobody else cared about.”
“Do you think that Franklin Vamana killed your father?” she asked.
“Police don’t,” he said. “It was so thoroughly debunked as just some wishful thinking on my mom’s part that it wasn’t considered a serious reason for me not to take this case. I was even given permission to use his old notes on the victims to build a profile for my case.”
“But what do you think?” she asked.
Her hand brushed his and he found himself taking it. He thought he was standing beside the most incredible and beautiful person in the entire world and that anyone in their right mind would’ve been running from him right now instead of holding his hand.
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.
“Neither do I,” she said. “But I know that I’m done hiding, and that you and I are going to take this killer down, starting now.”
SIX
She fought the urge to pace, but just ended up bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if the kinetic energy of her body moving was the only thing keeping her from falling apart. She’d just told Jay that they were going to step up, do something, escape the farm and get justice for the victims of the Phantom Killer. The drumbeat of motivation in her heart as she scanned the faces of the victims felt so strong it was like she could charge out into the fray and take down a sea of enemies. If only she could figure out how.
She glanced at Jay. His eyes were closed, and his lips were moving silently, and she realized he was probably praying. She and Jay had prayed together many times last summer. Their shared faith had been something they’d embraced. And now, even as she was getting to know him again and learning who he really was, it made her happy to realize his faith had been real, and not part of his cover. His belief in caring for those in need was even deeper than she realized. No wonder he’d seemed so happy when she told him she was working at a legal aid office and dreamed of becoming a lawyer for those in need who couldn’t afford one.
It was ironic. She’d worried about what her father would think if he found out she had feelings for Jay, and yet he’d been the one man that Dad had decided to trust with his deepest secrets. She’d always feared that when she caught a glimpse of the man behind the mask Jay wore, it would shatter her image of him. Now that she was actually getting to see who the man behind the cover really was, she liked him even more than before.
It was ironic, considering she now knew that very pursuit of justice that she admired was what would keep them from ever being together in the way she once hoped they could be.
Okay, Leia, focus. It was a simple problem. They were trapped at her farm, in the middle of nowhere, with no way to contact the outside world. She’d spent her entire life growing up at this farm and knew its ins and outs better than anyone, even if Jay had built a secret hideaway in the barn without her knowledge.
Lord, help me think outside the box.
An idea struck. She turned to Jay.
“Your team is tech-savvy, right?” she asked.
“Jess’s husband, Travis, has state-of-the-art computer skills,” he said. “Plus, she has a tech consultant named Seth, who claims to be one of the best computer hackers in the world.”
“Okay, well, you’ll remember we have an old computer in the basement?” she asked. The basement was only partially finished, with old plank staircases and drop-ceiling tiles. “It’s a big giant brick of a thing that takes an hour to do anything and can barely even run the internet. My dad basically gave it to my sisters and me to play around with when we were kids and he upgraded to a better one.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t see anything much of value on it when it came to the case, but I made an external backup of it, anyway.”
An uncomfortable feeling pricked at the back of her neck.
“You went through and copied my childhood computer?” she asked. “I wrote all my school essays on that thing. I wrote letters to my high school crushes, and poems. I even had my diary on it!”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and she watched as his jaw moved, as if rolling various words around on his tongue to see how they tasted.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I did and I’m sorry. I can imagine I’d feel really lousy if I was in your shoes. But I didn’t read any of it. I simply copied the data and ran it through an algorithm for anything possibly related to my case. The only thing
I actually remember were pictures your sister Sally drew of maps from stories in your father’s fairy-tale world. There were these rainbows, rivers, islands, trees and twin waterfalls. They were incredible.”
“Cymbafalls,” she said. “That’s the name my father gave his imaginary world. Sadly, he forgot the stories as he grew older and we never wrote them down, so they’re lost forever. But they’re oddly similar to what you were telling me about the Phantom Killer’s alleged victims. In each one, the princesses teamed up to rescue a different person who’d been captured by the Shadow...”
Her voice trailed off almost as if a thought had flitted past her mind too quickly for her to grasp. She’d never questioned the fact her father made up stories to tell at bedtime. Could he have based them on real events?
“I think we might be able to use the computer to contact the outside world,” she said. “We used to have an old phone line to the house that was really degraded and kept cutting out. When my dad had the new phone line installed, they never took out the old wiring. So, my sisters and I attached this really ancient modem to it that my dad didn’t use anymore and we discovered that as long as we sent very basic and quick, text-based emails with nothing attached, they’d get through about fifty percent of the time. It’s possible that when they cut the main phone line they didn’t get that one.”
“And if not, we have a fifty-fifty possibility of getting a message out,” he said.
“Yup,” she said, “and we’ll have to use my old email address because that’s the only email program loaded on the machine.”
“Well, it’s something,” Jay said, “and something is better than nothing. So, we sneak back into the criminal-filled house, make our way to the basement, fire up an old modem and hope that everyone checks their spam filters.”
“That’s why I asked if your team was tech-savvy,” she said. “If so, hopefully the fact it’s an old messaging system won’t throw them.”
“Knowing my contacts, it might intrigue them,” Jay said.
He rubbed his hands together, then reached for a roll of paper sitting on the floor, took it over to the metal folding table and spread it out. It was a blueprint of the farmhouse.
“The way I see it,” he said, “is we move along the tree line until we reach the back of the house. Then we create a diversion, cut through the kitchen, head down the back staircase, through the family room and we’re there. It’ll be very risky, but it’s our best option.”
She almost chuckled.
“Or,” she said, “we simply cut through this much shorter path to this side of the house and climb straight down into the basement.”
“That won’t work,” Jay said, but doubt hovered in his eyes. “I thought your dad installed locks on all the basement windows.”
“He did,” she said. “But stop thinking like a cop and start thinking like one of four incredibly strong-willed and adventurous girls who grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. He installed everything when we were tiny, and if he didn’t notice something was loose or broken we didn’t always tell him. Specifically, there’s a vent right here between the two windows that’s loose. Quinn used to use it to sneak in the house at night.”
His eyebrow quirked. “I thought you said she snuck out using the rope ladder.”
“She did,” Leia said. “But Rose always pulled it back up when she left. And if Rose was asleep when Quinn came back and didn’t lower the ladder back down, she’d sneak in this way.”
Jay snorted a laugh.
“Hey, Quinn’s now one of the top outdoor exploration and climbing guides in Canada,” Leia said. “She literally guides people up glaciers. Thankfully, we know it’s still possible to slip in and out through it, because Sally figured out that’s how Moses was getting in.”
“And remind me who Moses is?” Jay asked.
“A small brown, white and black tabby cat who sometimes shows up and pretends he lives here,” Leia said. “We’re not sure where he’s coming from and he never stays long. He’s very independent. But he loves hiding in bags and more than once Sally has opened her diaper bag or suitcase and been startled to find the little cat hidden inside. Sally always leaves a saucer and some treats out for him in the kitchen. I’m sure she’d appreciate it if we managed to find him and rescue him, too. But he might not be here. I haven’t seen him all night.”
Jay paused and his eyes searched his meticulously detailed wall of information for a moment.
“Well,” he said finally. “I’ve got to admit, I wish I’d come to stay at this farm and get to know your entire family sometime when there wasn’t crime involved.”
“Maybe when this is all over, I’ll invite you over for a family dinner,” she said.
He smiled and she felt warmth spread to her cheeks. Then just as quickly the grin faded.
Guess undercover detectives didn’t do friendships, either.
He dropped through the hatch first, back into the lower part of the barn and disappeared from view once he’d looked around. Then his face reappeared in the opening. He looked up at her.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll catch you. There is a rope ladder, but I’d need to hook it up.”
She swung her legs through the opening, slid her body off the ledge and tumbled down into his arms without even pausing to question it. He caught her to his chest and held her there for an instant as the smell of the hay, the old barn and the wet earth outside surrounded them on all sides.
They were mere steps away from the place where they’d first kissed. And maybe it was the familiarity of the place or the closeness of the conversation they’d shared, but in that moment everything inside her wanted to just let her head fall into the crook of his neck and savor the feeling of his arms around her. She wanted to wrap her arms around him in a hug, kiss his lips and tell him she’d missed him and forgave him.
Instead, she eased herself out of his arms as he set her down on the floor and stepped back.
Jay wasn’t asking her forgiveness, let alone asking her to kiss him or go back to the kind of relationship they’d had before. He wasn’t even implying he wanted to be friends. They’d been thrown together by circumstances, nothing more. And once they got help and made their way to safety, who was to say he wouldn’t just disappear out of her life and she’d never see him again?
Jay squeezed her hand for a brief moment and prayed aloud, asking God to guide them. Then they made their way out of the barn and through the darkness, down a narrow path shrouded by old farm equipment and overgrown hedges. Rain lashed against them. The farmhouse loomed ahead in the storm. They crouched low beside the edge of the garage and paused. A figure was walking back and forth between the farmhouse and garage, swinging his flashlight as he went like a sentry in the storm.
“I’m guessing that’s Ben,” Jay said. “I didn’t want to risk killing him and couldn’t arrest him, so I left him somewhere people could find him.”
“So much for hoping they’d either found whatever they were after or given up and left,” Leia whispered.
“I still wish I knew where they hid their vehicles and how they got here,” Jay said. “There’s something about this whole situation that still doesn’t make sense. But right now, all I can afford to worry about is getting inside that building.”
She held her breath as Jay’s keen eyes tracked the man’s motions. Jay counted slowly beneath his breath.
“His timing isn’t very consistent,” he said. “But I think I’ve figured out when our best window is to make a run for it.”
He reached down, took her hand and held it. They waited as the man with the flashlight strode past their hiding place, swinging the light in front of him like a minesweeper. Jay waited until he’d reached the edge of the driveway.
“Now,” he whispered.
She clenched his hand. He leaped up and sprung, holding her hand tightly as they ran across the
open ground in the darkness toward the side of the house. Her foot slipped and she tumbled to one knee on the wet grass, before Jay pulled her back up and they kept sprinting. The man with the flashlight turned back.
“Hey!” Ben shouted. The flashlight’s beam swung wide, bouncing its light between the barn and farmhouse. “Hey, is somebody there?”
Jay and Leia reached the farmhouse and their hands slipped from each other’s grasp as they dove for the relative safety of the side of the wall. She lay flat on her stomach on the ground and pressed herself against the wall. Then she started to crawl slowly toward the vent, hearing the faint shuffle of Jay behind her.
The man with the flashlight shouted for backup. Within moments, Willie had charged around the side of the building, adding a second swinging beam of light to the darkness. “What’s going on?”
“I think I heard something!” Ben said.
“Is it her?”
“I don’t know! Just help me look!”
She reached the vent, slid her fingers under the edge of the metal and pulled. Her fingers slipped, refusing to find a grip. She clenched her jaw and prayed. But still it wouldn’t budge. The criminals were still shouting and swearing. She couldn’t see or hear Jay anywhere. She swung her body around in the darkness, braced her foot against the vent and kicked. It swung free.
Thank You, God!
She slid her feet into the open space and pushed herself through. Her body slithered through the vent and landed back in the small basement office.
“Jay!” she whispered. “I’m in. Come on.”
There was no answer. Nothing but the sound of the pouring rain and shouting voices filtered through the vent. Fear seized her heart.
Where was Jay?
The movement in the darkness was so swift she barely managed to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming as she felt something soft bounce onto her shoulder from a pile of boxes before leaping up and disappearing in a brown and white streak through the vent.
Undercover Protection Page 7
