Christmas Witness Protection (Protected Identities Book 1)

by Maggie K. Black

  Seth was what was known in the tech industry as a “white hat” computer hacker because he only used his considerable powers for good. He was notorious for taking down and exposing abuse and corruption in places of power, starting with his own violent military general father. For years Seth had tried to be more of a heroic outlaw, hacking at will, infiltrating various criminal organizations and tipping off law enforcement, while skirting laws that got in his way. Then some violent criminals, linked to organized crime, had kidnapped him, hoping to use him for their own purposes, and Noah had saved his life.

  “Too late,” Noah said. “Looks like they already found Officer Crane and Corporal Asher. Are you tapped into whatever area surveillance you can get of the Port Lands around the water filtration plants—”

  “That would mean bending the terms of my witness protection agreement—” Seth started.

  “Understood,” Noah cut him off. He’d been responsible for Seth’s protection for eighteen months and knew all too well the terms he’d agreed to, as well as his habit of skirting them. Noah didn’t much like it, but that was a battle he’d have to save for another day. “But you already opened this can of worms when you tipped me off and I’m asking not instructing. Right now you’re an informant in a possible murder and possible kidnapping. I’m looking at a car crash, a missing whistle-blower and a dead RCMP officer. I think the Imposters took Hildegard.”

  “Sorry, on it.” Seth took a sharp breath. Then came the sounds of typing. “I think her friends call her Holly, by the way. I’m guessing it’s because she was born on Christmas.”

  Holly.

  Noah’s mind flashed to the image of the strong, slender and attractive woman with dark hair and piercing green eyes he’d seen in her file. Yes, that name suited her better.

  “Rumor is she hates being called Hildegard,” Seth added.

  “You know her personally?” Noah asked.

  “I know of her,” he said. “We both grew up military, went to the same high school for a year and even as a teenager she had a reputation for being exceptionally talented at both precision shooting and hand-to-hand combat.”

  “What can you tell me about the Imposters?” Noah asked.

  “They’re cyber terrorists,” Seth said. “In it for the money and not ideology. It’s believed there are only two of them. The huge hulking one who manhandles and hurts people goes by the handle the Ghoul. The other is a lot smaller and goes by the Wraith. They say he’s Canada’s second best hacker.”

  No guess who Seth thought the best was.

  “They go after very large-scale targets,” Seth added. “Hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. They’re ruthless and mercenary. In it for money and destruction. They’ve been known to both wear disguises and kidnap people to use online as proxies, before killing them. It’s said that no one has ever seen either of their faces and lived.”

  The typing stopped.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got you,” Seth said. “Skipped the street cameras and went for piggybacking on a satellite. Just zooming in. Now I can see you. What do you need?”

  “Everyone. Local police, RCMP, ambulance and our missing whistle-blower,” Noah said. “Any hostiles in the area?”

  “Nope, you’re all clear,” Seth said. “I’m trying to track where the Imposters took Holly now.”

  Hopefully, they were still on foot and hadn’t gotten far. In the meantime, Noah would go old-school.

  “I’ve got footprints,” he said, “and I’m going to follow them. If you see anyone or anything coming my way, let me know.”

  “Will do.” Seth kept typing.

  Noah started toward the footprints, weapon at the ready, following the faint and fading indentations in the snow. How had they managed to take her alive? When he’d been parked down the road from her safe house, he’d watched as she walked out to Elias’s car and insisted on doing a visual sweep of it herself, like a pro. Then she’d glanced his way and for one fleeting moment, her eyes had locked on his face, and it was like someone had sucked all the air from his lungs. Corporal Holly Asher was beautiful in a way he’d never expected from her file, with cropped black hair that perfectly framed her face and a strong, straight, almost regal bearing. Her military file alone had been enough to catch his eye. She was brilliant, talented, decorated and brave. But there was something else to her, too, a quality that had made it hard to look away.

  Just keep fighting, Holly. Wherever you are, just keep fighting until I can get to you.

  “Give me something!” Noah reached the end of the alley and looked around. The snow fell heavier now, wiping out any hint of footprints there might have been. He heard more keyboard taps. Each second ticked by, longer than he could stand.

  “Got her,” Seth said. “Warehouse. One street over to your right and three doors down.”

  “On it.” Noah started running. “I need you to call this in for me. Call everyone. Toronto cops. RCMP. The whole shebang.”

  “Already done.” Seth sounded worried. “But those aren’t secure lines. Anyone good enough to pull this off can hack into them.”

  “I know.” Noah reached the next corner and dived into an alley. Dirty red and gray brick hemmed him in on either side. “But we have to do this by the book the best we can.”

  A row of doors appeared to his right.

  “I just can’t guarantee who you’re going to get showing up,” Seth said, “and whether they’re going to be real or Imposters. Also, I think there could be a leak within the RCMP. Either that or someone in the military who happened to know everything about Holly’s protection detail and Elias’s movements. I just can’t see any other way the Imposters would’ve gotten enough information to set this up and kidnap her this way. There has to be a mole. Or some other way the RCMP has been infiltrated.”

  “I figured,” Noah said. “That’s why I’m also going to need an extraction team.”

  Fellow undercover RCMP detectives, who he knew were in the city, people he trusted with his life, who’d been through their own tricky and dangerous assignments and survived. Officers who, like him, were currently off active duty or on leave, so couldn’t have been tainted by whatever mole or leak there might be inside the RCMP. “Get me Mack Gray, Jessica Eddington and Liam Bearsmith.”

  “Assemble the renegade detectives,” Seth said. “I like it. Should I worry that none are currently on active duty?”

  “No,” Noah said. It was none of his business, any more than the personal reasons he was technically on vacation were theirs. Liam was on six months medical leave after being beaten into a short-term coma when his cover was blown. He looked as strong as an ox on the outside, but Noah suspected that whatever had happened had left lingering scars. As for Mack and Jess, all he knew was that both were facing some kind of review for something that had happened on a past assignment. “Just be thankful we have three of the best cops in the entire world available to help us out of this mess.”

  “What do I tell them?” Seth asked.

  “To get somewhere close and stand by.”

  “And what do I say if they ask about my connection to all this?” Seth asked. “You know I don’t work for you.”

  Like Seth hadn’t volunteered for this the moment he’d brought it to Noah’s attention.

  “Tell them you’re that famous hacker guy I once rescued from the trunk of a car and dragged safely through a hail of bullets.”

  Seth chuckled. “Do they know you’re not on active duty?”

  Noah didn’t answer. He’d landed an important promotion within witness protection, only to discover there was a glitch in gaining the necessary higher level security clearance due to a major financial mess his foster brother Caleb had gotten him into. It had left him in a bit of a limbo and, for now, he was using up vacation time and not being assigned any new cases until he decided what to do about it. But that didn’t mean
he wasn’t cleared to work.

  On the plus side, being off the clock had given him the freedom to take a personal interest in Elias’s transfer of Holly, when Seth had tipped him off that there might be a problem. And while Elias clearly hadn’t wanted Noah butting his nose in his assignment—let alone showing up in person when Elias hadn’t taken him seriously—he was really thankful he had.

  Noah reached the third door. His gloved hand grabbed the industrial handle and pulled. It didn’t budge. “Am I at the right door?”

  “Yup,” Seth said.

  “Got it.” Noah reared back and kicked hard. The door flew open. A long dark hallway lay before him.

  “Just to be clear,” Seth said. “Once you go in there, I won’t have eyes. I might not even have ears, depending on how deep the building goes and if it has a signal jammer. You’ll be on your own.”

  “Got it,” Noah repeated. He’d never minded working alone, and he didn’t want the sound of him talking on the phone, or even listening to someone on the other end, potentially alerting anyone he might want to sneak up on. “Put me on hold, assemble the troops, stay ready and I’ll get back to you soon.”

  “Sounds good. Stay safe.”

  “I’ll try.” Noah ended the call, put his phone on silent and slid it into his pocket. Then he raised his weapon high. Help me, Lord. I don’t know what I’m walking into.

  Noah stepped into the warehouse. Darkness enveloped him. He crept down the hallway, following the lines of the walls as they curved and twisted deeper into the building. His rubber-soled boots moved silently on the concrete floor.

  The gray, rectangular outline of a slightly open door finally appeared ahead. Noah sucked in a breath and prayed, eased the door open and stepped through slowly. He emerged onto a catwalk overlooking a warehouse. Cardboard boxes and tarp-covered pallets filled the space below and were piled high around him.

  And then he saw Holly.

  The corporal sat in a chair facing him, alone in a gap in the middle of the warehouse. Her hands seemed bound behind her back, but her legs were free. She looked up at him, her face full of strength and determination. His heart lurched.

  Then her eyes darted to her right and she gave a slight nod, as if acknowledging he was there and indicating she wanted him to see something. He stepped forward, following her gaze, and dread surged inside his core as he saw what she was gesturing to.

  It was a video camera.

  TWO

  A large man stepped into view, blocking Noah’s sight of Holly and the camera. He was huge, tall and broad, dressed in a dark navy police uniform with a hat pulled low. This would be the Ghoul, Noah guessed. He felt his breath tighten in his chest, willing the man to move. He had to see Holly’s face for just a moment longer. He had to know she’d seen him and that she knew he was there. He needed her to know that he would help her, even if he didn’t yet know how he was going to do that.

  Holly was at least two stories below him and several rows of boxes and shipping containers away. Noah’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He stepped back and reached for it, thankful he’d put his usual ringtone on silent and expecting to see Seth’s name or that of a fellow officer. Instead the name Dr. Anne Reed filled the screen. He hesitated. While he was growing up, his family had fostered over a dozen children for different lengths of time.

  He’d gotten to know Anne as a teenager, when she’d started dating his foster brother Caleb. Due to her own rough family life, she’d quickly become a nearly permanent fixture in the Wilder home. Anne and Caleb had had a baby together at eighteen and been married at nineteen. She was the closest thing Noah had ever had to a sister, and he considered their children his niece and nephew. But while Anne had excelled in school and become a medical doctor in her midtwenties, Caleb had careened through life, squandering away every cent and advantage he’d been given, relapsing after two stints in rehab for a gambling addiction and bouncing from one personal mistake to the next. His relationship with Anne was strained. He’d left her and the kids more than once, before always deciding to come back and give it another try. Caleb had also cut off all contact with Noah almost a year ago thanks to a joint business venture that Noah had invested his life savings in to help keep Caleb from gambling away the money Noah’s parents had left him and get his life back on track, only to have Caleb mismanage it so badly, it might cost Noah his higher level security clearance.

  If Anne was phoning him now, before seven in the morning, after almost a year of estrangement, it had to be urgent. He needed to take the call. Just not immediately.

  One emergency at a time. Noah breathed a prayer that Caleb, Anne and the kids were safe, and then declined the call.

  A light switched on below him and suddenly the space where Holly sat was bathed in a pool of light, but he still couldn’t see past the large man blocking his view of her face. Noah stepped closer to the railing. A cable came into view, then a tripod and finally a video camera that the Ghoul seemed to be fiddling with.

  Dread surged up inside Noah’s core like a geyser. He steeled himself and stepped to the very edge of the catwalk. A second figure in police uniform came into view, this one slender and smaller, sitting at a folding table with a laptop in front of him. Noah guessed that would be the Wraith. Then, as he watched, the hulking form between him and Holly stepped aside and for one long moment revealed her face again. Holly’s eyes looked up, directly at Noah, seeming to latch onto his gaze just as directly as they had earlier that morning in front of the safe house.

  She knew he was there.

  He wasn’t sure how well she could see his features at this distance, or if she had any idea that he was there to help her. But he felt the need to let her know that she could trust him, that he was safe, had her back and would help her—even if he still didn’t know how. He flashed her a quick thumbs-up and smiled. A goofy gesture, maybe, but one he hoped would let her know he was on her side. She nodded ever so slightly in response. Her eyes were on his face, keen and intent, as if they were asking him a question. They were asking him for something, and he knew that no matter what, he wasn’t going to let her down.

  He nodded back. Yeah, Holly, I’m here. I’m on your side. And with God’s help we’re going to get out of here alive.

  The faintest glimmer of a grin crossed Holly’s lips. Then she shouted, “Hey! Who’s that behind you on the catwalk?”

  Holly had told her kidnappers he was there? Why? What reason could she possibly have for tipping them off and blowing his cover? The Ghoul glanced back toward Noah, skeptically at first, but his eyes quickly widening as he realized someone actually was there. Yeah, me. The Wraith slammed the laptop closed and took off running into the rows of boxes and shipping pallets. The Ghoul yanked a gun from his belt, raised his weapon and fixed Noah in his sights.

  Holly struck before the thug could fire, leaping to her feet like a fury and spinning, swinging the folding chair around behind her like a weapon. The metal legs caught the criminal in the back of his knees and sent him stumbling forward onto the ground. The gun misfired, and the bullet flew somewhere high above their heads.

  Had Holly really been so confident in her ability to disarm the criminal before he could get off a shot that she’d taken the risk of using Noah as a diversion? And a “hey, look behind you!” trick at that? The Ghoul turned back and lunged for her. But Holly was ready for him, with a swift roundhouse kick that sent him stumbling to the floor and the gun flying from his hands. Noah’s heart jolted as if someone had just sent an electric current shooting through it. She was fighting back, against an armed kidnapper, with her hands still tied to a chair, even as he could see her strength and energy flagging.

  Noah was beyond shocked. He was even beyond impressed.

  Above all, he was determined that she wouldn’t fight alone. The metal catwalk stretched out on either side of him. Staircases descended into the warehouse at opposite ends. It would tak
e him too long to reach either one, and Holly had been alone without backup long enough.

  He vaulted over the railing and let his body drop down into the boxes below.

  * * *

  Holly watched from the corner of her eye as the man on the catwalk dropped out of sight into the piles of boxes. Was she right? Had it been Detective Noah Wilder? She didn’t know for sure. But friend or foe, he’d been a distraction she could use to draw enemy attention while she fought for her survival. And thankfully, she’d disarmed the bigger of the two criminals before he could fire at him.

  But now what? Pain still pounded through her head and seemed to radiate through her body. The headache was steadily growing worse. She stumbled forward, feeling the weight of the chair straining her arms and nearly yanking her shoulders out of their sockets. The apparently fake police officer who’d kidnapped her lunged at her once more. She swung the chair around again hard, using the metal frame attached to her wrists as both a weapon and a shield. It made impact, she heard a crack and then—thank God—the weight of the chair fell from her arms as the bottom of the metal frame gave way. She shook herself free.

  Okay, her hands were still tied, but at least she’d gotten rid of the chair. Now what?

  The dull, worrying ache in her skull was like nothing she’d ever felt before and seemed to radiate through her mind, clouding her ability to think. The big guy was down on the ground now, but even though she’d gotten in a few good blows, she didn’t expect him to stay there for long. The small guy was nowhere to be seen. She spun back, and the room began to spin with her, sliding in and out of focus like a scene from an old-fashioned projector movie that wasn’t sitting right in its frame.

  Something was very wrong. Help me, God! Prayers beat like a drum through Holly’s aching mind. She had to get out of there. She ran, darting down the closest aisle in the maze of towering pallets. Shipping containers and plastic-wrapped boxes rose around her, seeming to wave and move as she passed, like seaweed shimmering underwater. She pressed on, looking for an exit and pushing herself deeper into the labyrinthine maze, hearing her kidnappers pelting down the rows behind her, growing closer with every step.