Travis’s face was serious. His hand brushed hers in a gesture that was both protective and caring. Warmth spread through her body.
“Were you okay?” Travis asked.
“Oh, he was fine—”
“But were you okay?” Travis prompted.
She pulled her hand away. No, she’d been embarrassed.
“Of course.” She folded her arms and leaned them on the table. “There was a disciplinary meeting. He claimed he hadn’t touched me, but that even if he had, he’d just been swept up in his character. Of course, I claimed it was what I believed my undercover character would do under the circumstances. I chose suspension over mediation.”
Because she didn’t want to be forced to apologize for demonstrating to a room full of vulnerable people that it was okay for a woman to fight back and defend herself.
“Anyway—” She felt her tone tighten. “This is my team.”
And she was proud of them, regardless of what Travis might think.
Travis leaned his elbows forward on the table and, for a moment, didn’t say anything. Then he clasped his hands together.
“I’m going to be blunt,” Travis said. “Part of me is really touched that Jess thought I could add something of value to your team and your operation against the Chimera. But I have no interest in ever leaving my life in Kilpatrick.”
“A life where you violated the terms of your witness protection agreement by expanding your family without notifying the RCMP,” Liam pointed out. His smile was tight and somehow more intimidating than a frown would be.
“With all due respect, it’s unrealistic to think anyone’s going to integrate into a new life in witness protection without forming friendships,” Travis said, the tightness of his smile now matching Liam’s, and a warning flashed in his eyes. “Patricia Tatlow is my landlady and my friend. Her grandchildren are like family to me. Patricia didn’t choose to raise them alone. Her son and daughter-in-law were both cops who died trying to combat drunk driving. I stepped in to help raise their kids. I won’t apologize for any of that.” He turned to Jess. His eyes met hers. “And now Patricia’s in a medically induced coma.”
He might’ve been talking to the entire team, but his eyes were locked on hers alone. Then he turned back to the group.
“She had an existing brain tumor that the attack by the Shiny Man exacerbated,” Travis added. “It’s too soon to know if she’s going to make it. But before she went into surgery she asked me to adopt her kids if she didn’t make it. I agreed to do everything I could to protect them.”
Jess felt a gasp slip her lips. She wasn’t the only one. But it was Noah who spoke for the group.
“Of course you know you can’t adopt children under a false identity,” he said gently.
“I do.” Travis sat back and crossed his arms. “But I’m not about to let them lose everything and everyone they know and go into foster care.”
“My parents were foster parents,” Noah said, his voice somehow growing even softer and yet firmer at once. “I grew up with a lot of foster brothers and sisters. I understand that would be far from ideal, but there are a lot of wonderful foster families in the world. Social services might even find someone within their community.”
Travis’s chest deflated. “No disrespect intended.”
Noah nodded. “None taken.”
Tension seemed to crackle around the group, like a powder keg waiting for a spark. As for Jess, she now felt like she was the one who’d been winded.
“I have a lot of sympathy for the fact you’ve built a relationship with those kids,” Liam said. “Really, I do. But your life stopped being your own when you entered witness protection. Your life has been threatened. Jess’s life has been threatened. The children’s only living relative is in a coma. As active witness protection agents with the RCMP, we can’t just ignore that. If word gets out to the higher-ups that we just sat on the news of any of this, we could lose our badges.”
The detective sighed.
“Again, I’m sympathetic to your situation,” Liam added. “Really I am. But we need to relocate you to a new witness identity, as long as there’s an active threat targeting you, and you can’t take the children. With everything Jess has seen and knows about the children, Patricia and the Shiny Man, if she just ignores it all and goes home, you’re basically asking Jess to risk her career for you.”
The tension grew tighter until she felt like something in the room was about to snap. She took a long breath. Liam was right. She was risking her career. But how could she just turn her back on Travis?
Lord, this whole situation is a mess. Nothing makes sense and everything is at stake. Please, give me wisdom.
“What if we give it forty-eight hours?” Jess said quickly. Her hands rose instinctively, like she was trying to stop an invisible foe. “Two days. No more. Seth needs to upgrade all of Travis’s security systems, both at Patricia’s house and the store. I need to assist Travis on the Shiny Man case and hopefully help him catch the guy. And even though Travis isn’t going to help me in the Chimera case, I’d still love him to go over the file and consult on it.”
She glanced at each of the men in turn. “I know it’s unconventional, but so are we. We make it a quick forty-eight-hour RCMP operation to check in on Travis, help him upgrade his security system and deal with a reported threat. The fact he’ll also consult on the Chimera case will help justify the length of time we spend here.”
“And I can install things really, really slowly,” Seth added.
She shot the hacker a grateful smile.
“We can’t have any of you risking blowing your cover,” Liam said. “You’re running a parallel investigation to local police, not stepping on theirs. If it comes to it, you walk away from the investigation in order to protect your identities.”
“Agreed,” Jess said.
That wasn’t exactly a yes but she already knew which side of the fence her team would land on.
Then she turned to Travis. “It’s not ideal, I know,” she said. “But we’re painted in a corner. A lot can happen in two days. Patricia could wake up and recover. The Shiny Man could be caught.”
“Or I could have two days left with Willow and Dominic,” Travis said, “before they leave my life forever.”
SIX
The conversation seemed to move in a blur around him. He nodded at the right places and then, when the subject shifted off the topic and people started saying goodbye, he felt himself stand and walk out the front door. He wasn’t even sure if the conversation had wrapped up or if he’d said anything before leaving. He’d just known he’d had to get out of there before he’d said something he regretted.
He pushed through the front door and out onto the porch. The warm and dark June night surrounded him. School would be out in days and summer was almost here. Velvety darkness pressed in on all sides, filled with nothing but the faint whisper of wind rustling in the trees and the threat of impending rain. His fists clenched. For the first time, in a long time, he wanted to yell at the world.
Are you out there, Shiny Man? The words ripped through his mind in a silent shout. Are you watching me? Who are you? What do you want? Why are you taking my home, my family and my life from me?
But the words that blazed through his mind never crossed his lips. Instead he dropped down onto the swing, let his head fall into his hands, and prayed.
I’m trapped, Lord. Everything I could even think to pray of seems impossible to ask.
Desperate. That was how he’d felt when he’d first landed in Kilpatrick, alone in a town where he’d known no one and nothing. That was how he felt now.
He heard the creek of the door behind him and knew Jess was there before she’d even spoken.
He glanced up at her without raising his head. “What do I do?”
“Tomorrow or next week, I don’t know,” Jess sai
d. “But I can think of one practical thing you can do tonight.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” It had been a rhetorical question when he’d asked it, but anything beat lying awake worrying. He found himself hoping that she’d cross the porch and sit beside him on the swing again. Instead she crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall.
“I think you should go back to the bookstore and your apartment,” she said, “and do a visual sweep of it like you used to. You had this way of pacing a crime scene in the middle of the night and seeing things others had missed.”
He looked up. “Because I was an obsessive and stressed-out insomniac who didn’t sleep.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you were also really good at what you did. Nobody could get inside the mind of a criminal like you could, and that wasn’t just the coffee. You know this town. You know who the Shiny Man could be. But the whole time you were in the bookstore after he attacked, you were either taking care of Patricia, the kids or me. You need to go back there as a detective. Even if you don’t find anything or see something you didn’t see before, it could still jog your memory.”
He let out a long breath. She wasn’t wrong.
“Just go,” she added. “I’ll stay here and watch the kids.”
“No.” Travis stood. “I want you with me. You’ve always been a great detective, and I’m beyond rusty.”
Not that he much liked the idea of leaving the kids. But they were fast asleep and it was a safer option than bringing them along. Thankfully Seth was able to set up a video camera feed from the kids’ room, allowing Travis to keep an eye on them.
Rain had already started falling lightly by the time Travis pulled the truck down the long, unpaved driveway and out onto the road. He glanced at Jess in the passenger seat beside him.
“For the record, I know your team isn’t wrong,” Travis said, “and neither are you. I can’t stay somewhere where there’s a target on my back, and I can’t adopt the kids, become their legal guardian or even take them with me. I just hate it. Okay? I hate what’s happened. I hate what could happen and I hate the position it puts you in.”
“Nobody blames you for hating it,” Jess said softly.
He clenched his jaw and looked straight ahead.
“But you do blame me for not wanting to go back to being an undercover cop though, right?” Travis asked. “I will go over your entire file on the Chimera and your plan to go undercover. I’ll give you any feedback and insight I can, and I’ll pray for you all day every day. But I’m not going back to that life.”
They kept driving. The world was black outside his windows. Raindrops splattered against the darkened windshield. He glanced down at his cellphone and the video feed of Willow and Dominic sleeping peacefully in their beds. Then Travis’s eyes went back to the road ahead.
Lord, I’ve never loved anything in the way I love these kids. Please, help me protect them.
A car pulled onto the road behind them, low and dark, with only one headlight. It was rare to see another vehicle on the road this late at night and this car was trailing far too close behind them. Travis held his breath and tried in vain to see the figure behind the wheel. The car turned onto a side road and was gone.
“It’s just that you seemed to really love your job,” Jess said after a long moment. “You were motivated, you were focused, and you always kept me on track. Nobody cared about the work more than you. You brought all this heart into the work and you were amazing at it.”
“You’re right,” Travis said. “I was motivated. I was good at it. And I thought I loved it. But I didn’t see how it was killing me inside or what it was doing to me. Maybe it was right for me then, but God wanted to lead me to better. I loved working with you. But I hated myself.” His shoulders rose and fell. “Can you forgive me for wanting to rescue just two kids when there’re hundreds out there I could be helping to save?”
She startled. “It’s not my place to forgive,” she said, “and I’m the last person to judge anyone for not wanting to be in this line of work. It’s hard.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the seat. “Did I ever tell you I was engaged to be married once?”
“No.” Who in their right mind would’ve ever let a woman like Jess get away?
“It was a very long time ago,” Jess said. “I was nineteen. He was a few years older and didn’t want me to go into the police academy, because he was in med school and thought it would be too hard on our relationship if we both had big careers. As the wedding got closer, it became clear that he wanted me to be a housewife. He told me I had to choose between him and being a cop.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, rolling her shoulders back like she was tossing off a weight. “I told him I loved him, but I felt called to law enforcement. He canceled the wedding.”
The buildings of Kilpatrick moved past the window. Pain stabbed at Travis’s heart. “I’m so sorry.”
She held up a hand, palm forward, as if trying to push back any sympathy he might be feeling.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He was clearly the wrong person and, if anything, it hardened my resolve to spend my life rescuing as many people from as many bad situations as I could. If I had a family, I’d still be going after criminals like Chimera, I’d just be doing it from a different angle or a different way that didn’t have me in the direct line of fire.” She blinked and looked out the window. “Why did we pass the bookstore?”
He winced and did a careful U-turn on the empty small-town street. A shiver ran up his spine as he suddenly realized he’d been so involved in Jess’s story that for one fleeting moment he’d forgotten where he was.
* * *
Forty minutes later, Jess stood in Travis’s study and watched as he paced like a caged animal around the space. The skies had opened in the past few minutes, sending sheets of rain beating against the building. Thunder rumbled in the air punctuated by spikes of lightning that split the night. Tension crackled around the room and seemed to encircle Travis like an invisible force field, and Jess wasn’t sure why. He’d been tense in a way she couldn’t put her finger on ever since she’d told him the story about her failed engagement. She didn’t know why.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That we’re not going to be able to get any usable fingerprint or DNA from this chaos,” Travis said. He stopped and waved his hands through the air as if drawing an invisible circle around the mess. “The Shiny Man was wearing gloves, a jumpsuit and a respirator mask. It’s like he’d spent hours online researching how not to leave evidence.”
“Remember the man in Aurora who murdered three women?” Jess asked.
“You mean, Mr. No Evidence?” Travis snorted derisively. “The guy who practically drenched his crime scenes in bleach to destroy DNA? I can still remember the chemical smell. And how he sat there in the interrogation room and smugly tried to tell me that since there was no DNA evidence, I’d never get a conviction.” He shook his head. “Like the fact his car and apartment were covered in bleach wasn’t suspicious.”
If she remembered correctly, it had taken Travis four hours to get a signed confession.
Travis glanced at his cell phone, and she followed his gaze. Willow was curled up in a tiny ball, but Dominic had tossed his blankets off and now lay on his back like a starfish. Both kids were fast asleep.
“So what does your gut tell you about the Shiny Man?” she asked.
“Nothing new,” Travis said. He set the phone down on the desk with the screen visible. Thunder roared outside, momentarily drowning out Travis’s voice. “He wants something. The fact he trashed my study makes that clear. The fact he challenged Patricia means he might’ve also had a personal beef with her. The way he questioned you implies he also knows me personally and was surprised by the sudden appearance of a woman in my life he didn’t know. His Shiny Man getup implies this wasn’t an i
mpulse decision and he put a lot of thought and planning into it.”
And he hadn’t been counting on Jess.
Thunder crashed again, moments after the last burst and harder than before. The lights went out, plunging the apartment into darkness except for the pale glow on Travis’s cellphone. Her hand shot to her weapon as she steeled herself. Then a tiny yellow light flickered on ahead of her in the darkness and she could see Travis’s face in the flame of a lighter.
“The power grid’s not the best around here,” he said. He bent down and rummaged around on the floor. “Thankfully, I have a few candles.”
She watched as Travis moved through the darkness, pulling round candles from the wreckage, lighting them and setting them on the shelf, where they created small pools of light in the darkness.
“We need a list of potential suspects,” she said. “Anyone who the Shiny Man could be. Names we can look into. People we can investigate. Who has motive to hurt you, those kids or Patricia? What’s up with District Chief Gordon Peters? Why doesn’t he like you?”
“I don’t honestly know,” Travis said. “But we definitely got off on the wrong foot when I dozed off at the wheel and crashed into a tree. He was against my joining the volunteer firefighters and sometimes makes cryptic remarks about running a background check on me. But my witness protection identity should be solid and problem free. The only black marks on my name are some speeding tickets, which is kind of ironic considering I got plenty of those in real life, too. As far as I know, he was never married and had no kids. He always seemed sweet on Patricia.”
“Any romantic interest?” she asked.
“Between the district police chief and Patricia?” he asked. “Maybe, but if so, she shot him down.”
She made a mental note to ask Seth to take a look into Travis’s faked background to see if there was anything else there Chief Peters would have a problem with, as well as running a check on the chief himself. “Have you racked up any other enemies in town? Any animosity among the other firefighters?”
Witness Protection Unraveled (Protected Identities Book 3) Page 8
