Witness Protection Unraveled (Protected Identities Book 3)

by Maggie K. Black

  “No,” Travis said. She watched as he closed his eyes. “Judging by the security footage that Seth was able to pull, Shiny Man’s initial target was Patricia. She’s a sixty-eight-year-old female. One marriage, to a cop who died of a heart attack twelve years ago. One child, a son, who died while working a roadside check stop, along with his wife, who was also a cop.” His eyes snapped opened. “So, we look into all three of their professional records. Any one of them could’ve arrested somebody who’s held a grudge or has a family member who did. The fact it took them so long to make a move could be because they were behind bars.”

  Jess felt a smile turn on her lips. “Good start, Detective. Who else? Think motives. Anyone stand to gain financially from her death?”

  “Just me.” He shrugged. “If she’s left me her property in trust for the kids. Although, the baker next door, Harris Mitchell, has tried to pressure her several times to sell the bookstore. He can be a bit pushy and wants the property to expand his business. He threatened to sue her once over a fallen tree that did some damage to his property. But it was really a minor thing.”

  “And the baker’s daughter, Cleo, went with Patricia to the hospital,” Jess said. “Any other business dealings?”

  “Not that I know of,” Travis said. “One woman who has a local candle and incense shop was annoyed Patricia wouldn’t stock her stuff. But again, it’s petty stuff.”

  “Anyone in town with a criminal record?” she prompted.

  He watched the rain pound against the window for a long moment then he turned back.

  “No,” he said. “But there used to be. Braden Garrett. He’s twenty-four, has a drug problem and multiple arrests for minor things. He used to date Cleo and he was a nasty piece of work to her. She’d run to Patricia for help when his temper got out of control. Once when Patricia heard Braden yelling at Cleo outside the store, she grabbed a shotgun from behind the counter, marched out, pointed it at him and told Braden if he ever threatened Cleo again, she’d shoot him.”

  Jess whistled. “And why haven’t we interviewed him?

  “Braden left town almost two years ago,” Travis said. “Nobody’s heard from him since. I think Cleo’s now dating Alvin, the new kindergarten teacher. His fiancée left him recently when she got a great job overseas. Life in a small town is a veritable soap opera.”

  He glanced back at the cell phone, and his face paled. “The camera’s gone dead.”

  “It’s probably just a power outage. Call Seth.”

  Thunder crashed outside again, dragging her attention back to the window. Lightning flashed for a split second, illuminating the world outside. A gasp rose to Jess’s lips.

  The Shiny Man was standing on the fire escape, watching them.

  SEVEN

  The lightning faded, leaving nothing but darkness outside. But still the shape of the Shiny Man’s form floated before her eyes like a shadow.

  “He’s...” She swallowed hard and forced her tongue to find words. “He’s outside! Shiny Man is outside on the fire escape.”

  And she was going to stop him. She felt Travis’s hand reach for her arm in a gesture that was both protective and reassuring, but she pushed past him. Already she could hear the sound of footsteps clanking on the fire escape. No, the Shiny Man was not getting away this time.

  “Call Seth and check on the kids.” She crossed the floor in three strides and shoved the window open. “I’m going after him.”

  Wind and rain whipped against her face and seeped past her into the room. The fire escape was empty, as were the steps below her. Then she glanced up to see a figure disappearing onto the roof.

  “Jess!” Travis shouted behind her. “Wait!”

  She didn’t even pause to answer. Instead she dove through the window and sprinted up the slippery metal stairs as rain drenched her body and wind buffeted against her.

  “It’s not safe!” Travis’s voice floated faintly behind her.

  Of course it wasn’t. Any more than it had been safe when Travis had faced down the Chimera or any of the numerous times that either of them had gone up against a criminal. But this was who she was and this is what she did. And she’d never be the woman who stood comfortable, safe and dry in a candlelit room with a handsome man, when there was a criminal out there she had the power to stop. No matter how much she might want to.

  Help me, Lord. Help me stop this criminal and end this nightmare for good.

  Jess reached the top of the fire escape and paused with her head just below the line of the roof. Silence fell above her, besides the sound of the storm surrounding her. She readied her gun and risked raising her eyes above the edge. At first glance, the roof seemed empty. Then the lightning flashed again, and she saw him. Shiny Man was pelting away from her across the roof. Where did he think he was going?

  She sprang after him and pulled her weapon. “Stop!”

  Stop! Police! She felt the words cross her lips silently as her brain barely kept her from shouting them. She couldn’t blow her cover. Not even to stop him. Shiny Man paused and lingered for a second at the far corner of the roof. Then he leaped, his arms outstretched, the fabric of his jumpsuit flapping around him as he disappeared from view.

  No!

  A crash sounded from below. Anguish and frustration battled inside her as she ran across the roof, through the pounding water, feeling her footsteps threaten to slip underneath her and send her falling after the criminal.

  Jess reached the edge of the roof and looked down. The rain and darkness blocked her view. Then, with a snap, the power came back on and the ground came into view. There was no one and nothing there but a scattered pile of garbage bags and boxes she guessed the criminal had used to break his fall. Yeah, she wasn’t about to try to jump down after him.

  A sigh left her body. She holstered her weapon and started back across the roof to the fire escape. As she walked down the stairs, she could hear the faint sound of Travis’s voice and guessed he was on the phone with Seth. She reached the second floor and glanced through the window. Sure enough Travis was standing in the middle of the study with his phone to his ear. His eyes met hers, and she could see the question there. She shook her head.

  He ended the call.

  “Fill me in as we drive,” Travis said. “Power’s out at the house. Kids are fine, but Willow’s woken up and I want to be there for her. She’s pretty scared of storms.”

  She climbed through the window and had just reached back to close it when a light switched on in the second floor of the building opposite them. From the apartment above the bakery, Jess assumed. It disappeared just as quickly, plunging the window back into darkness. But not before she’d caught the outline of a woman against the curtains.

  “Did you see that?” She turned to Travis. “There was a woman at the window.”

  He nodded. “I think that was Cleo.”

  “Do we talk to her today or tomorrow?” she asked.

  There was a benefit to both. Conventional wisdom was that witness memories were clearest immediately after something happened, but when working undercover sometimes it made more sense to wait to find the right time to talk to someone.

  “Tomorrow,” Travis said. “We’ll find a way to make it a natural conversation. Knocking on neighbor’s doors in the middle of the night is a bit tricky, and whatever reason we come up with is going to become town gossip, especially if I’m going to be waking up Harris.”

  “Sounds good,” Jess said.

  She closed and latched the window. They sheltered their heads with jackets as they sprinted to Travis’s truck. He pulled the truck onto the road and drove toward the farmhouse.

  “The Shiny Man was reckless and desperate,” she said. “He just ran across the roof, in a storm, and then leaped off, falling into a pile of garbage. He could’ve been killed or seriously injured. It’s the behavior of the kind of criminal who does no
t think, does not plan...and might even indicate emotional instability or substance abuse. And that doesn’t fit at all into our earlier analysis that his getup implied he put meticulous thought and planning into his crime. So, unless there are somehow two Shiny Men we’ve got to deal with, we might need to rethink things.”

  Jess’s heart ached as she lay her head back against the passenger seat and looked into the dark and rainy night outside.

  Help us, Lord. I have no answers right now, just unanswered questions.

  She sensed Travis’s body stiffen even before she turned to see the worried expression on his face. His eyes darted from the road again to the rearview mirror. She glanced back over her shoulder. A car with one headlight was trailing them on the empty, unlit road.

  “That car was behind us on the way to the bookstore, too,” Travis said. “I think we’re being followed.”

  * * *

  Travis’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He couldn’t see the face of the driver behind him in the darkness. But while the world was full of coincidences, he was pretty sure being trailed twice in the middle of the night by a car with the same headlight out wasn’t one of them. The vehicle behind was tailgating and inching ever closer. He prayed and sped up slightly. The car behind fell back for a moment, but even before Travis could breathe a sigh, it caught back up with them again, until it was so close that if he risked tapping the brakes it might smash into them.

  He glanced at Jess. “I’m going to have to do some fancy driving.”

  “Go for it,” she said.

  The trust that shone in her eyes warmed something inside him.

  Okay, then. The rain beat down against the truck. The roar was slippery underneath his wheels. A gap loomed in the trees ahead, leading to an unpaved road. He fixed his eyes on it and gritted his teeth, waiting for the last possible moment to yank the steering wheel toward it. The tires spun beneath him. Trees reared in front of the windshield. But he steadied the wheel and the truck flew down the dirt road, branches beating against the vehicle as it jarred and shook along the bumpy ground.

  His phone began to ring. He glanced at the screen. It was Seth. He pushed the button to put it on speaker phone. “Sorry, man, I’m kinda busy right now.”

  “Uncle Travis?” Willow’s shaky voice filled the truck. “Will you pray with me? I had a nightmare and the storm’s really loud.”

  Travis felt his face pale as he glanced at Jess. But almost immediately she snatched up the phone, took it off speaker and held it to her ear.

  “Hey, Willow, it’s Jess. Your uncle Travis is a little busy right now, but I’ll pray with you.”

  Gratitude flooded his heart. Did Jess have any idea how extraordinary she was? Or how thankful he was for her?

  The single-headlight vehicle reappeared behind them through the trees. The wipers cut back and forth quickly through the wall of water pouring down over the windshield. He took another sharp turn, the truck swerved again, and they were back on a paved rural road. Thanks to his work in the community, he had a pretty good mental map of the back roads in the area. But with the one-eyed vehicle behind still too close on his tail, he couldn’t outrun it forever.

  Then a jolt shook through the truck as the car clipped their bumper from behind. The floodlights of a large agricultural supply warehouse loomed ahead. Travis waited until the last possible second, yanked the steering wheel hard and swerved into it. The truck spun in a tight and controlled circle. He hit the brakes, lowered the window and prepared himself to shoot.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  The car pulled in after them. Travis raised the weapon out the window and aimed it at the approaching vehicle, praying he wouldn’t have to fire. For one fleeting moment, he caught a glimpse of the Shiny Man’s reflective jumpsuit and respirator mask in the glow of the complex’s floodlights. Then the car swerved hard and its wheels screeched as it pulled back onto the road.

  Shiny Man sped off. A prayer of relief and thanksgiving filled Travis’s heart. In this battle of chicken, the Shiny Man had lost.

  The roads were empty as Travis drove them to the farmhouse through the rain and Jess stayed on the phone with Willow the whole way back. Getting the little girl back to sleep took even longer than it had when he’d first put her to bed. When she was finally settled and asleep, Travis found Jess waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. The furious sound of Seth tapping on the keyboard came from the dining room.

  “Seth’s searching online retailers for any Shiny Man–type orders that have been placed for this area,” Jess said. “Whoever he is, he didn’t buy that respirator mask, tactical flashlight or voice distorter in a town this small. If Seth can locate a recent shipment to the area matching the description of the Shiny Man’s gear, he can use that to figure out the address where it was delivered. I’ve also given him a list of all the potential leads we brainstormed back at your apartment. He’ll track them all down and we’ll see what he comes up with tomorrow. We’ll also talk to Cleo tomorrow, too. For now, I’m going to try to get some sleep. I suggest you do, too.”

  Yeah, not a bad idea.

  “You can take the guest bedroom,” he said. “Seth can have the pullout in the study, and I’ll take the living room.” Not that he expected he was going to be able to sleep.

  “Good night, Travis. Let’s all pray this all makes a lot more sense tomorrow.”

  She turned and darted through the door before he could respond, leaving an empty place where she’d been just moments before. Something in his heart tugged after her. Her former fiancé had been wrong. Her passion for her job was one of the best things about her and any man who wanted to take that from her was a fool.

  He lay awake for hours, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock and praying. He wasn’t sure when he even fell asleep, but when he next opened his eyes, early morning sun was slipping through the window and across the floor. The sound of cheerful voices filtered in from the kitchen.

  He found his phone in the couch cushions—the hospital hadn’t called. His body ached as he rolled off the couch.

  He found Jess and the kids waiting for him in the kitchen. He blinked. The children were dressed, smiling and eating cereal at the table. Jess stood by the counter and held up a kettle as he walked in.

  “Good morning,” Jess said. “Seth left about twenty minutes ago to go see about updating the security system at the bookstore. I made herbal tea, but I wasn’t sure if you still drank it.”

  “If it’s decaffeinated, yeah,” he said. “Though I still limit myself to one cup a day, and I no longer drink coffee, pop or energy drinks.”

  He hesitated a moment, realized there weren’t any jobs left to do, so instead slid into a seat beside Dominic’s high chair. How Jess had gotten the kids up and snuck them past the couch where he lay sleeping without waking him up felt like some kind of magic trick.

  “We have to go to school now,” Willow said earnestly. “We’re late. It’s eight-oh-five.”

  He let out a long breath. The Shiny Man’s instruction to act like nothing was wrong swirled through his mind. Willow’s kindergarten and Dominic’s preschool were both housed in a well-lit and very secure municipal building and civic center with security cameras, metal detectors and security guards at the door. The lines of sight were amazing and the kids would have dozens of caring eyes on them. It was the safest place for them. And yet, after everything that had happened, how could he ever let them out of his sight?

  “What if you and Dominic stayed with me today?” Travis said. “We could have a special day together.”

  Willow was already shaking her head vigorously. Her lower lip stuck out in a pout. “No. It’s school concert day! With all my friends! I’m playing the tr’angle!”

  Jess’s phone began to ring just as Willow’s voice rose to a wail. Jess stepped away from the table and answered the phone.

  �
�Hello? Yeah? Wow... Got it.”

  She stretched out her hand and offered the phone to Travis. He held up a finger to his lips to ask Willow to be quiet. Thankfully she stopped fussing, although her lower lip stuck out farther than ever.

  He held the phone to his ear. “Travis here.”

  “It’s Seth.” The hacker’s strained voice came down the phone. “I’m at the bookstore. It’s been trashed, and I’ve been arrested.”

  EIGHT

  A small crowd of people had gathered in front of Tatlow’s Used Books. Chief Peters had parked his cop car in front of the store and slapped yellow police tape across the door. Travis parked across the street and then slipped Dominic into a solid, reinforced sports-utility infant chest carrier that he pulled from the glove compartment of his truck. Jess noticed it was Travis’s size and already set for his broad shoulders. She took Willow by the hand and the four of them approached the bookstore together.

  There were at least a dozen people milling around the front of Tatlow’s, chattering and gawking, including most of the people she’d seen the night before, like the volunteer firefighters and Harris the baker. She didn’t see Cleo, his daughter, anywhere.

  As they reached the bookstore, the crowd parted just enough that she could see Seth sitting on the low sill of the huge front window. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands cuffed in front of him. Chief Peters stood before him, his chest puffed out like an angry robin protecting its yard.

  Willow gasped and tried to tug free of Jess’s hand to run to him. Instead, Jess scooped her up and held the little girl in her arms.

  “Jess!” Willow said. “Tell police Peters that Seth not a crim’nal!”

  The little girl’s wide eyes felt like a mirror to Jess’s own and there was something about the look in them that made Jess’s heart swell in her chest. Willow was so bold, so confident, and determined to do what was right. Not to mention incredibly caring. She prayed Willow would never lose those qualities.