Jess would know the sickly sweet smell of chloroform anywhere. But this was the first time she’d felt a rag soaked in it pressed up against her face, filling her lungs and threatening to pull her under. Instinctively she turned her face to the side, creating a tiny bit of distance between her nose and the rag. She forced her brain to overcome her fear, and focus. Chloroform wasn’t instantaneous, she could still breathe and it felt like her attacker’s dosing of the rag was light. For now, her biggest worry was the gun. Her fingers ached for her own concealed weapon. Help me Lord! If only she could reach her gun.
“I said, drop the phone!” The Shiny Man’s distorted voice rose.
She let it fall from her hand, praying that Liam would hear what was happening and alert Seth and Travis that she was in danger. The only question was whether they’d reach her in time. She thrashed from side to side, gasping for non-drugged air wherever she could.
The Shiny Man lifted her up and she felt her feet leave the ground as he tried to drag her backward. She bit his wrist so hard he shouted in pain and dropped her. She hit the ground and barely managed to tuck herself into a roll, as her body tumbled on the rough forest floor. Already she could feel the chloroform coursing through her. How long until she passed out? She didn’t know. Only that her body felt heavy and sluggish. She was growing weaker. But she wouldn’t give up without a fight.
She forced herself to her feet. But her fingers felt thick and unsteady as she reached for her ankle holster, fumbling in vain as she struggled to remove her weapon. The drowsiness in her head grew heavier. Help me, Lord! I can’t get my gun out! She gritted her teeth. If she managed to pull it, would she be steady enough to make a shot? If they wrestled for the gun, would she kill him or herself? She forced a deep breath into her lungs and reminded herself that if he wanted her dead, he’d have killed her already.
The Shiny Man charged at her.
“Stop!” she called. “I have a gun!”
The figure hesitated.
“Who are you?” she shouted. “What do you want?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he just loomed over her, an indistinct figure clad in orange-reflective gear with a silver buglike respirator mask covering his face. He looked more like a creature than a man.
Her head swam. Drowsiness beat over her like a wave. Panicked prayers filled her heart. She’d managed to fight through the drug so far. All she had to do was to keep fighting, stay conscious and stop him from taking her long enough for someone to find her. He took an awkward step toward her.
“You want to talk?” she called, hoping the bravado filling her voice would make him doubt the potency of the chloroform. “Come on then! Let’s talk!”
“Jess!” Travis’s voice floated toward her, faint and distant in the darkness. “Where are you?”
“Travis!” she shouted. “I’m here—”
The blow came hard and fast as the Shiny Man launched himself at her, catching her by the neck and knocking her down onto her back. Her head smacked against the ground. Darkness swam before her eyes.
“Jess!” Travis called. “Jess, where are you?”
She couldn’t answer. She could barely even breathe, as the Shiny Man crouched over her, holding her down with a gloved hand at her throat.
“Who are you?” the Shiny Man demanded. His voice distorted, creepy and unnatural thanks to the voice box hidden inside his insect-like mask.
Come on, Jess, stay focused! Underneath it all he was just a man, like every other criminal she and Travis had taken down and put behind bars.
“Who. Are. You?”
“Jess,” she croaked. Even drugged, scared and caught off guard, she’d let herself die before she blew her cover.
Travis’s voice faded, taking her hope with it. He was running in the wrong direction. The Shiny Man leaned in closer until she could feel the weight of him against her chest.
“What are you doing here?” the Shiny Man asked in his odd, mechanically distorted voice.
She shook her head, like she couldn’t speak, and gasped for breath until he loosened his grip on her throat.
“Visiting Travis,” she said. She swallowed hard. “We’re...we’re old friends.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
She blinked. Why would he possibly say that? “I’m not!”
“Then why hasn’t he ever mentioned you?”
What? The question sent shivers of fear coursing over her.
It was personal. Whatever was going on, and whatever this man wanted, he knew Travis and considered this personal. Travis had told her it was impossible to keep a secret in a town this small, where everybody knew each other’s business. And yet she’d never realized how ominous that could be until now.
“Who are you?” But even as words slipped her lips, she knew he wasn’t going to answer.
The sound of Travis’s voice disappeared. The Shiny Man leaned in close. The pressure increased on her throat again as his words came out in a long, electronic drone. “Why. Hasn’t. He. Mentioned. You?”
God, please help me get my words right.
“I don’t know, but he drew pictures of me!”
The Shiny Man recoiled. She gasped, as just as suddenly the intense pressure left her windpipe.
“He painted and drew pictures of me,” she said, “in his art therapy group. They’re up in his apartment. He didn’t tell anyone my name, but people in town knew we were engaged. I think I broke his heart.”
She felt ridiculous saying it, blurting out details of some fake romance between her and Travis. But it was the only way to protect Travis’s identity or her cover.
He swung back, his hand raised, and she’d barely had time to throw her arm up in defense before the light struck her. This time it was a strobe, flickering on and off in a sudden barrage of light. Then he struck, shoving the chloroformed rag back over her face, harder and stronger this time, until it threatened to suffocate the breath from her lungs.
Help me, Lord, I’m going to pass out!
“Jess!” Travis’s voice rose again in the distance.
The Shiny Man grabbed her by the throat and yanked her up.
“Give Travis a message for me.” The Shiny Man’s voice grew into a high-pitched whine like something out of a nightmare. “Tell no one about this. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary or change your daily schedule. Don’t talk to police. Don’t talk to anyone. Otherwise, I will take the children, and then I’ll come kill you.”
The Shiny Man tossed her backward. Darkness swept over her.
“Jess!” Travis called. “Shout if you can hear me!”
But he was too far away. She wasn’t going to make it.
Travis shouted her name into the darkness, prayers filling his heart as he pushed his body through the trees. “Where are you?”
Moments ago he’d seen a strobe light, disorienting him and flashing somewhere in the trees. Now the night was dark around him.
Lord, please help me find her.
“Jess!” He called out to her in the silence and pressed on.
How had he let her just go out alone like that?
He hadn’t thought for one moment it would be a problem. He hadn’t thought at all. Despite everything that had happened in the past few hours, he still wasn’t thinking of the world around him as a potential threat or danger zone. Kilpatrick still felt like home and his own backyard. It was like he’d been caught between two ways of thinking, without fully rooting his mind in either.
And that had shattered the moment Seth’s phone had buzzed. He’d looked up at Travis from across the kitchen where he’d been slathering on butter for garlic bread, and told him, “Jess might be in trouble.”
Travis tapped the earpiece that Seth had pushed into his hand as he’d rushed for the door. “Seth? Tell me the kids are safe.”
“They’re absolutely fantastic.” Seth’s voice crackled in his ear. “Also, the doors are still locked and there hasn’t been so much as a rustle in the bushes outside. I’m guessing you haven’t found her yet?”
“No.” Travis stopped running. “But I will.”
He held his breath and listened in the darkness as his eyes finally adjusted to the light now that the large flash had faded. As determined as he was to never go back to the man he’d once been, the former detective inside him was exactly who Jess needed now.
Then he heard it—a faint rustling somewhere in the trees ahead of him and on his left. He ran toward the noise, praying with every step. Then the trees parted and he saw them.
The Shiny Man was dragging Jess’s limp body backward through the trees.
“Let her go!” Travis commanded. “Now!”
The figure in orange dropped her body and raised his hand, barely giving Travis time to shield his eyes with his arms as the blinding light flashed around them. When his vision cleared and the light abated, the Shiny Man was gone and Jess was lying alone on the ground. A vehicle engine roared to life beyond the trees.
Travis knelt on the ground beside her, gently brushed the hair from Jess’s face and his heart swelled to feel her warm breath against his hand. His fingertips touched her neck. Her pulse was strong.
“Jess,” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Travis?”
His name left her lips barely above a whisper and a prayer of thanksgiving exploded like fireworks in his chest. “Are you okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded faintly.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head slightly. “Just sore.”
An unexpected smile curled on his lips. Of course she was sore. She was probably aching, bruised and scraped. But she’d always been one of the toughest people he knew.
“I’m...dizzy,” she added. “He used chloroform.”
His heart stopped. “He drugged you.”
“He tried to,” she said. “But it’s already wearing off...” she said slowly. “He wasn’t very good at it... Not enough on the rag... Didn’t hold it down long enough... You know, like we learned on the Pembroke case, chloroform is hard to do right...”
Travis chuckled despite himself. Even limp and dizzy, she was all cop. A very good and professional cop at that. Knowing her, no doubt her brain would start spinning a million miles a minute as soon as she fully woke up.
“Well, let’s be thankful he didn’t know what he was doing, then,” he said. He glanced around at the empty night. The sound of the vehicle he’d heard had now disappeared completely. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you, okay?”
She nodded against his hand. He bent down, scooped her up and held her to his chest.
Travis jogged back to the house, holding her as steady as he could. He tapped his earpiece. “Seth,” he said. “I’ve got her.”
A sigh of relief filled his ear. “She okay?” Seth asked.
“Yeah.” Thankfully. But his own chest was still aching from the way his heart had been pounding.
“Kids are still great,” Seth said quickly, and gamely, and Travis suspected he was putting on a cheerful voice for them. “Pasta’s done and drained. Apparently, Willow wants ‘shaky cheese’?”
“Grated Parmesan,” Travis said. “Top shelf of the fridge. Two shakes.” His pace slowed as he saw the lights of the farmhouse between the trees. “Stay cool and don’t freak out, but Jess has been chloroformed. Not enough to pass out completely, but enough to make her dizzy.”
Seth emitted an odd strangled noise, like he’d been about to exclaim something but then caught himself.
“Been there,” Seth said. “Not fun.”
Had he now? Travis vaguely remembered Jess saying Seth had been in witness protection, but he’d been so focused on his own situation, Patricia and the kids, he’d barely asked her about her team, if at all.
“I’m going to keep her away from the kids until she’s woken up and recovered.” Travis said. “Can you grab me a couple of juice boxes from the fridge and leave them on the front porch?”
“Will do,” Seth said. “Also, I hope you don’t mind, but I accessed Patricia’s security system on my phone. Took me two seconds to hack her password. It’s a single-camera system that only covers about five feet from the front door, but at least she has one. I’d like to upgrade both her home and bookstore to something a lot more secure before Jess and I leave.”
“Thank you,” Travis said. He needed help, whether or not he wanted it. He could only sit there with his metaphorical wheels spinning in the mud for so long, before accepting a push. “Thank you for everything, actually. I’m sorry if I seemed irritated or ungrateful with you guys earlier.”
“Pfft, don’t worry about it,” Seth said and Travis could hear the grin in his voice. “I irritate people all the time.”
Travis used to, too. He looked down at the woman in his arms. As grateful as he was that Jess hadn’t forgotten him, he still cringed to know just how crabby and short-tempered he’d been back when they’d worked together. That job had been like a shoe that didn’t fit properly and so had pinched with every step. Whatever he was made to do, it hadn’t been that.
He broke through the trees, with Jess in his arms. The front door opened. Seth waved in silent greeting, set two juice boxes down on the porch and closed the door again. The motion sensor lights flicked on as he crossed the lawn, bathing the world in pale yellow light. He looked down at the woman in his arms, as light and shadows moved across her face. He realized she hadn’t argued that he should put her down and let her walk. That worried him.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I feel like there’s something important I need to tell you but my memory is foggy.”
“Give it a moment, your mind will clear and it will come back to you,” he said. “You’ve been drugged and you’re probably in shock.”
“Also thirsty,” she said. “I need water.”
“Already on it,” he said. “Actually, I got Seth to bring us juice boxes, figuring the added sugar would help with the shock.”
She smiled. “You’re thinking like a cop.”
“A volunteer firefighter actually,” he said. “I’m much better at that than I was as a cop.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Because you’d rather fight fires than people?”
Because he was better at saving people than spending weeks getting inside the minds of criminals. Just because he could get his head around how evil people thought, didn’t mean it was good for him.
“The job’s mostly basic paramedic stuff, search-and-rescue, and public safety,” he said. “We almost never fight actual fires.”
He reached the house, walked up the steps and stopped at the wooden porch swing. It was still too early in the season for Patricia to set the pillows out on it yet. Her husband had built it for her when they’d gotten married. Willow and Dominic’s mother, Amber, had been sitting on it when their father, Geoff, had proposed. And now, it was where he sat with Jess.
He shifted her onto the seat beside him. She leaned against his shoulder, but thankfully she stayed upright. For a long moment he just sat there, the swing rocking slightly beneath them, until the motion sensor lights switched off again and he had to wave his hands over his head to get them back on. Then he glanced down at Jess. “How are you feeling now?”
“Thirsty and dizzy,” she said, “with a very foggy brain, but okay.” Her words were still slow and heavy, but her voice was definitely stronger and clearer.
He reached for a juice box, careful not to jostle her, balanced it between his knees, and slipped the straw loose of its plastic sleeve and popped it through the hole. Then he handed it to her. Her fingertips brushed his as she took it from him. Then she took a long sip.
“That was impressive,” she said. “You’re really good at that.”
“What, opening juice boxes?” he asked. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of practice. The hardest part is getting the straw out of the plastic sleeve without dropping it.”
He waited while she took another longer sip and then winced slightly and glanced at the box. The liquid was purple, the contents probably less than five percent actual juice and the flavor was confusingly named “apple berry.” But Willow loved them.
“So, drawing, painting and juice boxes,” she said. “Also, I’ve noticed you’ve put on quite a bit more muscle. Any other new talents you’ve developed?”
“A few,” he said. “I play first base on the local baseball team. I can build and start a fire without a lighter or matches. I can break plastic zip ties, if I can get my arms at the right angle. I tried my hand at pottery and made a few almost-symmetrical mugs. My big plan for this summer is to take the kids to the lake and finally learn how to skip stones. I watched a lot of online tutorial videos and took a lot of hobby classes when I moved here. I was pretty bored.”
“Anything you can’t do?” she asked.
“Math,” he said. “I’m still terrible at anything math related, and I can’t spell.”
She chuckled slightly and drained the juice box. He reached for the next one and this time she did her own straw.
“You were right,” he added. “I was a good cop. A very good cop. But it wasn’t good for me.”
She pushed off his shoulder and sat straighter. Then she crossed her legs and pressed her back into the seat.
“I was on the phone with my colleague Liam Bearsmith when the guy jumped me,” she said. “He snuck up on me from behind. I’m really embarrassed that I didn’t manage to grab my gun. But it was in my ankle holster and he picked me up.”
“And he drugged you,” Travis added, fighting the urge to rub her shoulder. Instead he set his hands on his knees.
“Still.” She frowned. “I hate having to be rescued. Even by you. If it had been on my waist, I’d have gotten to it sooner. If I wasn’t so little and short, he wouldn’t have been able to pick me up. And if I’d been paying more attention, he wouldn’t have been able to get the jump on me—”
He cut her off. “And if raindrops were doughnuts, we’d all eat like kings.”
He’d forgotten this about her. How she’d ramble, dither and doubt herself, until he cut her off, got blunt and helped her refocus. How someone so amazing could double-guess herself was beyond him.
She blinked. “That’s not how the expression goes.”
“It is around here,” he said. “There’s also one about bacon growing on trees. Now, what else can you remember?”
“He was in full Shiny Man garb,” she said, “including the creepy insectlike respirator mask and voice box. I bit him pretty hard, right in between his glove and sleeve, so he should still have a mark on his wrist from that. He said he wanted to question me. Not kidnap me or kill me. He wanted to take me somewhere to ask me questions...”
“What kinds of questions?” Travis asked.
“He wanted to know who I was...” She straightened as if something had suddenly clicked behind her eyes. “He wanted to know why you’d never mentioned me. I told him that I was an old friend and he called me a liar.”
Travis felt like cold water had suddenly dropped from above, drenching him through to the skin. The Shiny Man knew him. He was from Kilpatrick. He was one of them. Help us, Lord. “What did you say?”
“I told him I was the nameless, mystery, ex-fiancée woman you kept drawing,” she said. “It was an established part of your existing world.”
And not completely untrue.
“He also told me to give you a message,” she said. “Do nothing. Don’t go to the police. Don’t do anything out of the usual, or he’d come after me and the kids.”
Considering the fact District Police Chief Gordon Peters seemed to have a pretty low opinion of Travis, and had no idea who Travis and Jess really were, Travis wasn’t even sure he trusted the man enough to risk letting him in and getting him involved. Something tightened in his chest and he took a long, deep breath in and out, trying to loosen it.
“Good news is, this is more evidence he’s not working for the Chimera,” she said, “and that the Chimera and the Shiny Man are two completely unrelated cases. The Chimera only uses highly trained and deadly mercenaries from Eastern Europe. The Shiny Man is definitely an amateur, not a pro. His chloroform technique was lousy, and he hasn’t been all that great with a gun.”
And that was supposed to make him feel any better?
“Patricia is in surgery because of the fall,” he said, hearing his voice bristle. “He was trying to abduct you. This is no minor thing.”
“I didn’t say it was minor!” she said. “I didn’t even imply it. But surely it’s good news that this means your cover hasn’t been blown and Shiny Man isn’t working for an international criminal but someone you know. You can figure out who he is, we can have him arrested and move on.”
“This is my home.” Travis’s voice rose. “These people are my family. I know you don’t get it and think of all this as some fake little life I’ve been playing at. But this is who I am now. You said, like two minutes ago, that you hated having to be rescued. Even by me. Do you think I like having to be rescued by you?”
“Don’t change the subject.” A puzzled frown filled her eyes. “That has nothing to do with this. And you don’t get it. You’re a big, strong guy who’s never had to worry about someone picking them up like a rag doll.”
“And you’ve never blown your cover,” he said. “Or been shaking so bad with a blinding headache from caffeine withdrawal that you missed a shot. Face it, Jess, you came to Kilpatrick on a rescue mission.” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice but still it seemed to echo though the stillness of the night. “You came to rescue me. Whether you intended it that way or not. I’m in witness protection because my cover was blown. And in two days you’re going in undercover to clean up my mess and take down the criminal I let get away.”
“Nobody blames you for that—”
“I blame me!” Travis said.
“And I came to ask for your help.” She reached for him. Her hands grabbed his and held them tight. “Because I need you.”
Her eyes locked on his and he could see their blue depths searching his. And suddenly he felt an odd feeling filling up inside him. He wanted to sweep her back into his arms. He wanted to hold her, to protect her from danger and never let her go.
“No, you don’t need me,” he said and yet somehow his hands stayed locked in hers. “I keep trying to tell you, but you’re not hearing me. I was a wreck back when we worked together. I was depressed. I was irritable. I barely slept and chased caffeine shots down with coffee to stay awake.”
“You were still the best partner I ever had,” she said, “and I was at my best with you, Travis. I don’t know why all this is happening, but maybe we were brought back together for a reason, so I could help you stop the Shiny Man and you could help me stop the Chimera.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled his hands away from hers and checked it. It was Alvin, the kindergarten teacher. He answered. “Travis speaking.”
“Hey, Travis,” the younger man’s voice was hesitant. “Cleo and I are on our way back to Kilpatrick now. A doctor will be calling you soon with an update, but I wanted you to hear it from us first. Patricia’s in a coma.”