Jess watched as Travis’s terrified face went ashen in the dim light of the cell phone. She sprang to her feet and snatched the phone tracker from Seth’s hand.
“I’m going after her!” Jess shouted.
“No! I am—” Travis started to argue, but she cut him off.
“You need to protect Dominic!” she said. “I’m armed. Stay with Seth. Alert the team. Keep Dominic safe! I’ll go after Willow!”
“Take this!” Seth shoved an earpiece into her hand and she didn’t have time to wonder where he’d pulled one from so quickly.
“You got another way to track her?” she asked. “Like a backup phone?”
“Of course!” Seth said. “I’ll be watching you both.”
She turned to go when she felt Travis’s lips brush the top of her head.
“Stay safe,” he said.
“You, too,” she replied. “I’ll bring her back safe, I promise.”
Jess turned and ran for the side door of the auditorium, making her way through the crowd in the darkness as it surged around her. It was pandemonium. Children were crying, parents were trying to quiet them and staff was yelling for everyone to stay calm and in their seats, that the power would be back on soon.
In the meantime, she was certain, that whoever had cut the power had one target and one target only. And Jess was going to find and rescue her.
She burst through the door and ended up in an empty foyer. Dark hallway spread in both directions. She paused for a second and prayed, waiting for the small map on Seth’s phone to center itself and tell her which way to go. Then the lines stopped spinning and she realized what she was looking at. It was an overlay of a blueprint of the building with a blinking dot showing where Willow was.
Jess turned and ran down the hallway, hit another junction, paused to check the screen, then turned right and kept running. The sound of the auditorium faded behind her. The hallway grew darker ahead. The sound of her own pounding feet and racing heart filled her ears.
Then she heard it. Willow was screaming from somewhere up ahead.
Hold on, Willow! I’m coming!
She pressed on, feeling the sound of Willow’s voice filling her with fresh determination, strength and drive. She rounded another corner.
“Jess!” Willow shouted.
Jess barely had time to dart her gaze to the floor to shield her eyes as a sudden light flashed and bounced off the glass windows of the classroom around her. Then it stopped and Jess looked up through the haze of light and darkness, forcing her painful, watering eyes to focus on the shapes ahead of her.
The Shiny Man stood before her, clad in his orange reflective jumpsuit and eerie buglike silver respirator mask. He had one arm around Willow, lifting her up off the ground as he dragged her backward.
“Jess!” Willow screamed. “Help me!”
Help me, Lord! I can’t see!
The Shiny Man was getting away.
“No! Stop! Put me down!” Willow’s desperate cries seemed to echo around her.
“Jess!” Seth’s voice was in her ear. “There’s a door behind him! He’s about to leave the building!”
She had to stop him. No matter what it took and no matter what sacrifice she had to make. He was not going to take that little girl.
She yanked her weapon from her holster. “Stop! Police!”
Through light and shadows, she saw Shiny Man pause, falter in his steps.
“I’m not playing! Let her go!” Jess’s voice rose, filling the space around them with a strength as it rose to crescendo. “Right now! Or I’ll shoot!”
Already her vision was recovering. Blobs and blurs of light and darkness were sharpening before her eyes. She steadied her weapon with both hands, praying for an opportunity to take the shot. If he turned to run, she’d shoot his leg. If he shifted Willow to the side, she’d take out his opposite shoulder. Whatever it took to keep him from taking Willow.
The little girl’s cries had dropped to whimpers.
Jess gritted her teeth and prayed she wouldn’t have to shoot for Willow’s sake.
“Jess!” Seth’s voice crackled in her ear again. “There’s a van with its motor running just outside the door.”
Shiny Man took another step backward.
“I’m Detective Jessica Eddington of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police!” she shouted, feeling her voice rise to its full strength and power until it filled the hallway. “You’re not going to get a warning shot. You hurt one hair on that girl’s head and you will not make it out of here alive. Now, let Willow go!”
The Shiny Man hesitated a second. Then, as she watched, Willow fell from his grasp and he turned and ran.
Jess scrambled forward, holstering her weapon just as Willow launched herself into Jess’s arms. She caught the little girl to her chest and cradled her tightly. The emergency door slammed shut ahead of her. Shiny Man was gone. But for now, all that mattered was that Willow was safe.
“I’ve got her,” Jess told Seth. “He got away but I’ve got Willow.”
“Thank You, God!” Travis’s voice filled her ear and she wondered if Seth had another earpiece or if they were somehow sharing one. “Stay there! We’re coming to you.”
“Understood,” she said.
She sank to the ground, her legs suddenly feeling weak as all the adrenaline that had propelled her forward now seemed to crash down on her.
Then she felt Willow’s tear-stained cheek press against hers. Her voice came out staccato through sobs. “You...saved...me...from...the...Shiny Man.”
“I did,” Jess said. She held her close. “And I’m so glad you’re safe. Your baby brother’s with Travis and Seth, and they’re coming to find us. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Willow’s face filled hers, her eyes wide. “Jess,” she said, “you’re a police woman?”
The lights flickered on. The power was back. Jess looked up as Travis and Seth, now holding Dominic, pelted around the corner toward them.
Prayers of thanksgiving poured from Travis’s lips as he dropped to the ground and wrapped his arms around Willow, scooping her up and holding her tightly. Then Travis looked at Jess over the top of Willow’s head, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes.
“Thank you.” Emotion choked his voice in his throat until it was barely more than a whisper. “Thank you for saving her!”
“You’re welcome,” Jess said, slowly, taking Seth’s hand as he helped her up. She glanced from Seth to Travis, her heart pounding in her chest as the full weight of what had just happened hit her. “But I just blew my cover.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Jess, but you and Seth have to leave as soon as possible,” Liam said, his face was grim on Seth’s laptop video screen. “You don’t need me to tell you this, but with your cover blown, there’s no choice.”
Travis looked down at the wood grain of Patricia’s table. Night had fallen, the children were in bed and Jess was seated beside him, but he didn’t look at her face. He didn’t know how to. His heart was so heavy, he could barely breathe.
The mood had been somber as they’d returned to the house. Dinner had been take-out pizza, and Jess had gotten changed while Travis had done the bedtime routine alone. Seth’s duplicate box of Shiny Man’s order had arrived and was now spread out over the table. All night, the fact that Jess had blown her cover had been buzzing around in the back of his mind like an insect he didn’t want to swat at in case it stung him.
Instead he’d focused on how incredibly thankful he was that Willow was back safe and unharmed. But now, with the children asleep in the room above, and sitting around the table talking to the team, the full weight of what had happened and what it meant had finally hit him like a heavy stone landing in his gut.
“I’m sorry,” Jess said. Her eyes flitted from Liam’s face on the screen to Travis’s and back again. “My vision was compromised. He was holding a minor child. It was the only way—”
“Nobody is blaming you,” Liam cut in, his voice firm. “You made a call in a high-pressure situation in order to protect a minor child. It was unfortunate, but necessary.”
Was it, though? Travis thought. He definitely wouldn’t have ever doubted her before. She was way too good a cop for anything other than the benefit of the doubt. But believing in his heart that she’d made the right call somehow didn’t make it any easier to look her in the eye and know what she’d cost them. Or maybe it was just knowing that his dreams were going up in smoke.
“I’m going to recap,” Liam said. “I think as a team it would be helpful to take a look at the whole unvarnished situation, besides outside of what all of us might want, hope or wish it to be.
“We have one victim of a suspected homicide, Braden Garret. He was found dressed as the so-called Shiny Man and, we have every reason to believe, has been posing as the Shiny Man for several attacks, including on a current and former undercover detective. We have a second Shiny Man who attempted to abduct Willow today. We also have two minor children who’ve been living in close proximity to someone in witness protection and are now in his care, after their only living relative was attacked by Braden, while he was posing as the Shiny Man. Their primary caregiver and only living relative is now in a coma.”
With no signs of improvement, no matter how many times Travis called the hospital to check, or how many prayers he and others in the community prayed.
“One of the minor children just survived an abduction attempt,” Liam continued. “Although a police report has been filed and the child is now safe, we also have doubts about whether the local district police chief can be trusted and therefore he has not been fully briefed on the situation. All correct so far?”
“Yes,” Travis said. “Correct.”
Travis wasn’t sure if hearing what was happening to his life laid bare in a police briefing helped or hurt. But at least Liam was getting the facts right.
“An undercover detective chose to blow her cover to save a minor child from abduction by this secondary Shiny Man,” Liam added. “We still have no idea who this individual is, who murdered the other Shiny Man, if the two Shiny Men were working together or what possible motive there is for any of these attacks.” He sighed. “Anything I’m missing?”
“The bookstore was ransacked,” Jess said. “There’s talk of a community effort to restore it, but still it feels like maybe the property was a target. Willow seems convinced that the Shiny Man is after her books.”
“Because Willow loves her books,” Travis said quickly. “They’re her favorite things. That and her brother.”
And her community, and her class, and her family. All of which he was now afraid she and her baby brother were all going to lose.
“It’s still a potential data point,” Jess said.
“It’s not a data point,” Travis said. “It’s a little girl’s life.”
He immediately felt bad for being sharp. But at the same time, this was what he hated about the job and this is what had killed him about it—looking at real people’s lives and treating them like statistics. Even though he knew there was good reason why detectives like him were trained to keep their emotional distance from the people whose lives they were trying to save. But Willow wasn’t a case. She and her brother were family.
“I think I’ve figured out how the Shiny Man was able to be inside the civic center without setting off the metal detectors,” Seth said after a long pause, the kind of hesitation in his voice that implied he was scanning the ground for eggshells.
“I’ve gone through everything he’s ordered and done my best to recreate his getup,” Seth continued. “Looks like he took the guts of a tactical light and implanted them in a standard mini plastic flashlight, which got him past security. He also wore special contact lenses that reduced the light’s glare. They’re not a perfect fix, so I’m guessing he also closed his eyes at strategic moments when he set off the light to give him an advantage. Nothing all that special, honestly. He was just really smart in how he used it.”
Which got them where, exactly? Nowhere they hadn’t been twenty-four hours ago.
“Jess and Seth,” Liam said, “do what you can to help gather evidence and set up any additional security features you’re working on, and then head back to rendezvous with the team in Ottawa. I know you hate to cut and run without catching this guy. Trust me, I do, too. But with Jess’s cover blown, it’s the safest option.
“As for Travis and the kids, we’re going to get an extraction team to pick you guys up and take you to a safe house in Sudbury to be near Patricia in the hospital. My first choice will be to send a helicopter, but we might need to send a van depending who’s available. We’ll loop social services in to meet you at the hospital. Give me an hour.”
Travis’s head shot up. “You’re going to extract the children from their home in the middle of the night?”
“Do you have a better option?” Liam asked. “I can push it to just before dawn so that they get some sleep but leave under cover of darkness. The most important thing we can do right now is to make sure the children are taken care of.”
“I will find a better option,” Travis said. “I’ll take care of them.”
“With all due respect, you don’t exist!” Liam said, and for the first time since Travis had met the steady and solid man on video screen, the detective’s voice rose. “You’re an imaginary person whose identity was created by a very dedicated team of Witness Protection agents—including myself. And I get it.” Liam let out a long breath and his voice dropped just as suddenly as it had risen. “Trust me, I’m not unsympathetic. In fact, as someone who has been undercover many, many times, I know what it’s like to lose yourself inside another identity and begin to think that’s who you are.”
Unexpected pain flashed in Liam’s eyes, like something long deeply hidden had floated to the surface.
“But you have to remember that isn’t really you,” Liam continued. “And, again, as much as I hate to say this, you weren’t supposed to get as close to that family as you did. These people you care about don’t know who you really are.”
Okay, but maybe Travis had no idea who he was anymore, either. He wasn’t the man he’d been when he’d first entered Witness Protection. He wasn’t the man who’d driven himself to exhaustion, living on caffeine with no real relationships and no peace in his heart. And while Travis Stone of Kilpatrick, Ontario, with friends, community and an unexpected family, wasn’t him, either, it was the happiest and closest to being real he’d ever been.
And with him gone, and all that gone, who was he now?