The room froze. Travis held the weapon steady and aimed it between the kindergarten teacher’s eyes.
“Travis.” A warning rumbled through Chief Peters voice. “Give me back my weapon.”
“I wish I could,” Travis said. “But Alvin is the Shiny Man who tried to kidnap Willow yesterday. He gave information about Jess online to some really bad criminals who’ve kidnapped her, and I’d do anything to get her back.”
Alvin laughed. “What is this? Some kind of joke?”
“Slide your cell phone across the floor to Seth,” Travis said. “Then put your hands on your head and get down.”
Something went cold in Alvin’s eyes that belied the artificially wide grin on his face. His hand twitched down to a faint lump at the side of his sweatshirt.
“Stop!” Travis ordered. “You so much as try to reach for that gun and I’ll shoot!”
Voices babbled around the room. There were a million different ways this could go wrong. And only one way he could make it go right.
“I’m a former undercover detective with the RCMP,” Travis said. “I’ve wanted to tell all of you that, so many times. But I’ve been in witness protection for the past four years, after taking down a particularly nasty international crime lord’s operation with the help of my partner, Jess.”
Eyes blinked and jaws dropped. But legs and arms still tensed as if to strike.
“And yeah—” he glanced at Chief Peters “—I was a selfish driver and not the greatest man. But Jess is an incredible RCMP detective, the best person I’ve ever met, and, thanks to Alvin, is now in the hands of a major crime lord. All that matters now is saving her.”
The kindergarten teacher smirked, but the look in his eyes grew colder.
“And why would I do any of that?” Alvin asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Travis admitted. “But I’ll figure it out.” For now, he’d focus on how. Then he glanced at Cleo, huddling with her dad behind the counter. “If I’m right, then Alvin and Braden were working together. He betrayed your trust, teamed up with your abusive ex and used you as an alibi. That means Alvin called Braden for updates and to give him direction while you were at the hospital with Patricia. Is that possible? Did he make secret phone calls while you were together? Calls he didn’t let you overhear?”
“Don’t answer that!” Alvin snapped.
But it was too late. Cleo had already nodded. “He did.”
One step closer. Thank You, God.
“You all know me,” Travis said, glancing around the room. “You’ve prayed with me, had meals with me, and played baseball with me. I’ve helped put out your fires—both real and metaphorical—and you’ve helped put out mine. Right now, I need your help to save Jess.”
A pause spread through the room, filling the store and spreading between the books.
“Son,” Chief Peters said, his voice firm and strong, “give me back my gun.”
“Look, I know it sounds crazy,” Travis said. “But all I need is his cell phone. It’ll take my buddy Seth here a couple of minutes to prove if what I’m saying is right. If I’m wrong, you can arrest me and I’ll go without argument. If I’m right, Jess’s life is on the line.”
“Come on!” Alvin said. “You can’t believe him!”
“Detective!” Chief Peters’s voice rose. “Stop dillydallying, hand me back my weapon and go get his phone.”
Travis took a deep breath, prayed for wisdom and handed Chief Peters the gun.
“Thank you.” The chief turned the weapon on the kindergarten teacher. “Give him the phone, Alvin.” Then he glanced around the room. “Show’s over. Everyone get out of here. Quickly and safely. Go.”
People began to evacuate along the sides of the room as the cop turned to his shoulder mic and called for backup. Travis realized suddenly that Chief Peters could’ve called for backup at any time before, instead of hearing him out.
Travis started across the floor toward Alvin. But before he’d gotten halfway across the room, Alvin’s hand darted to his side. The kindergarten teacher yanked out a gun and pointed it at Travis.
“Just let me go and nobody gets hurt!” Alvin shouted.
Travis rolled his eyes and leaped, feeling years of dormant instincts course through his body as he caught Alvin around the middle, forcing the gun over his head as he brought him to the ground. He pressed Alvin back against the floor hard with one hand. With the other, he pried the weapon from his hand and sent it sliding across the floor to Chief Peters.
Alvin looked up at him, his eyes wide and manic. “Okay, you’re right. But I can tell you how to reach the Chimera. I can give you the dark web IP addresses he used to contact me. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. All I want is ten thousand dollars cash and that brat’s weird, upside-down picture book.”
Willow’s favorite bedtime storybook? That’s what all this was about?
“I’m not negotiating.” Travis pinned him down.
“You can’t search my phone without a warrant!” Alvin snarled. “You need me to give you the password, otherwise by the time you get a warrant to crack my phone, Jess will be dead.”
“Oh, I’m a former detective,” Travis said. “Seth’s not law enforcement at all. And if Chief Peters wants to arrest me for snooping through someone’s phone, I will gladly plead guilty and take the misdemeanor.”
He yanked the phone from Alvin’s sweatshirt pocket and slid it across the floor to Seth.
“Crack it,” Travis said. “Find the Chimera. Tell him that the RCMP detective who took down his operation, saw his face and missed the shot is very much alive and wants to trade his own life for Detective Jessica Eddington’s.”
The helicopter was turning around. Jess could feel it moving beneath her, but all she could see out the windows was an endless field of sky. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting in the back of a helicopter with a gun pointed at her face and her hands tied together. But all that time she’d been flying, not knowing where she was going or what awaited her, she’d had something important to hold on to—the others had escaped. Willow and Dominic had been rescued. Seth was okay, would contact her team and they’d mount a rescue.
Travis would find her. She didn’t know how or when, but somehow she had faith that she would see him again. Her former partner, the one who’d always tugged at her heartstrings, the man she liked, respected and admired most in the world somehow had feelings for her. Just like she did for him.
The helicopter began to dip. They sank, lower and lower, until she felt the jolt of ground beneath her as they landed.
She looked out the window. They were in a small airfield surrounded by trees. Were they still in Ontario? Were they in northern Manitoba or southern Nunavut? Had they somehow crossed into the United States? A large black and windowless van was parked on the tarmac. She’d seen enough nearly identical vehicles in photos and case files to know that when someone took an unwilling and non-optional ride in one, they usually didn’t come back.
The helicopter door in front of her was opened by one masked man in dark fatigues, while another slit her zip-tied hands free from the seat, yanked her arms together, retied her wrists and then practically shoved her so hard she nearly fell.
These was all scare tactics. Ones that she and Travis had studied all too well. It was all intended to frighten and intimidate people into complying and to keep them from trying to escape. Her jaw clenched as she made her way across the tarmac toward the waiting van. Knowing with every step that no matter what they did to cow her, it wouldn’t work. No matter what, she would never give up hope.
She was shoved into the back of the van. It was partitioned just like the helicopter, with a wall of what looked like bulletproof glass separating the front seats from the back and a screen mounted behind the driver. She fell onto one of the two bench seats that ran across the van lengthwise and sat awkwardly without a seat belt. Two masked men climbed into the back with her, then two others got into the front and they drove off.
Her captors were talking both to each other and on their phones in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, their words clipped and static. She leaned her head against the wall of the vehicle and closed her eyes, pretending not to listen in or to understand the snatches of words and conversation as they moved around her.
“...GPS coordinates...”
“...he’s a high-risk individual...”
“...Chimera will want visual confirmation...”
The texture of the ground changed beneath the tires of the vehicle as the van slowed. She could hear the faint sound of rushing water fill her ears as the back door of the van sprang open.
She opened her eyes and then she saw him.
Travis.
Her former partner was standing alone, without any obvious backup, vehicle or weapon, on a long bridge that arched high over what sounded like a river.
Improbably, and despite all obstacles, her brave, stubborn, impossible and incredible man had found her. One of the masked men bounded out of the back and shouted at Travis to raise his hands and approach the van.
Travis turned, stretched his strong arms up to the sky, and walked slowly toward them. His chin was raised and his eyes were strong. When he got about twelve feet away, a second masked man jumped out from the passenger-side door and told Travis to drop to his knees and place his hands on his head. He did so.
One man kept a gun trained on Travis, while the other patted him down, confiscated his cell phone and smashed it on the ground under his feet. Then he slowly waved a metal detector over Travis for good measure, making sure he had no weapons of any kind. And all the while, Travis’s gaze never left Jess’s face. He was ordered back to his feet, his hands were zip-tied in front of him and then he was shoved toward the door and onto the bench seat across from Jess. Travis’s eyes met hers, and although neither of them spoke, she could feel the weight of unspoken words move through the silence between them.
One masked man shut the door and then went around and got in the front of the van. The other touched the screen mounted behind the driver’s seat. It flickered to life and the featureless silhouette of a man’s face appeared, an indistinct part of a city skyline behind him.
Even before she heard his distorted voice, she knew it was the Chimera.
“Yeah,” the Chimera said. “That’s the guy. How you were stupid enough to have him in your grasp earlier and let him get away will be dealt with later. In the meantime, bring them both to me.”
“Wait!” Travis’s voice rose high and like a shout. “Mr. Chimera, sir! You promised me you’d let her go, if I turned myself in. That was the deal!”
The Chimera didn’t respond. He just laughed. It was a low, guttural, dismissive sound. Then he ended the video call.
The vehicle started to rumble across the bridge. Travis leaped to his feet, in a single swift motion, before their captors could even respond. His hands clenched and arms flexed as he raised them above his head and brought them down so sharply the zip ties snapped.
The mercenaries’ weapons swung toward him.
“Jess!” he shouted. “Close your eyes! Now!”