Runaway Witness

ONE

Iris James’s hands shook as she piled dirty dishes high on her tray. Something about the look of the bearded man in the corner booth was unsettlingly familiar. He’d been nursing his coffee way longer than anyone had any business loitering around a highway diner in the middle of nowhere, in the northern regions of Ontario, even if there was a snowstorm brewing outside. But it wasn’t until she noticed the telltale lump of a gun hidden underneath his red plaid jacket that she realized he might be there to kill her.

She shifted the tray of dirty dishes into the crook of her arm and slid her hand deep into the pocket of her waitress’s uniform, feeling for the small handgun tucked behind her order pad.

Then she glanced around the crowded diner and prayed.

If today’s the day Oscar Underwood’s hit men finally catch me, please get someone to find and rescue every last person he kidnapped. And don’t let anyone in this diner right now get hurt in the crossfire.

It was six thirty at night, the late-February sun would be setting soon and the dinner rush was in full swing. Iris stepped behind an empty table and watched the man out of the corner of her eye as she quickly added more dishes to her growing pile.

Growing up poor in a small Canadian town, she’d first gotten a gun to protect herself against wild animals, never imagining she’d ever need it for protection against kidnappers or killers. But then she’d become a social worker, opened a homeless drop-in center in Toronto and started hearing rumors that Underwood’s men had been kidnapping strong and healthy street youth and homeless people in their late teens and early twenties to work on his remote farms and ranches.

The homeless said Underwood used a team of masked Jackals to subdue and tranquilize their victims. Police had called it a ridiculous urban legend. Iris had done everything she could to get the authorities to take action, including camping outside the Toronto mayor’s office.

But no one listened. Not until the kindest, sweetest and most understanding man she’d ever known—a homeless center volunteer named Mack Gray—had been murdered.

She’d agreed to testify at Underwood’s trial and go into witness protection until then. But criminal hackers had stolen her witness protection file and sold it to Underwood. She’d dropped out of witness protection’s care, disappeared from the new life they’d given her and had been on the run from the Jackals ever since, dyeing her blond hair various shades of brown, living out of a camper trailer and never stopping anywhere for more than a few days at a time.

Iris dropped her tray of dirty dishes on the counter and grabbed a steaming pot of coffee, pulling it off the percolator so quickly it splashed and sizzled on the heating element. She wove through the tables, praying for wisdom, topping up mugs and watching him out of the corner of her eye. The man was taller than his slouch implied, with a thick black beard and a Montreal Canadiens baseball cap shoved down so low she could barely see his face. But even as he seemed to avert his gaze when she glanced his direction, she couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been watching her.

And that she’d definitely seen him somewhere before. Something about the line of his jaw unsettled her in a way she couldn’t begin to understand.

A shiver ran down her spine and she gripped the coffeepot tighter to keep it from shaking. As if sensing her eyes on him, the bearded man glanced up, and for a fraction of a second she caught sight of a pair of piercing blue eyes before his gaze dropped back to his coffee.

Mack?

Hot tears filled her vision and her hands began to shake so hard that the coffee sloshed in the pot she carried. No! It can’t be! Come on, Iris, get a grip on yourself.

Mack’s body had been found floating in Lake Ontario eight weeks ago with two bullets in his back. This man was at least ten pounds lighter than Mack, with a nose that was much wider and a chin a lot squarer than Mack’s had been.

Hey, waitress! A large trucker from the group at the table by the window snatched hold of her wrist as she passed and jerked her back a step. Don’t be so stingy. Leave the pot.

She yanked her hand away, scalding coffee sloshing over her arm as she did so. A chorus of crude laughter rose from the table of truckers in front of her.

Pay your bill and get out! The diner’s gray-haired owner, Colleen, clapped sharply at the men as if they were wayward chickens and stormed across the room. Nobody touches my staff. And leave a decent tip behind you!

The diminutive woman stood by the table with her arms crossed as the men each dropped a twenty on the table, grabbed the remains of their sandwiches and skedaddled into the snow without waiting for change.

Colleen glanced at Iris. Soft lines crinkled her face. You all right?

Iris nodded. When she’d packed everything she owned into the tiny camper, emptying her bank account and going on the run, she’d managed to take with her a large laminated map of the country, on which she’d marked all the locations that street youth had told her they’d been able to go off the grid for help, food, safety and work. What had once been a passion project to help her better understand the lives of those who came through the center’s doors had now become a roadmap to her own survival.

She’d visited close to a hundred so far as she’d crisscrossed the country. They hadn’t all panned out. A few she’d suspected had been fronts for criminal activity and for some others she’d barely arrived before the still-small voice inside her told her it was time to leave. But most had been filled with kind and compassionate strangers, like Colleen, and guilt welled up inside Iris, knowing she was about to disappear on her before her shift was done. She glanced back at the bearded man in the booth.

He was gone.

Iris’s heartbeat quickened as her eyes darted around the room. He was nowhere to be seen. At least while she could watch him, she’d felt like she had some control over the situation. Now he was out there, somewhere, like an animal waiting to strike.

You’ll be surprised to see just how many people who come in here would rather drop a twenty than bother to do math, Colleen said, dragging Iris’s attention back to the table. In their hurry to leave, the men had left a hundred dollars on a forty-one-dollar bill. Colleen swept up the pile of twenties and handed them to Iris. Cash out the bill and consider whatever’s leftover your tip. I’m just sorry you had to put up with that.

Thank you. Iris swallowed hard, scooped the dirty dishes onto a tray and picked it up. If she’d been able to wait out just three more days, she would have gotten over six hundred dollars in her first paycheck. But every inch of nerves running down her spine told her not to wait another minute. I really hate asking this, but I wondered if I could get a small cash advance on my pay for food and gas?

She held her breath, but Colleen didn’t even blink. There are two one-hundred-dollar bills underneath the tray in the cash register. Take them and make a note in the ledger. You all right?

I will be, Iris said. Thank you.

Iris turned quickly and hurried to the counter before Colleen could see the guilt and fear filling her eyes. She dropped off the dishes, cashed out the bill, took the two hundreds and her tip and headed through the kitchen, grabbing her jacket off a hook. She pushed through the back door and scanned her surroundings. Not a person in sight. Winter air stung her skin. Snow swirled down around her and the gray February sky spread above her, hemmed in by dark green conifers.

She zipped herself into her jacket and pulled the hood down tight as she ran for the tree line and then through the snow-covered woods until she reached the abandoned gas station where she’d parked her big black truck. She’d paid cash for the small secondhand camper trailer attached to the hitch and that had been her home for the past few weeks.

Almost there. All she had to do was make it across the parking lot, get to her camper, leap inside and hit the road.

The bearded man stepped out from behind the gas station.

She stopped short, yanked the small handgun from her pocket and pointed it at him with both hands. Whoever you are, get down! Now!

Don’t shoot! His hands rose. It’s me! Mack!

Her heart froze. The shape of his face was slightly wrong, and seeing him here and now defied all logic. Yet somehow she knew that voice with every beat of her heart.

The gun shook in her hands. I told you to get down!

Iris! I’m an undercover cop!

Detective Mack Gray’s heart pounded so hard as he stared into Iris’s hazel eyes that the bullet wounds left by a Jackal ached in his chest. How was she even more tenacious and more beautiful than he remembered?

He’d gone undercover with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate claims that Oscar Underwood was kidnapping street people to work at his remote farms and ranches. For some unexplained reason, local Toronto police were turning a blind eye to it. Mack had volunteered at the homeless drop-in center in order to protect Oscar’s latest target—the head social worker. And he’d completely underestimated just what a force of nature she would turn out to be.

Iris James had this huge heart that made street youth open up to her, combined with a sheer tenacity that kept her hounding the mayor’s office and harping at local police no matter how much they dismissed her. When he’d been shot and nearly killed by one of Underwood’s Jackals, Mack had thought he’d never see her again.

Now, despite the handgun clutched in her hands, it took all his self-control not to try to hug her.

I’m part of what I guess you could call an off-the-grid witness protection task force. Helping those whose secret identity files were stolen and sold in the recent data hack at Christmas, Mack said. I’ve been looking for you for weeks. I know I look a bit different, but that’s only because I’m wearing facial prosthetics. The nephew of one of our guys is a whiz when it comes to creating disguises—

Mack Gray is dead. The words left her mouth like the crack of a whip.

He felt his jaw drop. Dead? Whichever cop had come up with that cover for his disappearance had left it out of the files.

I was injured, he said, keeping his hands raised, but I survived.

Mack Gray was shot. Iris punctuated her words by jabbing at the air with the gun like it was a teacher’s chalkboard pointer. Twice. Then tossed into Lake Ontario by one of Underwood’s Jackals.

Well, that part was true at least.

I was hit with a tranquilizer dart first, he admitted, then shot twice with a handgun and then they tried to drown me.

The memory reared up suddenly and painfully inside his mind. It had been just him and Iris alone in the homeless center that night, cleaning up and talking long after it had closed.

She’d been upset about the missing street youth, he’d walked her home to her tiny ground-floor apartment in one of the less desirable parts of the city, and despite the fact he was supposed to keep a professional distance from his targets, he’d found himself wrapping his arms around her. He’d held her tightly and promised her that no matter what it took, Underwood would be stopped and all the people he’d forced into working for him would be found.

She’d gone inside, but he’d stayed there, asking God to help him handle whatever the strange and overwhelming emotions he felt for her were that seemed to be cascading inside him.

That’s when he’d seen the man, clad in dark fatigues, with a horrific snarling face painted on his camo-green ski mask. With a tranquilizer gun in his hand, he’d tried to open Iris’s window.

And Mack had seen red.

Despite not having permission to engage or break cover unless Iris’s life was in imminent danger, Mack had chased him off. He’d pursued the man through Toronto’s back alleys until there’d been a flash, then a bang of a gun, and then all was a blur of pain. He’d woken up in the hospital three days later, with holes in his chest, machines keeping him alive and a buddy breaking the news he was on probation pending internal investigation.

I’m sorry, he said. I didn’t realize you thought I was dead. I should’ve tried to find out what cover story they’d given you. Usually they go with something far less dramatic, like a sick grandmother in Moosonee. He considered telling her about the Jackal outside her window and then decided what mattered most was calming her down. That was one thing he’d always been good at. But yeah, I was shot by a Jackal in an ugly camouflage green animal mask. It was touch and go for a long time and doctors thought I wasn’t going to make it. If it helps, I was actually legally dead for a moment.

He tried to grin as he added the last part in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood.

Are you seriously trying to joke about almost dying? Iris demanded.

Yeah, he admitted. Though judging by the look on your face, that wasn’t the right call. He resisted the urge to point out she’d always seemed to find his lame jokes funny before. I’m sorry, I’m really cold right now and I didn’t exactly plan out what I was going to say when I found you.

Fire flashed in her eyes. And now that you’ve found me, what do you want?

Your forgiveness. The words crossed his mind and surprised him.

I want you to go back into witness protection until Underwood’s trial, he said. I know we let you down last time. But the Jackals won’t stop looking for you until you’re dead and as your friend—

You are not my friend, she cut him off. I don’t even know who you are anymore. Because the Mack Gray I knew would never lie to me! He was the only person on my side fighting to stop Underwood and would never use me or pretend to care about me, as part of some undercover ruse!

He opened his mouth to try to explain himself but the pain in his chest tightened so sharply he could barely breathe.

Iris. He started toward her. Instinctively his arms parted to pull her into his chest. I’m really, really sorry—

Stop. She raised her free hand like a traffic cop. You don’t get to hug me. Not now. Not ever again. I lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. Twice. First when a cop showed up at my door and told me Mack Gray was dead, and again right now when you told me our whole relationship was fake and our friendship didn’t exist to begin with. I want you to go, leave me alone and forget that you ever found me.

A black, windowless van flew around the corner at a speed that shocked him. A huge man in dark fatigues sat in the front seat. The snarling face of some kind of wild animal with large jagged teeth was painted on the front of his camo-green mask. It was a Jackal, with the very same mask as the one who’d shot him outside Iris’s apartment and left him for dead.

Iris! Mack shouted. Run!

The Jackal leaned out the window and fired.

Mack pushed Iris out of the way just as he felt the sharp sting of a tranquilizer dart pierce his neck.

TWO

Iris’s feet pelted across the expansive parking lot and toward the safety of the truck. Behind her she could hear the Jackal’s van coming and Mack shouting at her to run. Panic welled up inside her throat. Somehow, one of Underwood’s Jackals had finally found her and for the first time in her life she saw