eyes rolled. She was just fine assessing the situation on her own, thank you very much, and then she could help him locate her and brief him better on his arrival. If only her head would stop pounding.
“Don’t worry,” Noah added. His voice softened. “It’s all going to be okay. What happened?”
She opened her mouth to tell him, then closed it again. It had all happened just seconds before and yet somehow her mind was fuzzy.
“Gunshots came from our left,” she said. “I didn’t see the shooter.”
“And then?” he asked.
“Then the vehicle lost control. I had to grab the wheel and force it to stop. We crashed.”
And she’d hit her head. Motion dragged her attention back to the window. She looked up. A white cop car was pulling into the alley in front of her. A slim, uniformed officer sat behind the wheel. In recent years, Toronto police had slowly started swapping out their signature white cars for nondescript gray cruisers that blended perfectly into the dreary city streets in winter. But this one was an older model, its white hood reflecting the dim street light against the predawn sky. She glanced to the mirror. A second police vehicle was pulling up behind. It, too, contained just one officer—a large figure in a peaked uniform cap. “The cops are here. I’m going to go talk to them.”
She grabbed the handle and pushed the door open.
“Wait! No! Stay in the car!” Noah’s voice rose. “They might not be cops!”
What? What did he mean by that?
“What do they look like?”
“The cops?” she asked. “One’s big. One’s skinny. I can’t really see their faces or give you much of a description from this distance.”
Tires screeched. The vehicles ahead and behind her surged forward, as if both drivers were mashing their accelerators at once. They were coming up fast on either side, trapping her in the middle. She leaped from Crane’s ruined car and started to run, feeling another wave of nausea sweep over her. Help me, Lord! The cruisers roared closer. She rolled, tucking her body tight and desperately hurling herself out of the way. The phone fell from her hand. She heard the screech of metal smashing hard against metal. Slush and dirt flew, spraying over her.
She lay still for a moment, shivering on the cold ground, urging her body to rise. Then she heard footsteps running toward her.
“I’ll grab the phone and laptop, you grab the girl.” The voice was thin, high-pitched, and made her think of a weasel. Then large, rough hands grabbed Holly. “We can use her.”
RCMP Detective Noah Wilder scanned the cold, dark Toronto streets for any sign of Elias’s car. The officer’s phone was dead, Corporal Asher was gone and he’d lost sight of the vehicle when the overpass had turned slightly to the north. But he’d heard the sound of gunshots, and a car crash had split the morning air.
He never should’ve done what Crane wanted and backed off. Yes, the old officer had served for so long he’d twice declined retirement and now chose his own assignments. But he was also too set in his ways and didn’t understand the nature of dark web threats. Not that Noah was exactly an expert, but he had an excellent source. One that had told him there’d been chatter in the seedier corners of the internet that a pair of cyber terrorists, called the Imposters, was going to hijack Corporal Asher’s witness protection transfer.
But why? And what for? What would a pair of notorious dark web hackers and thieves want with a military corporal? He still had no idea. He just wished he was wrong.
Noah opened his window. Cold wind and the smell of burning fuel assailed him at once. For a moment the sound of the crash still seemed to bounce and echo off deserted buildings in the frosty morning air. Then they faded, and silence descended again. He pulled up one street and down another. Three cars came into view, mashed and tangled together. There were two white cop cars, with Crane’s vehicle in the middle.
Noah stopped the engine, pulled his weapon from its holster, thankful he’d maintained his authorization to carry a handgun. Then he leaped out and ran toward the wreck. Thick snow swirled down from the sky above him. The passenger door and trunk of Elias’s vehicle were open. The elderly officer lay against the steering wheel, and even at a glance Noah could tell he hadn’t made it. Corporal Asher was nowhere to be seen. Sets of footprints spread across the ground were quickly disappearing in the blanketing snow.
God, please help me find her.
He grabbed his phone and hit a number. Seth Miles answered before it had even rung once. “Hey, Noah? I’m getting intel that the Imposters might be posing as cops.”
Seth was what was known in the tech industry as a “white hat” computer hacker because he only used his considerable powers for good. He was notorious for taking down and exposing abuse and corruption in places of power, starting with his own violent military general father. For years Seth had tried to be more of a heroic outlaw, hacking at will, infiltrating various criminal organizations and tipping off law enforcement, while skirting laws that got in his way. Then some violent criminals, linked to organized crime, had kidnapped him, hoping to use him for their own purposes, and Noah had saved his life.
“Too late,” Noah said. “Looks like they already found Officer Crane and Corporal Asher. Are you tapped into whatever area surveillance you can get of the Port Lands around the water filtration plants—”
“That would mean bending the terms of my witness protection agreement—” Seth started.
“Understood,” Noah cut him off. He’d been responsible for Seth’s protection for eighteen months and knew all too well the terms he’d agreed to, as well as his habit of skirting them. Noah didn’t much like it, but that was a battle he’d have to save for another day. “But you already opened this can of worms when you tipped me off and I’m asking not instructing. Right now you’re an informant in a possible murder and possible kidnapping. I’m looking at a car crash, a missing whistle-blower and a dead RCMP officer. I think the Imposters took Hildegard.”
“Sorry, on it.” Seth took a sharp breath. Then came the sounds of typing. “I think her friends call her Holly, by the way. I’m guessing it’s because she was born on Christmas.”
Holly.
Noah’s mind flashed to the image of the strong, slender and attractive woman with dark hair and piercing green eyes he’d seen in her file. Yes, that name suited her better.
“Rumor is she hates being called Hildegard,” Seth added.
“You know her personally?” Noah asked.
“I know of her,” he said. “We both grew up military, went to the same high school for a year and even as a teenager she had a reputation for being exceptionally talented at both precision shooting and hand-to-hand combat.”
“What can you tell me about the Imposters?” Noah asked.
“They’re cyber terrorists,” Seth said. “In it for the money and not ideology. It’s believed there are only two of them. The huge hulking one who manhandles and hurts people goes by the handle the Ghoul. The other
