Cold Case Secrets. Maggie K. Black

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      The helicopter’s spotlight flashed above them, dragging her attention to the sky. A figure, tall and broad-shouldered, now dangled from underneath it, suspended from a rope like something out of an action movie. She blinked. Cutter looked up and swore.

      It was an unexpected distraction, but she’d take it. Her right hand dove into her jacket pocket, yanked out the stun gun, flicked it on and pressed it hard into his side. Cutter bellowed in pain. The gun fell from his hand. She kicked up, threw him off her and scooped up the gun. Then she stumbled to her feet and ran, pushing and pelting through the branches until she’d lost him in the trees.

      The helicopter light swung above her again like a searchlight, filtering through the leaves and illuminating the rock face ahead of her, and that’s when she saw the gap. It was narrow, like a slanted alley only about three feet wide. She ran for the gap in the rocks, slid her body inside and pressed herself against the wall. She heard the sound of branches breaking and a voice swearing as Cutter ran by her hiding spot. It was only then she realized her hands were shaking. Hot tears filled her eyes.

       God, if You’re even still listening to me, thank you so much that I’m still alive! Now, what do I do?

      She couldn’t remember the last time she’d prayed. But somehow the fear pounding through her had poured out into the need to cry out to the God she’d long stopped talking to for help. She put her stun gun back into her jacket pocket, but kept the gun she’d taken off Cutter clutched tightly in her hand. Could she really shoot and kill a man if it came to it? If his face appeared at the entrance of her hiding place, did she really have what it took to look him in the eyes and pull the trigger?

      How much was she really her biological father’s daughter?

      No, no, she wouldn’t let herself think that way. Her father had killed for his own selfish ends, not in self-defense. She was nothing like him. She never had been and never would be.

      Her head leaned back against the rock and her eyes closed as she listened to the sounds of the helicopter in the distance, wind brushing the trees, light rain hitting the rocks around her and a river rushing somewhere nearby. Maybe if she could get up to higher ground, she could find a way to signal the helicopter. Maybe she could even spot the cabin, run there and retrieve whatever Turner had left for her. But for now, she was on her own, with a phone that hadn’t been able to get a signal in hours and a killer looking for her.

      “Grace Miranda Finch!”

      Her heart froze mid-beat as suddenly Cutter bellowed her name.

      “Senior crime reporter!” His voice grew louder. Twigs snapped and branches cracked. It sounded like he was coming back through the woods, looking for her. “Torchlight News, Queen Street, Toronto. Born April third. Age thirty-six.”

      No! She grabbed her side as if suddenly realizing she was missing an organ. He had her wallet! She hadn’t even realized it had fallen from her pocket.

      But now he had her life, her address, her identity, he had—

      “Hal Turner,” Cutter read like a man announcing a public execution, “was convicted today to two consecutive life sentences...”

      He had the news clipping she’d cut from the paper at the age of fifteen about her father’s conviction and had kept folded small in her wallet ever since as a reminder to never stop working harder, aiming higher and pushing herself to be the best possible person she could be.

      “...along with two counts of first-degree murder, drug trafficking, bribery, corruption, breach of public trust...”

      Grace tuned Cutter out. She’d obsessively read every article about Turner when he’d first been arrested, hoping with all her heart that no one would ever uncover that the dirty cop had secretly fathered a daughter he barely saw and hardly knew with a twenty-two-year-old emergency room nurse he’d met at a crime scene and never deigned to give either his heart or home to. Turner had bailed long before Grace was born. She’d always had her mother’s last name, not his, and while he’d sporadically wanted to see her growing up, had insisted his name not be listed on her birth certificate. She’d never looked like him, not in ways that anybody had noticed, with the slender build and long black hair of her beautiful Afro-Caribbean Canadian mother instead of looking anything like her overweight German Canadian father, whose pale skin was frequently flushed red with anger. No one had ever seemed to suspect she was mixed race, especially after her mom and Frank, a fellow nurse and widower, had drawn close during the pregnancy and married when Grace was two. Gossipmongers speculated that Grace must have always been Frank’s, but her mom had consistently risen above others’ idle gossip.

      But Grace had obsessively followed every moment of the trial. She watched television for hours, flipping through news channels to find his face and then hid in the computer lab when she got into journalism school, scanning the wires for his name. What had she even been looking for? Clues to what would lead a man who’d sworn an oath to protect his community to instead cut deals with drug dealers? Whether there was any credence to the story his lawyer had spun—that his partner had been the real criminal, the deaths had really been a murder suicide and that her father had set the fire in a noble attempt to protect his former partner’s name?

      She’d been fourteen when he was arrested. She’d been there, in a restaurant-chain coffee shop, wondering why the father she’d barely seen had wanted to see her. His face had been white with fear and his hands had shaken so hard he could barely pick up his coffee cup. Then suddenly six police cars had pulled up outside. He’d leaped to his feet, told her to point the cops in the wrong direction, make up some story about where he’d gone and then quickly get to his apartment, destroy his computer and burn his files. Then he ran, leaving her to watch through the window with a gawking crowd of spectators and journalists as people in uniform chased him down the block. She hadn’t talked to the cops or gone to his apartment. Instead, she’d slipped out the back and gone home, the hair prickling at the back of her neck with every step, half expecting a journalist to stop her and ask her what she had been doing with him and who she was. But no one ever had. Seemed that for whatever reason, Turner had actually kept her existence a secret. The next time she saw her father’s face was his mug shot on the news.

      She hadn’t heard from Turner again until she was twenty-eight, when her name was syndicated in newspapers across the country and he needed money.

      “Listen to me, Grace Finch, wherever you’re hiding!” Cutter shouted, “You looking for Hal Turner? ’Cause I know him. He and I broke out together, and he’s real close by. He told me that he was coming here, looking for someone. I can take you right to him. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

      Her heart stopped. Her father had broken out of prison? Her father was here?

      The noise above her was so faint she hadn’t even realized someone else was there until the uniformed police officer dropped down into the crevice beside her. Her breath caught in her throat. Her lips parted. But before she could let out a sound, one strong hand clamped over her lips while the other grabbed her hand, closing over the gun and peeling her fingers away from the trigger. The officer pulled her to him so that her back was against his chest.

      “It’s okay, I’ve got you.” The voice in her ear was strong, warm and compelling, with just a hint of danger, filling her with a sense of reassurance that was as unexpected as it was unfamiliar. “I’m Detective Jacob Henry of the RCMP. I’m here to rescue you, and I’ll keep you safe. Do exactly what I say, and I’ll get you out of here alive.”

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