He turned his focus to Jace. “What would you have done? If you knew they would make good on their word, that they knew where you lived and could send people in to murder your family, what would you do? Once the shock wore off, I mean? Would you have it in you to take that sort of chance? Would you risk the lives of the people you loved? Or would you demand they provide regular proof of your child being alive and well? Would you demand they take care of her? Would you promise anything, anything in the world, so long as they let her live? So long as they let your entire family live?”
Jace had nothing to say to this. He turned away, both disgusted and furious with himself for relating to this man. What would he have done had he been in that situation? What if he didn’t know who he could trust?
“Senator Collins, it seems this group has spent the last two decades indoctrinating your daughter. Whether she was the one who killed Sal or if she was only there at the time, we don’t know, but the presence of her hair points to her presence here, on the property. There’s a good chance she’s been trained all these years to resent you, your family.”
“The ultimate way of getting back at me for turning my back on them,” William whispered. “My God. What can I do? What are we going to do?”
“We are not going to do anything,” Logan informed him. “You are going to lay low, pretend you don’t know about this. Never leave the presence of your guards, for any reason. She could be out there somewhere, and she would be looking for you.”
“For me?”
“All of you. Any of you. Your wife is under police protection right now. We’ve explained why, that there’s a stalker hunting your family. We didn’t go into detail, mind you, but they know this is serious.”
“And Kara?”
“She’s safe on the beach with your men. There’s nothing to worry about.” Logan glanced at Zane, who left the room presumably to go to the control center, where he could check on the video feed.
“I never could’ve imagined. Not ever. My poor baby. My poor Krista.” William covered his face with his hands, shaking. “My God, she’ll never forgive me.”
“And you convinced Kara she was wrong all those years,” Jace spat, turning back to him. “How could you do that to her? Sending her to the doctors, trying to convince her she was crazy.”
“Again, I ask you what you would’ve done. If it got out that she believed Krista was alive, if anyone from that group heard there were suspicions or rumors, what would’ve happened? Do you think I should’ve taken that chance? That I should’ve lost both of them?”
The two of them stared at each other for a long, silent beat before Jace turned away in disgust again. His wolf wanted nothing more than to tear the man into pieces and was only waiting for permission to do so.
Never in the years since he’d become a shifter had Jace so desperately wanted to give in to that instinct.
Zane’s scream cut through the air like a knife. “The feed is down! The feed is down!”
Jace took off running, pushing his way past Logan and outpacing Zane as they ran for the beach. He should’ve known. He should’ve brought her with him. He should never have left her alone. He ran with her name on the tip of his tongue, repeated with every beat of his heart. Kara. Kara. His Kara, always his.
What they found when they reached the dunes brought him skidding to a halt.
Peter. Greg. Both of them on their backs, eyes open, throats slit from ear to ear.
A blanket, food.
And no Kara.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Wake up.”
Kara winced, blinking against the sudden burst of sunlight when the canvas bag that had been covering her head was ripped away. She was on her side, lying on the deck of a small boat, her hands and feet bound.
When she was finally able to bring the world back into focus, she found a familiar face staring at her.
So familiar, she scrambled to a sitting position, gaping in shock. It was like looking in a mirror. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, staring at her own face.
There were slight differences. The face of the girl staring back was paler than hers. There was a hardness, too. This wasn’t a person who smiled very much. There was no light in those green eyes.
“Krista?” she whispered. “Is it you?”
“It’s me,” Krista confirmed in a flat voice. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
Tears spilled over onto Kara’s cheeks. “I knew it. I knew it! I knew you were alive. I felt you. I felt you all along. And I told them. I told them you were still alive, but nobody believed me. Oh, Krista…” She tried to lift her arms, to put them around her sister, but it was awkward with duct tape wrapped around her wrists.
She finally understood that they were alone on the boat. There wasn’t a sound other than their breathing. The engine wasn’t even on anymore.
Which meant… “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, dumbfounded. “Krista, it’s me. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Don’t even pretend you missed me,” Krista spat in response.
Kara’s head snapped back like she’d been hit. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. “But I have. How would you even know? Krista, they sent me to doctors when I wouldn’t stop talking about you still being alive. I was obsessed with the idea of finding you for so long. Were you in my room that night?”
Krista frowned for a second, her forehead wrinkling. “Yeah. I was there. They took me to see you when I wouldn’t stop talking about you.”
“Who did? I don’t understand any of this. Where have you been? Where did you live? Why didn’t you come home?”
“Because I was home,” Krista snickered. “My real home. The home I’ve lived in for twenty years, sis. Not as nice as the one you grew up in, but it gave me what I needed. But yeah, back in the day, I missed you. I thought something bad happened to you. They sneaked me into the house one night and let me see you, but then you woke up. I didn’t understand at the time, but they must’ve chloroformed you or something. You fell back to sleep right away. There I was, five years old, thinking they killed my sister.”
Kara cried harder than before, imagining this. Her poor sister, suffering. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Somebody took you? You were kidnapped? I still don’t understand.”
“Just stop.” She was so harsh, so cold. “What happened to me saved my life. I would’ve turned out just like you—spoiled, self-centered, convinced the world spun around me. Disgusting. Selfish.”
None of this made sense. She didn’t remember being hit over the head, but everything coming out of her sister’s mouth was as jumbled up as it would’ve seemed if she had a head injury. It was like they were having two different conversations.
Think, think. She had to push emotion aside for the time being, no matter how incredible it was to have her sister in front of her again.
She couldn’t think of her as her twin, though. This was someone who’d kidnapped her. She had probably killed the guards on the beach, too. Kara hadn’t seen that—the bag was already over her head—but she heard it. She’d heard their bodies fall onto the sand, heard them gurgling.
And Krista had done that. Her own sister had done that.
She didn’t know this person, hadn’t known her for a long time. She needed to keep that in mind.
“They took you, didn’t they? That foundation Dad got involved with. They were the ones who caused the car accident, weren’t they? Do you remember anything about that? Did they take you there or at the hospital or what?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Krista stood suddenly, fists clenched at eye level with where Kara sat.
“Okay. We don’t have to talk about that, but are they the ones who taught you that you shouldn’t be like me? That there’s something wrong with the way I grew up versus the way you grew up?”
“What, you think it’s so hard to believe? You think the way they brought you up is the only way a person is supposed to live? Of course you do,” Krista snickered. “Y
ou disgust me. All your money and what do you do with it? You throw it away. You could give to the poor, the homeless, people who are currently working two or three jobs at a time just so they can barely get by. Families whose healthcare bills have left them bankrupt. Veterans living on the streets because their own country turned their back on them after they fought so bravely.”
“You mean like Sally?” Kara forced herself to look up into her sister’s face, daring her to look away. “He fought. He got a Bronze Star, didn’t he? He was proud of it. He deserved to be proud, but you killed him, didn’t you?”
“It was a message!” Krista spat.
“A message? What was a dead Sal supposed to tell us? That we were vulnerable? Congratulations, your message was received loud and clear. He didn’t deserve to die. You must know he loved you. He still blamed himself, you know.”
“Shut up.”
“He thought he should’ve been with you that night. He should’ve been with you and Daddy. He thought that if he’d been there, he could’ve prevented this—if he could have, I don’t know. He would’ve been so happy to know you lived.”
“He was, for a second.”
It was Kara who had to look away first, squeezing her eyes shut, her stomach churning. So he’d known in those last moments. He knew Krista lived. And then she killed him. Poor Sal. Poor, devoted Sal.
“What did they do to you?” she gasped over her hitching sobs. “What did they turn you into?”
“They turned me into the sort of person who can slit a man’s throat without breaking a sweat,” Krista reported, and she actually sounded proud of herself. “I do what I have to do. Our father made a promise to these people, the people who raised me, who taught me everything I know, and he welched on that promise. Typical politician, right? He lied to them, just like he’s been lying to you your whole life. The way he lied to Mom.”
She crouched again, taking Kara’s face in her hands, holding it just in front of her own. “He left me with them! He didn’t come get me! He let them keep me! He didn’t even tell the police. He didn’t tell anybody because he didn’t care! He left me. He let you think I was dead! He told the whole world I was dead! He used my supposed death as a way to get sympathy in his next election! Do you understand what that means?”
There was so much pain, so much agony in her voice. “All those years asking myself what I did wrong, why he didn’t love me enough to come for me when he knew I was alive. It took years for me to understand that he was the one in the wrong, not me. He is evil. He is selfish. He’s done everything in his power to turn you into that same sort of person. He’s twisted you. He doesn’t love you any more than he ever loved me.”
They were both in tears now. Kara wondered how long her sister had been holding this inside, and her heart broke. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I would never have let this happen if there was anything I could’ve done, please believe me. I wanted so much to get you back. So, so much. You’re the missing part of me. I love you.”
“We have to make him pay.” Krista’s hands were still on either side of her face, and they were shaking. “Do you understand? He has to pay for what he did.”
Kara forced herself to nod, staring into eyes that were so much like her own. “I agree. He kept us apart. He lied for so long, all because he wanted to keep his job. Did you know Mom threw him out last night? She hates him, too. Maybe we can all be happy together.”
Sorrow touched her sister’s eyes before she shook her head. “No. Not with her. And not with you, if you want to keep living the way you live now.”
“What do I have to do?” Kara whispered, her mind spinning. Would she ever be able to get through to Krista, or would she end up dying on this little boat or tossed overboard without the ability to swim?
“You have to give up everything. Renounce your name. Give up your trust fund.”
“I’ll give it away. I’ll give it all away! Whoever you think deserves it the most. Whatever you want, Krista. I just want us to be together again, the way it was always supposed to be.”
“I don’t know if they’ll want to accept you,” Krista whispered. “I mean, this was all their idea.”
“The people who raised you?” Kara ventured.
“Yeah. That’s not how this was supposed to go. I was supposed to—” She let go of Kara’s face, tucking hair behind her ears with a gentle touch. “I don’t think they’ll like that idea.”
“But Krista, listen to me. You’re an adult now. You don’t have to do what anybody else tells you to do. Whatever you want, you can have. We can go home together, or we can live someplace else! Anywhere in the world, I can get us there, and then I can give everything else away once we’re settled. We don’t need anybody else. Just us. We have so much lost time to make up for, don’t we? I want to know everything there is to know about you. I just want you back in my life. I’ll do anything.”
Krista pressed her lips together hard enough that they almost disappeared. God, what had they put her through? She could barely make a decision for herself now, completely brainwashed. They had trained her to kill, those bastards. This was all a way to get back their father, twisting her into something barely recognizable, making her believe all these terrible things, that their father hadn’t wanted her, that Kara was wrong, evil for having her trust fund. They’d turned her into an extremist just like they were.
But they didn’t know what it meant to have a twin either. It was the only advantage she had in this situation, and she counted on it then.
“Krista, I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. No matter how many doctors they sent me to, no matter how many people told me I was crazy, I never gave up hope. I tried to get the police records, the medical records, anything I could get my hands on to prove that you didn’t die that night. I felt you, always. I just want us to be together now. Do you think you might want the same thing?”
There was a war going on inside her. Kara watched it play over her face. Hope and rage and loneliness and fear and love fought for control. Her eyes hardened, then softened and filled with tears.
“Do you remember what kind of ice cream I asked for?” she whispered with a smile.
A smile Krista shared. “Rocky Road,” she whispered back, but an instant later, her smile vanished. “That was then. That was another life.”
“It doesn’t have to be!” Kara pleaded with her as she stood.
“No. It does have to be that way. That’s just how it is. I have a job to do.”
Jace. He would blame himself forever. So would her mom and her father.
She was just about to beg for her life when the roaring of boat engines made her head snap around, her eyes searching the horizon.
“What the hell?” Krista demanded. “You led them to me?”
“How could I?” Kara asked, but it fell on deaf ears as her sister dragged her to her feet, holding her up as a shield. A bloodstained hunting knife found its way to her throat, where Krista held the blade poised there.
And that was how they waited for the boats to arrive.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“There!” Jace touched his earpiece. “We got ‘em, Val.”
“Yours are the only boats in the area,” Val reported, watching the satellite feed. “It looks like they’re alone. Only two bodies on the boat, probably the girls. She must’ve done this alone.”
“Please, don’t hurt either of them,” William begged.
“We’re going to do what we have to do,” Logan informed him as he steered the speedboat toward its destination. “Our objective is to save Kara. We’ll try to save both, of course.”
William let out a gut-wrenching cry, and Jace turned to him. “Remember. Whatever Krista is now, they turned her into this. If she’s dangerous, if she’s the one who murdered Sal and Peter and Greg, she’s a criminal now. We have to treat her that way. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is. Kara has to be our priority.”
“My baby,” William whispered. “My babies.” J
ace had to turn away, too conflicted to offer a reply.
The sun glinted off a piece of metal, and Jace understood instantly what it was. “She’s got a knife to her throat,” he barked into his microphone, ignoring William’s whimpers and wishing they had left him behind, but he’d insisted if they were going to use his name to rent the boats, they had to bring him along.
It occurred to him now that Krista might take her rage out upon her father, and he found himself hoping that was the way it went. Kara had nothing to do with this. She was innocent.
Though if Krista had spent her entire life being brainwashed, she was also innocent.
Logan slowed the boat’s progress, as did Sledge in the second boat which held the rest of the team. They approached with caution, flanking the small boat which held the two girls.
It was uncanny. They were almost completely identical except Kara’s eyes held fear, while Krista’s held nothing but satisfaction. Hard, cold satisfaction.
“Hi, Dad,” she called out upon spotting William. “Long time, no see.”
“Krista!” He reached out for her, though they were nowhere near each other. “Please, honey.”
“No, you don’t get to call me that. You forfeited that chance a long time ago. You gave me up to them. Look what they’ve turned me into! Look at everything I missed! Everything you gave her!” She gave Kara a shake, pressing the knife a little too hard against her throat. A thin trickle of blood rolled over her skin, leaving Jace panting and grunting and practically bursting out of his clothes so the wolf could take over. His own claws bit into his palms, signaling how close he was coming to losing all control.
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 24