by AJ Quinn
Dana tried, without much success, to ignore the sensuality inherent in Kellen’s movements. “That tells me there are people who don’t really know you.”
“The same could be said about you.”
The comment came perilously close to hurting. “Maybe,” she answered honestly, “but unlike agents Grant and Owen, I’m working on rectifying the situation without browbeating or threatening you.”
A ghost of a smile touched Kellen’s lips. “I’m a situation?”
“You know what I mean.” Dana groaned. “Now just listen to me for a moment. Can you do that?”
“Fine. I’m listening.”
“Good. You need to know Annie and I aren’t about to hand you over to the FBI and walk away. You should already know that, but that’s a conversation for a different time. For now, I’m asking you to trust me when I tell you we’ll both be there by your side while the FBI talks to you. And if at any point you’re not comfortable with the direction the conversation is going, Annie’s already told them the whole thing gets shut down.”
“And then what?”
Dana gave her a wry grin. “And then everyone waits for the arrival of the cadre of lawyers Senator Parker has on standby. So come on. Game on, Ryan.”
“I’m counting on lawyers and politicians to save the day?” Kellen laughed in spite of herself. “God help me.”
Chapter Twelve
Cody and Ren were in the hallway outside Annie’s office, faces pale, eyes filled with fear by the time Kellen and Dana got there. She didn’t know how, but Kellen was starting to believe both girls could somehow pick up on her emotional state by sensing disturbances in the universe. Just like Bogart.
There wasn’t a lot she could do at this point, but Kellen touched them both, reassuring them through physical contact that she was fine, and that they would all be fine, even though it was possible nothing could be further from the truth.
She hated it. She’d never lied to the girls before and had no interest in starting now. But she didn’t know how long she’d be tied up in Annie’s office. Not that she could begin to imagine a positive outcome, but she didn’t want them to worry needlessly.
“You won’t disappear, will you?” Ren asked.
Surprisingly, it was Dana who answered. “Kellen’s not going anywhere except back to work after we’re done here. You have my word on it.”
After the girls were gone, Kellen reached out and squeezed Dana’s hand. “Thanks for that.”
Dana smiled briefly, but there was no more time as they entered Annie’s office and closed the door behind them.
Hands loosely held at her back, Kellen chose to stand near the window where she could look out at the mountains that normally soothed and calmed her. She blanked everything out of her mind but the moment. And then she waited for the first volley to be fired.
“Ms. Ryan, I understand this is difficult.”
Turning to face the room, Kellen looked at Calvin Grant. “Special Agent Grant, although I appreciate the sentiment, you have no idea what this is like for me. But if I remember correctly, you previously agreed to call me Kellen.”
“But that’s not your real name, is it?” Owen interrupted. “So why don’t you make this easier for everyone by telling us who you are?”
Kellen leashed her pain behind an inscrutable calm, even as a cold chill descended along her spine. “If this is the tactic you’ve chosen to use with me, I suggest you rethink your approach. Because I can tell you I’ve no interest in playing a role in your good cop-bad cop routine.”
In the ensuing silence, Kellen could hear only the sound of her own shaky breaths.
“You’re right. I told them it wouldn’t work.” Grant shrugged. “But we’re desperate and willing to try anything. We’ve got a hell of a mess on our hands, Kellen. I don’t need to tell you that. People are dying and we need to figure it out and stop this before someone else gets killed.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Something gripped Kellen’s throat, making it hard to swallow. Her heart started to race and she could hear nothing beyond the noise in her head.
Dana caught her shoulders, her strength apparent in her hold. “Kellen.” Her voice was sharp, her hands tight. “Breathe.”
And she did, desperate for air.
“Another,” Dana said more softly.
As the panic in her lungs subsided, she pulled in air. Deeper this time, as the need to be alone slammed through her. Alone. Safe. Anywhere but here.
Somewhere the memories crashing through her mind could be held at bay.
please don’t please don’t please don’t
Somewhere she could get her feet back solidly in the present.
Except in the present, Special Agent Owen was still talking to her. “Why don’t you give us what we want?” he asked. “Tell us who you are.”
Her stomach churned, the pressure in her chest increased, and she was beginning to shiver. Don’t lose it, she told herself. For God’s sake, don’t lose it.
“Who are you protecting?”
“No one.” She all but screamed out the words before her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I ran away when I was twelve and I wasn’t worth looking for. Is that what you want to hear?”
“That just tells me your parents were dumber than I thought.” Everyone turned as Senator Harrison Parker entered the room. “Stand down, Agent Owen.”
He was, at sixty-four, a striking man. Tall and fit, with a full head of silver hair. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him. There were lines on his brow and bracketing his mouth. Lines that hadn’t been as evident before.
But as he pulled Kellen against his broad chest, his hand gentle on her cheek as his eyes gazed down at her with a compassion she didn’t want, the overwhelming need to accept the shelter he offered pounded in her blood.
The senator’s hawk-like gaze swept over the room. “Special Agents Grant, Owen. Step out.”
Kellen let her gaze skim over Owen, whose impassive brown eyes avoided hers as he got to his feet, while his hands balled into fists. Of course, the way things had just gone, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to punch something. Or someone.
She eased from the senator’s hold and moved back to the window and a view that at least offered the illusion of escape while Harrison Parker settled into the wingback chair Calvin Grant had vacated and looked around the room.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said to Annie. “Would someone care to bring me up to speed?”
*
Dana moved closer to the window and kept her eyes on Kellen while Annie brought her father up to date. Annie never once asked the senator why he was here. There was no need. Harrison Parker had built his reputation as a man of action quite honestly. He would not send in his lawyers if he believed his presence could accomplish the same thing—or more.
Kellen remained silent while Annie answered the senator’s questions. But that didn’t worry Dana as much as how she looked. Ice pale. Her stance stiff. Her hands unsteady. Her eyes shadowed and echoing her pain.
“Kellen?”
She didn’t immediately answer when Harrison spoke to her. Ten seconds turned into thirty and then into a minute. Finally, she looked up. “Why are you here?”
“When I first learned what was going on here, about the FBI raising questions regarding your past, I became worried that they would fixate on you to the exclusion of everything else. It seems I was right.” He sighed. “I’m sorry they upset you.”
“You know, don’t you,” she said in a flat voice. “About my past.”
“Forgive me, Kellen, but you were going to be associating closely with my only child, a child I would do anything to protect. A child whose life you saved. And while I felt instinctively I could trust you, I needed to be very sure.”
“How much?”
“How much do I know?” He gave her a gentle smile. “At a guess, most of where it started.”
She drew back to study his expression. “What does that mean
?”
“It means I know what your father did to you when you were a child. And instead of protecting and defending you, as she should have done if she was any kind of a parent, your mother threw you out. Left you to fend for yourself.”
Dana heard Annie’s gasp, but she could only focus on Kellen. She watched her run a hand through her hair and saw the weariness in the gesture.
“For years, my father used me as a life model for his art. Made me pose for him and for his friends. And then, then it wasn’t enough to just look, so he raped me. Is that what you need me to say? Is that what the FBI agents want to hear? That my father had me pose nude for him and his friends, starting when I was seven. And then he raped me and beat me repeatedly.”
“Jesus, Kellen. No,” Dana whispered. “You don’t have to—”
“You’re wrong. The senator already knows what happened. Who I was. But the FBI…that’s what they’re waiting to hear. Maybe you are too.”
Except Dana didn’t want to hear any of it. Didn’t want Kellen to dredge it all up. But it seemed Kellen had slipped into another place and time and had stopped listening.
“I hated it. I hated how his friends—how he looked at me. How he made me pose. I knew it was wrong, but I had no say. And then it all changed, and I couldn’t stop him. It hurt, but no matter how much I begged and pleaded with him, or how much I fought back, he just kept holding me down. Kept raping me. Kept beating me.” She stumbled over the last couple of words and stopped to take a shuddering breath.
“What happened afterward?”
“You mean when my mother finally came home and saw what had happened, what continued to happen? I thought—I thought she was going to help me.”
“But she didn’t?”
“No. I don’t remember how, but somehow she got me into her car. But instead of taking me to a doctor like I thought she was going to, she drove me somewhere in the middle of the night. Somewhere I’d never been. She made me get out of her car, threw three twenties at me, and told me never to come back if I knew what was good for me.”
Nobody said anything when Kellen fell silent, her eyes dark with introspection. Dana grew increasingly concerned, because defeated was the only word that came to the fore of her mind as she took in Kellen’s slumped shoulders, her hunched posture. It was not a word she would have previously associated with the woman she’d been slowly getting to know.
Worse, she had no idea how to resolve the impasse. She could think of nothing to say that could make a difference. No words of consequence or comfort that could ease this much pain.
“My father…” Kellen said into the silence. “The day it happened, my father said it was my fault. That I’d been trying to seduce him for years and now it made sense why he’d always wanted me. He was only human. And I was just a whore for tempting him.”
“Kellen?” Dana had heard enough. She wanted to help. But more than anything, she wanted to stop Kellen from bleeding out in front of them. She took her hand, held it firm.
“It’s all right, Dana. Let me just finish this,” Kellen said. She squared her shoulders against her obvious exhaustion and took a shuddering breath, but Dana noticed she didn’t release her hand. If anything, she held on to it tighter.
“All right, but I don’t understand. Why didn’t your mother help you?”
“I think maybe because she was afraid it would ruin my father…their life…if people found out what he’d done. If she took me to the hospital like she should have, social services would eventually become involved and start an investigation. And then it would all come out. So it was far better for everyone if I simply disappeared.”
“Not for everyone,” Harrison said. “What happened to you after your mother forced you out of her car?”
“A stranger—a woman, she found me wandering alone on the street. I guess I looked pretty bad because she took me to a hospital.”
Letting go of Dana’s hand, she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed. Struggled under a strong compulsion to hold herself together, to not let too much slip beyond her reach. “I remember all the pitying glances from the nurses, the whispered conversations of the doctors. I had to have surgery. The repeated rapes had…there were tears. After I woke up, the doctors wouldn’t tell me much. They said all that mattered was getting my strength back. Getting better. And they asked me who had hurt me. Mostly, they just wanted to know my name and who had done that to me.”
“What name did you give them?”
“I made one up. That was the first time. I gave them the first name that came to me, and just like that, I became someone else. I guess I’ve been doing that ever since.”
“Why did you never go back? Why didn’t you confront your parents or file charges?”
“I’m not sure whether this will make sense to you, but the loss of innocence, it can’t be undone, no matter what you do or how hard you try. So there really was no point in going back.”
Placing a gentle hand under Kellen’s chin, Harrison made her look at him. “I understand. And Kellen? You need to know, I’m so very sorry.”
She nodded. “I can see that. I can also see you knew all along, yet you never said anything. Never told me you knew.”
“I decided I would let you make that choice. I decided if you wanted to talk to me about your past at any time, I would be there to listen.”
“And you never told Annie.”
“No, for the same reason. I know my daughter. And I figured if you ever felt you could trust someone—trust her—enough to share what had happened to you, Annie would be there to listen. She would stand by you and offer whatever you needed. But it wouldn’t change the essence of your friendship.”
Kellen turned to Annie. “And does it? Does it change anything between us?”
“Kellen Ryan, how can you even ask that?” Annie gave Kellen a shaky smile, her eyes swimming with tears. “I know you. I’ve known you since you saved my life ten years ago. You’re my best friend, the sister I’d always hoped for, and I love you. Nothing can change that.”
Looking as if the world had tilted under her and she hadn’t found a way to regain her balance, Kellen merely nodded.
“At the time, was there no one else?” Dana asked. “No one you could turn to for help?”
“I’d been homeschooled, so other than my father’s artist friends, I had virtually no contact with others. The hospital arranged for a social worker to come and see me. But I heard her talking to the doctors about putting me into a foster home while they tried to find out who I was and what had happened to me. I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I told them what happened. Or that somehow they’d believe my father. That it was my fault.”
She shrugged and gave a flicker of a smile. “I guess counting on others was never something that naturally occurred to me. Not at any time but especially not then. So I waited until there was just enough light to see, but dark enough for me to hide in the shadows. I slipped out of the hospital and ran. I don’t think I stopped until I found myself here in Haven.”
“I think I can understand, given what you went through,” Dana said firmly. “But things have changed and you don’t have a lot of choice this time. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to have to trust us to help you. We care about you, Kellen, and we’re not going to let you down.”
*
Kellen thought she had steeled herself, but in the aftermath of the telling, she felt emotionally and physically drained.
She hadn’t planned to delve so deeply into the past. Not here. Not now. Maybe not ever. But she’d been fighting it for so long. Trying to hold it together. Trying to hold it all in rather than letting it bleed out for all to see.
And yet somehow, word by revealing word, a thin shaft of light had shone into the darkness inside her, and a glimmer of peace descended in her mind. Was this what she’d needed all these years? To speak the truth to someone who would believe and understand?
If so, it was a start. A good start. Even though she
knew that beneath the liberating words, the fear still ran deep.
“Why don’t you go back to your cabin and rest for a while?” Annie’s eyes were soft with understanding.
“I can’t.” Her voice broke and for a heartbeat or two, she stared out the window, her jaw working tightly. “Unless I’m mistaken, there are two FBI agents waiting outside this office, and the moment I step outside, they’re going to be all over me. Pushing for me to tell them everything.”
Harrison cleared his throat, not unaffected by the exchange. “Kellen, tell me something. Do you think there’s any real possibility that either of your parents is responsible for these killings?”
“You know who they are, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge the truth of her statement. “Let me ask you the same question. Do you believe either of them is capable of being behind all these deaths? For the sake of killing a daughter they haven’t seen and likely haven’t thought about in nearly twenty years?”
“Nothing in life is ever guaranteed,” Harrison said, turning his head to look straight at Kellen. “Personally, I believe your parents are much too selfish and self-absorbed to do anything that might in any way interfere with their lifestyle. Of course, knowing who your father is, I would have never thought him capable of doing what he did to you. Or your mother, for that matter.”
“That’s kind of what I thought.”
“So my answer is that I wouldn’t eliminate either of them from a list of suspects, but I strongly believe we’ll find the answer elsewhere. I’m sorry to say we’ll also need to take a look at the other families,” Harrison said gruffly. “Cody’s and Ren’s.”
“You’re going to raise a lot of ghosts that might be better off left undisturbed,” Kellen said. “No one becomes a runaway by choice. The girls were sixteen when I brought them here, and they’d already been on the streets for four years.”
“Oh God. You’re saying they were twelve?”