Secrets Return (Leftover Girl Book 2)

by C. C. Bolick

  “You had a twin?” Evelyn asked.

  “She died when I was five. My mother was a Protector and I am beneficiary of her legacy. My sworn duty for the last twelve years has been to serve and protect Kayden.”

  “And your involvement with the Lucha Noir?” Evelyn asked.

  Mom shifted in her seat and shot Dad an alarmed look. Slowly, she raised her eyes to meet Evelyn’s. “Please don’t hurt my children. The secrets I’ve kept became mine before they were born.”

  Evelyn faced Dad again. “I have been told Justin Delaney was the leader of the Lucha Noir before his disappearance.”

  Dad crossed his arms. “You have been told correctly. I’m still their leader.”

  “Then you uphold what they fight for.”

  “With every thread of my being.”

  “We never meant to keep Kayden from you all of these years,” Mom said. “But whoever hurt Chase is after her.”

  “I know.” Evelyn lowered her head.

  The nurse from the hall entered the room, along with a doctor.

  “Your son is stable for now,” the doctor said, “but we need to do an MRI. You can see him.”

  Evelyn nodded, seeming to struggle for words.

  “He’ll be okay?” Dad asked.

  The doctor turned to Dad. “He may have a concussion, but we need to get the results to know for sure.”

  “I will follow in a moment,” Evelyn said and the doctor nodded. As he left the room, Evelyn looked at Mom. The power in her voice returned. “We are not finished yet. I want to know more about why this happened. I want to understand why you took my daughter.” Her eyes narrowed. “You will not lie to me. You know who I am.”

  Mom bowed her head slightly. “Yes, your Highness.”

  “Whoa,” I said, my head spinning. It wasn’t the room. We were in a freaking movie. “What did you call her?”

  Dad chuckled, but his voice held more of a ‘told you so’ sound. “It seems she left something out.”

  I crossed the floor to stand before her. “Chase said you work for the government.”

  “In a commanding role,” she said.

  “That’s what you were taking me back to?” I asked. “Oh my god, no.”

  “I have no choice,” Evelyn said quietly. “When your father left, I had to take his place. Then he died, leaving me alone.”

  “Kayden suffered a trauma that night,” Dad said. “Her memory has never returned. We’ve exhausted every resource in our effort to unlock it.”

  “She does not remember me.” Evelyn pursed her lips. “Or her father.”

  “Can we talk to her?” Dad asked, jamming his hands in his pockets. “At least have the opportunity to explain the last twelve years?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but you will answer to me after I see my son. You will not leave this place with her.”

  “Agreed,” Dad said, his voice filled with resignation.

  Evelyn took a long look at me and left the room.

  Mom reached for my hand, but I pulled away. Dad sat beside her while I took a seat across from them. A cup of coffee appeared in Dad’s hand. He offered it to Mom, but she shook her head. He placed it on the table.

  “Do you think Chase will be okay?” I asked.

  “I hope so,” Dad said.

  “Can I see him?”

  “After we talk.”

  Silence filled the room as I considered where to start a million questions.

  “Jes,” Mom said, “we deserve the chance to tell our side.”

  I crossed my arms. “My name is not Jes, or Jessica, or anything resembling what you’ve called me for the last twelve years. And you knew the whole time.”

  Dad sighed. “Okay, Kayden. Does that make you feel better?”

  I shrank from his words. His voice held a bitter edge that seemed unfair at the least. “None of this makes me feel better. Last night I found out the two people who raised me…” I swallowed hard. “You guys kidnapped me?”

  Dad stared at me strangely. “After everything, you still don’t remember that night?”

  “No,” I whispered as the tears started to fall. “I remember getting on the ship. I remember a man with a gun. After that, I only remember running through the woods and the headlights.”

  Mom clenched her fists. Pain burned in her eyes.

  I wanted to hate them. I needed to hate them, desperately. These people took my life away. The tears became a river.

  Mom shook her head and leaned forward, opening her arms.

  Guilt bubbled in my throat, welling up to mix with the tears. How had my almost normal life become this?

  I stood, willing my feet to run away from her arms. Her eyes met mine and I could see her love for me shining through her tears. I reached for her embrace, landing in her lap as my whole body shook.

  “Honey,” she said, smoothing my hair. “In no way did we kidnap you. No one kidnapped you. You hid on your father’s ship. When he realized, you were past the point of no return.”

  “I saw the man with the gun. He shot…my real father.” I swatted the tears, picturing the evil face looking down at me as the bullet exploded, and felt my father’s arms shove me from the bullet’s path. I turned to Dad. “Please tell me you weren’t involved with killing him.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone that night,” Dad said, “although the thought did cross my mind after the gun went off.”

  “I understand now,” I said. “My father tried to protect me, but the evil man shot him.”

  Dad gripped my hand, a look of pity in his eyes. “You remember him dying?”

  I pulled my hand away and held it up. “There was blood on my hands, my face.” I touched my cheeks.

  Mom hugged me tighter. “You don’t have to remember.”

  “He died saving my life. I need to remember.” I looked at Dad. “You were there.” I spun around to face Mom. “And you.”

  “Yes,” Mom said, so quietly I wouldn’t have heard her words had I not been sitting on her lap.

  Dad nodded. “After he…your father died, others would have come for you. Dangerous others. We knew you must be protected.”

  “Where were we?” I asked.

  “We were in an old farmhouse,” Dad said, “outside of New York City. There was an argument over—”

  “Me,” I said.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “After the gun went off, you ran from the farmhouse and into the woods. You’d never seen snow, but that didn’t keep you from racing through the night.”

  Mom released my arms. “Justin had a truck—the old Ford, you remember?”

  “I jumped in,” Dad said. “I didn’t think, just turned the key and hit the gas. I knew your feet were bare and you wouldn’t get far. It wasn’t long before I found you, teeth chattering, but you wouldn’t speak. It was a month before you uttered another word.”

  “Lorraine washed the blood off your hands.” He put an arm around Mom’s neck. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled as he kissed her forehead.

  “We called you Kay Ray,” Mom said, with a sorrow deeper than I ever remembered. “We tried everything to make you remember, but somehow you blocked out that night, along with everything before it. We still don’t know why you screamed whenever you saw water.”

  “Chase,” I said. “He was in the water beneath the platform as I snuck onto the ship. I thought he drowned that night. He said our aunt kidnapped him, but our mother saved him. I didn’t remember him in the water until the night before my last birthday.”

  “You blocked it out,” Dad said, unable to hide the pain that coursed through his voice. “Your mother would’ve come for you too. I knew she couldn’t keep you safe, not after that night.”

  “Justin and your father were friends,” Mom said. “Your father came to Earth to warn our team about a pending strike.”

  “Either of us would have died to save your life. All he wanted was to save others. He never planned to involve you.” Dad smiled, which appeared as more of a strain on his lips than
anything. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  Yeah, twelve years’ worth of truth. “Why make me think I was really Jessica Naples?”

  “Justin and I had a past, a life on Earth,” Mom said. “If we wanted to hide you here on Earth, you needed a past too. Authorities don’t take kindly to people who appear with no birth certificate or social security number.”

  “Does that really happen?” I asked.

  She laughed as if she’d never been so tired. “Haven’t you ever read one of those tabloids in line at the grocery store?”

  “So, there we were,” Dad said, “sitting in a coffee shop trying to get you to eat something when a picture of Jessica Naples came over the news. You remember, the one with the bear?”

  I shivered. “How could I forget?”

  Dad smiled. “I looked at Lorraine and asked, ‘you thinking what I’m thinking?’”

  His comical voice did nothing to make me feel better. “You decided based on one picture?”

  Mom nodded. “It made sense at first. She was four—you’d just turned five. You were about the same height and size. We dyed your hair to make it brown like in her picture. She had blue eyes, so no problem there. Justin went to the police, claiming he’d found you. It really was the perfect lie. We tracked the Naples, and they’d already made it to Florida. They weren’t coming back.”

  “Then the TVs caught on to the fact they were gone. No one could understand why they’d disappeared, when Marsha Naples had begged for her daughter’s safe return, crying herself sick on camera only one week before.”

  “The reporters wanted to interview you,” Mom said. “They wanted to take pictures of us.”

  “So, everyone just bought it? I find that hard to believe.”

  “It was a great story,” Dad said, with sarcasm. “Girl from the gutter disappears, leaving the police convinced she’d never be found. Witnesses said her parents shot up with her there, but they didn’t have enough evidence of wrongdoing. And worse, no one really cared. It was the perfect cover for you.”

  “What about fingerprints?” I asked.

  Mom waved a hand. “Fingerprints are easy.”

  Dad sighed. “We all needed to disappear, but you can’t hide in front of ten thousand cameras.”

  “Bailey’s dad helped us,” Mom said. “He had the means to get us out of New York. The story of your past couldn’t change—we were kind of locked in at that point. You were really Jessica Naples. I kept the box of articles in case we ever needed to prove it.”

  “You’d go to that kind of trouble?” I asked. “It seems strange since all those years you insisted I not tell anyone about New York.”

  “Anything to keep you safe,” Dad said. “We never lied about that fact. You being Jessica Naples kept the bad guys off your track.”

  “Who are the bad guys in this whole scenario?”

  “Anyone wanting to keep you from saving the Lucha Noir.” Mom stilled. “I’m assuming you’ve heard of them by now.”

  “According to Evelyn—”

  “Evelyn?” Dad asked.

  “That’s what she told me to call her.” I pulled myself from Mom’s lap and once again sat across from them. “I had trouble calling her mom.”

  “She is your mother,” Dad said. “You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

  “But it’s weird,” I said. “I’ve always known you guys adopted me, but seeing her…it changes everything.”

  Mom leaned forward and rested her head on her hands. “What did she say about the Lucha Noir?”

  “Basically, the same as your government lesson. About the planet with twins?”

  “Nice touch, huh?” Dad’s eyes gleamed. “You got the message, and with impressive perception. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more pride than in that moment.”

  This man who raised me, lying to my face for years, still made my heart swell. He was the enemy. I was a horrible daughter. “She said you’re their leader.”

  “Yes,” Dad said.

  “Chase thinks she’s wrong, that the Lucha Noir are fighting to free people. There’s another thing I want you to explain. He said the Lucha Noir call me Honra Ril. What does that mean to you?”

  Dad’s grin faded. “How would Chase know…” He looked at Mom, alarm growing on his face.

  “Because he joined them,” I said. “After he and Evelyn left last year, Chase became some kind of hacker and landed in jail. He said they needed his skills.”

  Amazement replaced the alarm. “Son of the queen of Golvern joining the Lucha Noir? Does she know?”

  “No, but what did Mom mean about me saving the Lucha Noir?”

  “It’s a rumor,” Dad said. “We’ve lived on Earth for many years, far removed from the inner-workings of that planet. Years ago, someone got the bright idea you’d somehow help the Lucha Noir win their revolution. Our revolution. There are those who believe they can predict the future. We call them—”

  “Olsandyols,” I said.

  “You always learned fast,” Mom said, with a somber look. “The Olsandyol was careless in speaking those words, especially since you were so young. No one is sure of how or when, but the moment that prediction was made you became a target.”

  “Whenever we ran,” Dad said, “it was because we felt someone was too close to the truth. That’s why we never wanted you to talk about New York. We didn’t need reporters showing up who might take a picture of us.”

  I shook my head. The story made perfect sense. After all, it sounded too convoluted to be fake. No wonder they’d made me lie, why they acted unhinged when I was barely twenty feet away. No wonder they’d been so worried about me. “If all of this is true, why did you guys let me go out? To the movies? To the game? Riding in the jeep?”

  “Everywhere you went, Bailey and Pade were there,” Mom said. “Even though they didn’t know you were one of us, they knew how to contact us if anything happened. We couldn’t exactly keep you locked in the house forever.”

  I thought of the day Pade seemed hesitant to take me to the airport. “Am I a danger to you?” For the first time that night, I thought of my brothers. “What about Danny and Collin?”

  “They stayed the night with Joel,” Dad said. “Charlie’s gone to check on them. For the moment, you are our focus. Everything we’ve done for the last twelve years is a waste if something happens to you.”

  “Why not use technology to hide us?” I asked.

  “Because technology can be defeated,” Mom said. “We needed a story without questions. We needed drama with a human touch.”

  “Are you really from Earth?” I asked.

  “Justin was born on Earth, but both of his parents were from Golvern,” Mom said. “Think you had it bad? He never got to go outside when he was young. I grew up in Credence, just like I always told you. The trick about lying is it has to center around truth to be effective.” She smiled. “My mother came here on an educational trip and met my father, who was human. They married, but after Charlie was born without a twin, she knew she could never go back. Even though I had Darla…” Her voice choked up.

  “Aunt Charlie told me about the fire.”

  Mom nodded and reached for the cup of coffee. She took a long gulp.

  “But didn’t staying on Earth shorten her life?” I asked.

  “My mother died when I was twelve,” she finally said, “but we had all those wonderful years together. On Golvern, Charlie would have been sent to a separate home. She would have been tormented and never allowed to go to nursing school.”

  “You didn’t have the sunscreen back then, did you?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask about that,” Dad said.

  “They tested me last night. The doctor insisted what I wore wasn’t sunscreen.”

  “It’s a special sunscreen,” Dad said. “We’ve worn several iterations over the years, but this version seems most effective.”

  “But you got sick,” I said.

  “So did you, with the right amount
of sun. The sunscreen keeps me well for the most part, but don’t forget I’m older than you. I’ve had many maintenance treatments over the years you never knew about. That’s what we were going to Atlanta for.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “She’s half human, which has advantages.”

  “But your cancer, the chemo—”

  “A marathon maintenance treatment, though every bit as painful as chemo, I’d imagine. The hospital in Atlanta has special doctors who know how to treat our people. That’s where we took you after your sunburn.”

  “But that was a human hospital.”

  He laughed. “We call it by the name of a human hospital to stay off the radar, but I promise the hospital we were in only treats people like you and me.”

  His words made my skin crawl. “Why didn’t Pade or Bailey notice?”

  “They didn’t know which questions to ask any more than you did.”

  “I’m sure Evelyn’s doctor will figure out the secret to your sunscreen,” I said. “He scraped a sample from my skin.”

  “Good, maybe it will help others. The discovery was made several years ago by a close friend of mine, and as much as I wanted to distribute the results beyond Earth, it simply wasn’t feasible while we were underground. Not having to die is going to be a big deal for a whole lot of people.”

  I watched Dad’s face as he spoke, saw the hope shining in his eyes. “What happens now?”

  Dad leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “We wait.”

  “For?” I asked.

  “Whoever was trying to kill you.”

  Nowhere to Run

  “We just sit and wait?”

  “That’s the idea,” Dad said.

  I couldn’t believe how calm he sounded. “Aren’t you going to call someone? How can you be sure it’s not the Lucha Noir?”

  He opened his eyes. “If the Lucha Noir were trying to kill you, I’d be the first to know.”

  “Are you really their leader?”

  “Of course he is,” Mom said. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  I shook my head. “For twelve years, we’ve moved from town to town, with barely enough money to pay the bills.”

  “Money was never an issue,” Dad said. “But living a simple life kept us off the radar.”