by BETH KERY
To this day, Dylan thought Jim had a better understanding and more keen insights into the details and nuances of the Adelaide Durand kidnapping case than any of the FBI agents sent to investigate the crime. Those FBI agents had failed completely, while Jim had been the one to encourage Dylan to never give up. He’d supported Dylan’s trips to regularly visit Avery Cunningham, one of Adelaide’s kidnappers, every year in prison until Cunningham had finally confessed to the crime just before his death. That refusal to give up had been what eventually gave Dylan clues to Addie’s whereabouts twenty long years after she’d first been taken from the Durand Estate.
Of course, Jim didn’t know about Cunningham’s confession yet, and Dylan wanted to keep it that way for a while.
“Odd that the alarm would malfunction tonight. It’s never gone off once—with or without cause—since I moved in here six years ago. I have it regularly serviced,” Dylan was saying to Jim.
“The storm caused some power outages down south,” Jim said from where he leaned against the edge of Dylan’s desk, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Maybe it was some kind of electrical anomaly.” He noticed Dylan’s skeptical look and shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Trust me. After thirty-seven years on the force, I can’t tell you the number of false alarms I’ve raced to in the middle of the night caused by faulty security systems. You know better than anyone how many Durand execs live in Morgantown. Lots of big houses. Lots of fancy security systems. Lots of malfunctions,” Jim said with a small smile.
“I still don’t like it.”
“Have someone come and take a look at the system—”
Jim paused and blinked. His stare at the door widened. Dylan spun around. Had Jim been mistaken in thinking it was a false alarm?
Alice stood warily several feet back from the open door, her short hair wild and mussed, her robe tied haphazardly and bunching awkwardly around her slender frame. Her face was set and pale, like she was ready for battle. She had a death grip on his five iron.
“Alice. Damn it,” he mumbled under his breath. He crossed the distance to the door rapidly. “I thought I asked you to stay put until I came back.” He grasped her forearm and pulled her into the den after him.
“You might have come up and told me what was happening sooner, instead of leaving me up there to worry all alone while you sit down here having a friendly chat,” she hissed under her breath. She jerked her arm out of his hold and cast a half-apologetic, half-resentful glance at Jim before returning her burning stare to Dylan.
“We just determined there wasn’t an actual break-in a few seconds ago.” He resisted a strong urge to lift her over his shoulder and lock her behind a closed door somewhere. Jim was studying her with avid interest, only adding to Dylan’s sense of growing unease.
Damn Alice for her impulsivity. He didn’t want Jim to suspect the truth. He wasn’t dead set against Jim knowing about his finding Addie in general—the sheriff had been one of the few who had known about Dylan’s continued search all these years, after all. Jim deserved to celebrate the amazing truth with him at some future date. It was just that as soon as Jim knew about Addie, the sheriff would be obligated to inform the FBI. The kidnapping wasn’t Jim’s case. It was a federal one.
Alice wasn’t ready yet to have police and agents swarming around her and asking her a slew of questions. She claimed that she was fine, but Dylan was much less confident about her emotional and mental well-being. It was only two days ago that she’d been told she’d been born a completely different person than the one she’d believed herself to be.
She certainly wouldn’t be prepared if her “mother,” Sissy Reed, and some or all of her many uncles were implicated in colluding with Avery Cunningham, one of Addie Durand’s kidnappers. She hadn’t asked him about the Reeds’ involvement in the past few days and Dylan hoped to spare Alice that reality until some future date. In Sidney Gates’s professional opinion, Alice suspected the Reeds’ collusion and was repressing it. Her silence on the matter was an indication to him that she wasn’t ready to tackle that painful territory yet.
Don’t ask. Don’t tell. That was the course of action Sidney was recommending for now.
To have the Reed clan thrown into prison right this second might give Dylan a rush of sweet vengeance, but it would only leave Alice feeling more torn, confused, and alone. She despised the Reeds, but they were family, too. Dylan knew better than most that feelings toward family members could be a tangled, confusing mess.
He unclenched his jaw and exhaled his frustration. “Jim Sheridan, I’d like you to meet Alice Reed.”
“Do you have a license to carry that five iron, ma’am?” Jim asked, stepping forward with his hand extended in greeting. Alice glanced dazedly at the golf club she gripped like she’d forgotten it was there. She grimaced and unpried her hand, shaking with Jim. “It was the first likely candidate I saw in Dylan’s closet.”
“I’ve always preferred a seven iron for a fight myself, but I can see how the five might give you a little more maneuverability in a pinch,” Jim joked.
“You wouldn’t have needed either if you’d done what I’d asked you to do and stayed put,” Dylan reminded quietly, leaning against his desk with forced casualness.
That wild, cornered-animal look leapt back into her eyes. “What if you needed help? I couldn’t just wait up there without knowing what was going on!”
“I told you I could handle it myself, Alice,” he said, his pointed stare meant to remind her of what else he’d asked her to do. She looked a little abashed, but clearly was not subdued.
“So what is going on?” she asked, shifting on her bare feet and glancing at Jim.
“Nothing much. And unless you can fight the aftereffects of an electrical storm with that golf club, there’s nothing here to do,” Jim said.
“The storm set off the alarm?” Alice asked, lowering Dylan’s club slowly. “But the storm has been over for hours.”
“Maybe it was some kind of residual electrical burst,” said Jim. “Hard to tell.”
“The point is, everything is fine,” Dylan said. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her, as if she had just become aware of her disheveled appearance. Dylan didn’t care for the way Jim stared at her face fixedly, a slightly bemused expression on his face. Again, Dylan experienced that sharp urge to hide her. “The house was never breached. Why don’t you go back upstairs? I’ll be up in a minute,” he added when she furtively met his stare from behind the partial shield of her spiky bangs.
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed huskily after a moment. “I guess that alarm clock is going to go off soon.”
“Have to work early in the morning?” Jim asked.
“Yeah,” Alice replied.
“There was some pretty serious flooding a few miles south of town in the vicinity of Chandler Creek. I hope you don’t have to drive far to work,” Jim said concernedly.
“Oh no. I’m just down at the camp.”
Dylan resisted an urge to roll his eyes at her giving Jim exactly what he’d angled for with his fishing. She gave Dylan one last fleeting glance and walked out of the room.
THE next morning her kids were still riding high from being the top team in accumulated points after the first week at Camp Durand. It was a good time to have everybody so cheerful, because the morning mandatory activity was the zip line challenge—the activity Alice had struggled with most during her training. Alice was terrified of heights. Worse yet, she’d been paired up for the zip line during training with Brooke Seifert, who had been Alice’s nemesis since the first day she’d arrived at camp.
Today Alice was more fortunate.
“At least I don’t have to do the zip line myself this time around. And, I’m with you instead of Brooke,” Alice said quietly to Kuvi Sarin as they walked side by side through a meadow toward the woods, the twenty kids from both of their teams spread out around them. Kuvi was her cabin mate and friend. She was warm, genuine, funny, and smart. Except for the smart part,
she was pretty much the exact opposite of Brooke Seifert.
“Brooke’s team got paired up with Thad’s for this challenge,” Kuvi said wryly. “She’ll be in heaven.”
“From what I saw yesterday, so will Thad,” Alice replied under her breath. Kuvi gave her a sharp, knowing glance. Yesterday, Alice had spied Thad and Brooke kissing in the woods. She’d immediately told Kuvi what she’d seen. The accidental sighting had shocked her, because in the past Thad had only publically demonstrated a platonic interest in Brooke. In fact, Thad had previously not even attempted to hide that he was very interested romantically in her—Alice. She considered Thad a great guy and a friend, so what she’d seen between him and Brooke had left her feeling confused and disturbed. She’d been subtly avoiding Thad all day. Why was he purposefully misleading his friends when it came to Brooke? Was it because he knew how much Alice disliked her?
“Hey,” Kuvi whispered. “You promised yesterday that you were going to tell me where you have been disappearing to at night.”
Alice glanced around warily, assuring herself that their conversation wasn’t being overheard. Until yesterday, Kuvi had assumed she was sneaking away from their cabin at night for trysts with Thad. Alice had never admitted to that, but Kuvi and Dave Epstein—their other friend—had just assumed a relationship between them, given Thad’s obvious attraction to Alice.
“I’ll tell you tonight, after the night supervisors take over,” Alice said quietly. “I promise,” she added when she saw the question and concern in Kuvi’s eyes. Kuvi nodded.
Alice wasn’t exactly looking forward to confessing for the first time that she was having an affair with Durand Enterprises’ CEO. Kuvi was sure to tell her that she was out of her mind. If they were discovered, the ramifications for both Alice and Dylan could be serious. But part of her was relieved at the prospect of telling the truth as well. She respected and liked Kuvi too much to keep lying to her.
Alice spotted Sebastian Kehoe, the Durand vice president of human resources, a minute after they entered the woods. Kehoe stood at the bottom of a wooden flight of stairs that led to a forty-five-foot-tall zip line platform. He looked at them, pointedly checked his watch, and continued to write on a clipboard that Alice suspected was surgically attached to his hand.
Uh-oh. Were they late? Alice couldn’t really afford to get on Kehoe’s bad side, although she constantly felt like she was scrambling not to land there with a resounding thud. Kehoe was a long-time Durand executive. He was the top boss here—at least he was when Dylan wasn’t around. It was generally acknowledged, even grudgingly by Dylan himself, that Camp Durand was Kehoe’s baby and had been for as long as most people’s memories went. Camp Durand was held up as a model example of Durand Enterprises’ strong community and philanthropic ideals as well as being an innovative, fresh practice for finding the best of the best young executives in the world. Kehoe certainly held court at Camp Durand like some kind of village potentate. Which was unfortunate, because Alice couldn’t rid herself of the uneasy feeling that Kehoe didn’t like her at all. She thought it might have something to do with the fact that Dylan hired her, when Kehoe usually did all the hiring for the elite group of counselors and future Durand executives. On a more worrisome note, she dreaded that Kehoe suspected something was going on between Dylan and her, and didn’t like that fact at all.
She and Kuvi approached Kehoe while the other kids spread out in the clearing, talking among themselves.
“Hello, ladies. May I have your assignments for your zip line pair-ups?” Kehoe asked Alice and Kuvi briskly. Alice’s stomach dropped. Kuvi reached into her backpack and retrieved several pieces of paper. She handed them to Kehoe.
“Alice?” Kehoe asked unsmilingly, glancing up and peering at her through a pair of preppy black-rimmed glasses. Everything about Kehoe was neat, his appearance as exacting as his manner. Even in his camp sportswear, Kehoe was meticulously groomed. He was trim and sinewy, his athletic build making him look much younger than a man in his fifties. “Your assignments, please?”
“I, uh . . . I forgot to type them out,” she said in a rush. “But I know all of my pair-ups by heart. I put a lot of effort into it.”
“But not enough thought to give me the paperwork I asked for. I wasn’t just asking for the names and teams, Alice. I wanted your rational for how you paired up the kids. The zip line is a significant challenge for a lot of our new campers, and a few of the older ones as well. It’s important that we put some planning into how we’re going to comfort and empower them for what could potentially be an anxiety-provoking activity,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry. I can type up my list this evening,” Alice said, humiliated. How could she have forgotten? It wasn’t like her. It’d been a crazy past few days. Was she a lot more preoccupied and distracted by the news about Addie Durand than she realized or cared to admit? Maybe Dylan was right to be so concerned about her mental state.
“We don’t approach a potentially dangerous challenge like this in a careless or thoughtless fashion,” Kehoe said.
Rebellious anger spiked through her embarrassment and irritation at herself. True, she’d screwed up, but it wasn’t because she was thoughtless. Having been terrified at the mere idea of zooming across the top of the forest while suspended from a skinny little wire, Alice had put significant planning into how she’d match up her kids to empower them for the challenge. During her own training, all Kehoe had done to alleviate her blind panic over completing the activity was match her up with a useless Brooke Seifert. All Brooke had done was simper saccharine platitudes for her safety, and even escalated Alice’s anxiety by tricking her to look down at the forest floor, mounting her vertigo until she’d been mindless with fear by the time she flew off the platform.
Some help Kehoe had been.
Although the truth was, Alice had never confessed to the fact that she was scared shitless of heights to Kehoe, allowing him or anyone else the opportunity to comfort her during the experience. Alice didn’t speak of her weaknesses easily, let alone babble on about them to a man like Kehoe.
“I know it’s important. I messed up,” Alice admitted stoically, looking Kehoe square in the eye. “I’m really sorry. Like I said, I have put a lot of thought into my team’s pair-ups. I can name them easily. I can give you the rationale for my pair-ups right now—”
“I don’t have the time to listen to an oral report. I want the typed list and your rationale first thing after dinner tonight,” Kehoe interrupted sharply. He made a rapid note, his writing so pressured it looked like his ballpoint might drill all the way through the multiple sheets of paper to the clipboard itself. He turned and stalked a short distance away, calling out to gather the scattered, chatting teenagers. Alice glanced at Kuvi abashedly.
“It’s okay,” Kuvi whispered hearteningly. “It was a little thing, comparatively. Gina Sayre forgot that anti-bullying workshop agenda we had to do, plus lost track of Mark Drayner and Shayna Crawniac during the kayaking activity she led. Kehoe was furious when he found the pair of them tied up to shore and going at it in Martyr’s Cove, both of them half-naked.”
Alice smirked. “We should rename it Sinner’s Cove.”
“I should have reminded you. I know how distracted you’ve seemed lately.”
“It’s not your responsibility,” Alice muttered, frowning.
She really needed to pull it together. It sucked, having Kehoe lecture her like that. Until now, his disapproval of her had remained vague and difficult to pin down. Alice’s team was top in points, and she’d avoided making a major mistake so far, despite the fact that either Kehoe or one of his manager minions was watching them like hawks. She’d clearly just received her first black mark in Kehoe’s meticulous notes, however.
Thankfully, Kehoe only stayed with their group long enough to assign them a Durand manager before he walked off rapidly through the forest in the direction of the next zip line platform. He was obviously intent on gathering more documentation of counselor s
crewups, Alice thought darkly. Only nine of the fifteen counselors would be selected to become a Durand executive, after all. Kehoe had to find rationale for making cuts somewhere. Alice feared she’d just conveniently gifted him with a nice sharp knife.
THE challenge itself went as smoothly as could be expected. There was only one rough patch—when Judith Arnold, a pretty, stubborn, talented seventeen-year-old whom Alice had just recently made the student team leader, called Alice out in front of all of the Red Team.
“What do you mean I’m paired up with Noble D?” Judith demanded when Alice called out the pair assignments. “I should be with Jill!”
Here we go, Alice thought.
She’d wondered how long her and Judith’s relative peace would last. Despite the fact that Judith had been rude and insolent toward Alice since the moment she’d arrived at camp, she had also demonstrated true strength and compassion at times with the other campers. Alice had made the decision just days ago to challenge the girl with the team leader position. Judith was smart and strong. Alice’s instincts told her that Judith could lead her peers effectively. She’d been feeling cautiously optimistic about her risky Judith selection. The first days of Judith’s reign had been relatively conflict free. Alice had even shared a couple nice moments with the girl at the bonfire last night when the Red Team had been declared top in points. Things had been looking up.
Until now, anyway.
“Jill is with Terrance,” Alice said, picking up her backpack and flinging it over her shoulder. “Terrance is an expert. He did the zip line at a church retreat,” she said, referring to the custom by which Camp Durand tried to match up campers with experience at a task—“experts”—with the uninitiated “novices.”