Convenient Lies
Robin Patchen
JDO Publishing
Join my newsletter list to download a free copy of Beauty in Flight and learn about new releases, including my July, 2019, release, Legacy Rejected. You won’t want to miss it.
To Eddie
For the constant support and encouragement.
I couldn’t do this without you.
Contents
Also by Robin Patchen
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Epilogue
Also by Robin Patchen
About the Author
Also by Robin Patchen
Beauty in Flight
Beauty in Flight
Beauty in Hiding
Beauty in Battle
Hidden Truth
Convenient Lies
Twisted Lies
Generous Lies
Innocent Lies
Amanda Series
Chasing Amanda
Finding Amanda
Legacy Series
Legacy Rejected, releasing July 2019
Legacy Restored, releasing October 2019
Legacy Redeemed, releasing January 2020
Standalone Novellas
A Package Deal
One Christmas Eve
Faith House
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my critique partners, Normandie Fischer, Kara Hunt, Jericha Kingston, Candice Sue Patterson, Sharon Srock, Pegg Thomas, and Terri Weldon. These ladies make me look good.
Thank you to my editor, Ray Rhamey.
Thank you to Lacy Williams for all your publishing help.
Thank you to my husband and children for supporting me in this venture.
Finally and most importantly, thank you, Lord, for the story idea and the ability to bring it together.
One
There were only two people Rachel Adams trusted. One was twelve days old, and the other had mysteriously quit answering her phone. At least Gram could be counted on to stand by her side, assuming Rae could get in touch with her. And Jean-Louis? The baby didn’t know any better.
The betrayers were too many to count. Julien, though. His betrayal was the most recent, and the most brutal.
Rae pretended to sleep as his lips brushed her forehead, leaving behind the scent of his cologne. She didn’t move as she listened to the snap of the lock, kept still while she imagined Julien making his way down the staircase to the first floor and across the black and white tiles in the foyer. The heavy carved door slammed one story below.
Hector would fall in step beside him. Rae had asked Julien once why he didn’t have his guard pick him up in the car outside their building.
“And miss the morning walk through my favorite city? Never.”
She could almost hear his teasing tone. Always with a smile. Always with that look in his eyes that made her feel so loved.
Would he nod to the men he left behind to guard her and Jean-Louis? Or did they stay in the shadows the way they did when she left the building? For her protection, or so he’d said.
Julien would stride down the street past the patisserie, which would just be opening for business, the scent of freshly baked croissants and yeasty loaves wafting around him.
A few minutes ticked by. Surely Julien was in his car, out of the parking garage, and on his way to his early morning meeting by now. And yet she waited. Last week, he’d left for a meeting only to return ten minutes later for one last kiss on his infant son’s forehead. She couldn’t chance that happening again, especially when he’d told her he might not make it home tonight. When fifteen minutes had passed and he hadn’t returned, she flipped back the covers and jumped out of bed.
After a quick shower, she dressed and pulled her hair into a bun. She grabbed the clothes she’d need and shoved them into her suitcase. She spared one fleeting thought for the wardrobe filled with designer clothes back in Tunis, but she shook it off. What use would she have for those things now?
When she finished, she tiptoed into Jean-Louis’s room and grabbed a handful of outfits for him. Not too many. He’d grow out of them in a few weeks, anyway.
The messenger bag she’d use as a carry-on was more suited for her laptop, but Julien had made her leave that back in Tunis when she’d been ordered to bedrest. “No more work for you, young lady.” His charming smile hadn’t set her at ease when he’d taken the laptop and her smart phone and handed them to one of his servants, who’d bowed quickly and disappeared. Julien had given her a cheap flip phone for emergencies. “Our child needs all your attention.”
That’s when she’d started to worry. Did he know she’d discovered his secrets?
The messenger bag was already packed with the baby gear she’d need on the long trip. She lifted the interior flap and pulled out a manila envelope. She felt the flash drive she’d slid into it, along with a handful of photocopies. Maybe they’d save her. Maybe not.
She unlocked the ornately carved box on the top of her bureau, removed the jewelry from their protective boxes, and dropped them in a paper bag. Who would store thousands of dollars’ worth of gemstones in a sack from the market? It looked like a pile of trinkets one might buy at a kiosk at the mall.
Finally, Rae dug a box from deep in the closet. She’d owned these items for years, worn them in Africa to fit in where western women often wouldn’t. She hated them. She’d seen what the clothes meant for women all over the world. They would be the perfect disguise. Julien’s guards would never suspect it was she who hid beneath.
She pulled the loose-fitting black abaya over her jeans and T-shirt, then fastened on her baby carrier. She added the wide black scarf around her shoulders and positioned it over the baby’s sling. Yes, that should work as long as Jean-Louis kept quiet.
She pulled the note she’d written from her bedside drawer and reread it, just to be sure. The hospital called. Gram’s taken a turn for the wor
se, and she’s not expected to pull through. Forgive me, but I have to see her. I’ll call when we change planes this afternoon. Love, Rae.
Love, Rae. Those last two words had been the hardest to write, not because they weren’t true, but because, on some level, they still were.
She left the note on Julien’s bedside table. No going back now.
She grabbed the second note and walked to his office. He kept the door locked, but the old-fashioned locks were easy enough to pick. She’d done it enough, it took less than a minute to get the door open. She opened the file cabinet and slipped the note into a file containing information on his other business, the one he’d kept from her. When Julien realized Rae wasn’t where she said she’d be, he’d check his files. Then he would know. Either he would leave her alone because she could expose him, or he would hunt her down. She hoped he would choose the first. She glanced at the photograph of Julien and Jean-Louis on the desk, the one she’d snapped a week earlier. The love that shone in her husband’s gaze was unmistakable. Tears stung her eyes. At least she knew that wasn’t a lie. Maybe Julien loved his son enough to let him go.
She wouldn’t count on it.
In the bedroom, she fastened the niqab around her head so only her eyes showed. After she dragged her suitcase to the front door, she returned to the baby’s room, where she changed his clothes. His eyes blinked open, and she kissed his cheek. “Shh, baby. Go back to sleep.”
He scrunched up his face as if he were about to cry. At least his cry wasn’t that loud yet. At two weeks old, his little lungs could only make so much noise. She lifted him and rocked him until he relaxed against her shoulder.
As she eased him into the sling, he barely stirred. She draped the scarf over him, placed the messenger bag on top of the suitcase, and slipped out.
She lugged her suitcase down the stairs, through the center courtyard, and out a side door, where the tiny cab she’d ordered the night before waited for her in the alley. The taxi driver hefted her suitcase into the trunk while she glanced left and right, straining to see in the dim light of dawn. Julien’s guards were nowhere in sight. The morning was quiet. Free of weapons and violence.
“Charles de Gaul, s’il vous plait.”
The drive to the airport seemed to take forever. Rae didn’t relax until her flight’s wheels lifted off the runway.
She kissed Jean-Louis’s tender head, wiped the tears that had dropped onto his thin spray of hair, and whispered, “We’re safe, for now.”
* * *
Nearly nine hours later, Rachel pulled her suitcase to the curb at Logan International Airport. She dropped the abaya, scarf, and niqab, along with the remaining airline ticket, into the trash can, and climbed into a beat-up yellow cab. The taxi slid onto the highway and was quickly engulfed in the chaos of the traffic headed to downtown Boston.
Rachel Adams had disappeared.
Two
Reagan McAdams had been gone more than a decade when Rachel resurrected her.
Although how her alias could resurrect her true identity, she wasn’t sure. She did know that the woman she’d become in college, Rachel Adams, had to disappear, and fast. So Rachel would be Reagan McAdams again, the name she’d been given at birth. She’d return to her hometown until she collected Gram and got what she needed. And then she’d disappear again.
At least she’d stuck with the nickname Rae through it all, or else she’d be completely confused. Right now, too many choices at the coffee shop were enough to confuse her.
They’d been traveling for two days by the time Reagan and the baby crossed into Nutfield, New Hampshire. She’d had her fill of planes, trains, and automobiles, of spaces so small she could barely get comfortable. And then there was the taxi that stank of body odor and that cheap hotel, the only one that would agree to her cash-up-front, no-ID requirement. She certainly couldn’t use her current ID. She wasn’t willing to leave any crumbs for Julien to follow. So she’d settled for the horrible hotel, where it was just the baby, Reagan, and the varmints that called it home. All she could think about now was her comfortable bed and her beautiful grandmother.
She couldn’t imagine why Gram hadn’t answered the phone. Rae had tried to reach her the day after Jean-Louis—Johnny—had arrived, healthy and beautiful, weighing in at seven pounds, eleven ounces. She’d had to cajole the nurse into giving her his weight in pounds and ounces instead of grams. It hadn’t mattered, because Gram hadn’t picked up. Not that day, not any day since. Rae could understand if she’d forgotten to charge her cell, but the house phone? What could account for her not answering that? Perhaps the hearing loss was worse than Rae had understood. Not a shock at her age, and she’d never wanted to try hearing aids. Whatever the reason, Gram was Rae’s rock. Her comfort. As soon as they stepped into her house, Gram would wrap them in her wrinkled arms and make everything all right.
But when she turned the clunker she’d bought in Manchester down the driveway to her childhood home, the place looked deserted.
In Gram’s defense, it was nearly midnight, and she wasn’t expecting them. She’d always kept the porch light on, but maybe she’d gotten out of the habit. Or maybe the light bulb had burned out. Or maybe Gram was sick.
No, Reagan wouldn’t consider that. She couldn’t wait to introduce Gram to little Johnny. She’d adore him and tell Rae how to be a mommy. And oh, how she needed those lessons.
Reagan stepped out of the car and breathed in the chilly fall air. It smelled so clean here, so fresh. She’d loved Tunis, and if things had been different, she knew she’d have fallen in love with Paris too. But here in the woods in New Hampshire, surrounded by the tallest trees, the prettiest leaves, the greenest grass, she felt embraced by comfort.
Not that she could see much of that in the moonlight, but her memory filled in the blanks.
Reagan freed her sleeping son from his car seat and kissed his head. “We’re here.” Joy bubbled up with her words and, despite her fatigue, or maybe because of it, she giggled. She grabbed the diaper bag from the backseat and headed for the house. Home. For all its dark memories, for all the secrets this place hid, it would always be home.
She knocked. Rang the doorbell. Waited. Knocked again.
When no lights came on, she dug her keys out of her purse. She’d been carrying this key on her key ring since childhood, and though she hardly got to use it, having it with her had always felt right. She slid it into the lock and turned the knob.
The door creaked as it always had. No other sounds greeted her, certainly not Gram’s joyful gasp. Rae carried Johnny inside. Gram would be sleeping, of course. Still, why was it so quiet? And cold. The house felt hardly warmer than the air outside. She flipped the light switch. Nothing.
“Gram?” Her voice echoed off the walls. The only answer came from Johnny, who started at her shout and whimpered. Rae kissed the top of his head and patted his back. “It’s all right, baby. We’ll figure it out.” She inched her way into the kitchen and hit the switch. Still dark. There’d always been a flashlight in the junk drawer. She made her way to it and pulled it open, thankful for the moonlight that streamed in through the kitchen window. She felt inside until her fingers touched the thick metal shaft. Thank goodness. She shined the light around the kitchen. Everything seemed to be in place. She headed for the stairs. Perhaps a storm had knocked the lights out. She wouldn’t think about that full moon outside, the cloudless skies, and the dry ground, because only a storm explained this.
Johnny fussed, his whimpers loud in the too-quiet house. She’d feed him as soon as she woke Gram. She ignored her pounding heart and called out again, “Gram? It’s Reagan.” She listened for sounds of stirring. Nothing but the hollow thump of her footsteps on the hardwood. The third stair from the bottom creaked. In all those years, as much as that noise had driven her nuts, Gram still hadn’t had it fixed. Why, at the loud creak, hadn’t Gram woken up? The woman had never slept through that noise when Rae was a teenager coming home after a date.
She called out again. “I’m coming upstairs. It’s just me.”
She flipped on the switch in the upper hallway. Nothing. She turned right into the master bedroom and swept the beam of light over the bed. It was empty, the blankets tucked carefully, the pillows arranged. She shouted louder, her heart pounding now. “Gram? Where are you?”
Johnny wailed, and Gram said nothing.
Maybe she was in the hospital. Rae was about to grab the house phone and call when she stopped. The goal had been to come to town, get what she needed, and leave again without anybody knowing she’d been there. How could she do that if she called the hospital? Could she find out anything without being discovered? Would it be dangerous if people discovered she was there? Julien didn’t know her real name, didn’t know where she was from. He’d look in California until he realized she’d kept as many secrets as he had. She should be safe here for now. Still, alerting the town to her homecoming hadn’t been part of the plan.
Convenient Lies Page 1