Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Shiloh Walker

  It was different this time. I remembered more. There was giggling. I’ve remembered bits and pieces of that before, but it was more vivid.

  She was laughing, laughing and happy and singing. The cops, asking about my mother.

  And I remembered her name.

  My mother’s name was Jeanette. And I think she loved me. She smelled like flowers and grass and my stepfather said the baby took her away from us.

  But my mother loved me.

  I remember that … my mother loved me.

  “She didn’t love you,” Darcy muttered, staring at the diary entry. “Nobody fucking loved you. Ever. Except me. I’m the only one who loves you.”

  But Shay didn’t seem to get that.

  Shay didn’t realize that Darcy was the one who cared, the one who would take care of her, always.

  The one who would never, ever go away or disappear, no matter how ugly Shay’s secrets were, no matter how bad her scars.

  Everybody else ran away, or left, or died. Sooner or later.

  But Darcy would always be there.

  “She didn’t love you,” Darcy whispered, touching the screen. “But I do.”

  Her mother had loved her.

  It was a bittersweet thing to carry in her heart that day, but somehow, it managed to steady her. In the back of her mind, she had odd flashes of memory. Almost memories, more than anything else. The scent of vanilla … something richer, sweeter. Cookies …? A laugh, husky and soft. Come on, princess, that’s enough …

  Off in the dark, quiet house, the phone rang and the memory shattered, falling apart like gossamer threads.

  “Damn it.” But even as she grumbled, she felt her heart kick up a little bit. Elliot … he’d said he’d call.

  A smile was already forming as she went to answer. It stopped ringing before she made it to the phone, but a quick look at the caller ID was enough to dash that rising hope in her heart.

  Not Elliot. Darcy. Again.

  And she’d called several times. Twice while she’d been sleeping, and then once while she had been writing in her diary; Shay hadn’t even noticed.

  The low, angry hiss of Darcy’s voice came back to her, echoing through Shay’s memory … Michelline …

  “How do you know about me, Darcy?” she asked, staring at the phone. She wasn’t going to pick up. She didn’t care just then how many times the woman called. “Just who are you?”

  It was, she realized, a question for which she really, really needed to have an answer.

  Too bad no easy answer existed.

  The data search she’d run on Darcy was several years old. She’d stayed off the general search engines, going instead to a public records base—she didn’t want to spend time combing through a thousand Did you go to school with Darcy Montgomery links—but the info she’d come up with was sketchy at best. The latest address wasn’t even listed. It looked like a bust, but Shay knew that address was legit, damn it. She’d been sending books there for two years, and she knew the books were sent out to contest winners and received. She also sent bookmarks and promotional shit, and knew that stuff was received, too.

  Booksellers emailed her to thank her, to update mailing addresses, to request a higher quantity—all sorts of shit.

  Contest winners emailed her to thank her.

  That stuff wasn’t just sitting in a house somewhere.

  So if that stuff was being sent out, just who in the hell was taking shipment if it wasn’t Darcy?

  “This just doesn’t make sense.”

  But lately, that seemed to be the sum of Shay’s entire life.

  Nothing made sense.

  Absolutely nothing.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “YOU’RE SERIOUS.”

  Staring at the computer, reading through the data she’d found, Shay sighed. “As a heart attack.”

  On the other end of the line, Elliot was quiet. Finally, he said, “That’s disturbing on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin, Shay.”

  “Tell me about it. The address where I send books … it doesn’t belong to her. It’s like she doesn’t even exist.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. But she was lying. She had a few ideas, but she wasn’t ready to speak them aloud. Not yet. It would make them too real, for one thing. And she had to handle this now before it got worse. If she told Elliot, he’d probably want to come with her, but he had a business to run and it wasn’t fair that either he or Lorna had to pay for the mess in her life.

  “I heard a new blog popped up.”

  Shay closed her eyes. That hadn’t been the highlight of her day. After the migraine, the revelations, the memories … she’d been sitting at her computer when she saw an email from somebody she knew only vaguely. Apparently a new blog had been set up under her name, but not on her site and not hosted at wordpress.com. Which, Shay had already discovered, was going to make it harder to get down. It was now at www.shaneneilblog.com.

  “Yes, I’ve learned.” Absently, she hit refresh on her screen, checking her email. “I’ve sent a notice to the ISP, but who knows when they’ll do something about it.”

  “Are you still thinking it’s this assistant of yours?”

  One of the emails all but grabbed her around the throat—the subject line was like a red flag waving in front of her.

  It was from Darcy.

  That book where the author loses his identity?

  For a few seconds, Shay sat there, staring at the screen, at that new email, hardly able to breathe.

  “Shay?”

  Swallowing, Shay whispered, “Yeah?” Her fingers were shaking as she clicked on the email.

  “Do you still think it’s her?”

  As she started to read, she mumbled, “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  Was it just her imagination that this message seemed vaguely threatening?

  Shay,

  Did you forget, you were going to send me that book … the one where the author loses his identity for being an idiot? I really want to read that. I can’t wait to see how it ends.

  Darcy

  PS: Where are my new passwords?

  “Elliot … I have to go.”

  Earth’s End was a small town. There, everybody knew everybody else’s business.

  That was why she didn’t do much in the way of business there; she didn’t bank there, she didn’t use an accountant or lawyer there. All of her business was done out of Anchorage.

  She had to drive a lot longer, but it was worth it.

  The drive seemed especially long today and her skin was crawling. All she wanted to do was go back home and maybe dig a moat. It would be hard as hell, considering she’d have to dig through snow and frozen ground, but if she had a moat all around the house, would anybody be able to get in without her help?

  A moat and a drawbridge … to keep her brand-new dragon out …

  Hysteria bubbled up in her throat and she gripped the steering wheel desperately. I can’t wait to see how it ends.

  “Yeah,” Shay muttered, a chill running down her spine despite the fact that she had on her parka, boots, a hat, gloves … despite the fact that her truck was cranking out the heat, despite the fact that it was actually nice and toasty in the interior. She was cold, but it had nothing to do with the temperature, and everything to do with the implied threat.

  I can’t wait to see how it ends.

  “I bet you can’t.”

  But if Darcy thought she was going to bully Shay into silence, bully Shay into anything, she was in for one very rude awakening.

  Shay wasn’t letting anybody take her life over. Maybe it was empty as hell—or had been, until Elliot came along. Maybe she was lonely a lot of the time, and maybe she was afraid of her own shadow. But it was her life, damn it, and she’d protect it.

  So she had to take precautions. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she wasn’t going to take any chances, especially since the m
oat option wasn’t exactly viable.

  If that made her paranoid, so be it.

  Shay could live happily being paranoid. Well, maybe not happily, but it wasn’t any skin off her nose.

  Maybe Darcy shouldn’t have sent that email, because now Shay was being precautious in the extreme. She kept remembering what had happened in that book she’d read—all the hero’s documents had been burned and he’d almost been killed. Nobody knew who he was, really.

  Everything had been on paper for him.

  Most things were online, or in email, for Shay.

  But the paper trail Shay had wasn’t about to get burned up; she figured a nice, safe place for her legal documents would be a safety deposit box. Just in case. Being as paranoid as she was, she also thought she’d leave a set of copies with her lawyer in town.

  She already had a safety deposit box that she kept a few things in, so at least she wouldn’t have the hassle of obtaining the damn thing. Moreover, nobody knew she had the box. She’d gotten it years ago, and had never mentioned it to anyone. Only she had the key. She was also going to stash some cash and other valuables in there. She’d heard all the hype about not storing that kind of stuff in a safety deposit box, but Shay figured she had enough issues to worry about without jumping onto the government conspiracy and bank theft bandwagons.

  She just needed to make sure she’d have resources, if she needed them. That was all. In case her impersonator decided she wanted to do more than just take over Shay’s life online.

  Even as she thought this, she told herself, You’re getting carried away.

  Except she wasn’t so sure. Somebody was stealing her life. Kicking her agent to the curb. Trying to take on a persona for her online when she didn’t want one.

  And sending her creepy little email messages.

  Calling her names that nobody should know.

  Giving her addresses that weren’t real.

  If that wasn’t enough to make somebody paranoid, what was?

  By the time she made it to Anchorage, she had herself good and worked up. Not the ideal way to meet with her lawyer, Noelle.

  Looking like a paranoid lunatic wasn’t going to endear her to the woman.

  Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  The white light of the screen glowed, turning the woman’s face into an even paler oval.

  Highlighting her smile.

  So far, Shay hadn’t answered her calls or emails.

  But that was fine. None of that really mattered. She could still do what needed to be done. Although she did miss talking with her.

  This would all pass, eventually, and things would go back to how they were. With a little bit of work, of course. She wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see that things were a little off-kilter.

  She would have to fix things, but first, she had to make Shay understand why she had to do this. Why she had to do things this way, and why, really, it was just better if Shay would leave things alone and let her handle this end.

  She’d been doing it for years and everything had gone just fine.

  It would be best, though, if she didn’t have to wait too long to get a start on cleaning up the mess. No telling how long it would take to get back in control if she had to take the direct route, so she’d go for the indirect one and see if that would get her anywhere.

  Plus, to be honest, all of the emails she was getting now were a pain in the ass. It was a hassle dealing with Shay’s daily emails, but the hate mail made Shay’s regular email look like a dream.

  At least she’d been smart. She’d set up the blog on its own site, away from WordPress. She’d backed it up so all she had to do was import the posts and everything looked as it had before the site was shut down.

  She had all the comments moderated, and those ugly or negative ones never cleared.

  She’d even designed the new site just like the real website. Once she had access to Shane’s website, she would merge them. But that wasn’t anything she could think about until she had access to the site. Too fucking bad Angie was the one Shay trusted to design it—she’d tried to talk Shay into giving her a chance to do that, but she’d brushed her off. Angie’s always done it and she does a good job. Why fix what isn’t broke?

  But once she had access to the site, she could lock Angie out, too. She’d damn well do it; should have already done it.

  Which was what she was working on now. It would be hard, because she couldn’t even access the email accounts anymore. Except one. It was an old one, one Shay had used years ago when she was still on AOL. She’d found the password in one of the old emails she’d printed out, stored in one of her many file boxes.

  She’d get back in. Take the site and then move it away from that bitch Angie. Once it was out of Angie’s control, it would be harder for Shay to do anything about it. She could work on convincing Shay that she needed to just relax and let her handle this. She would even take over Angie’s job. There wasn’t anything Angie did that she couldn’t handle anyway.

  It would all work out.

  In the end, she’d get this all done, all taken care of. Once things settled down, it would all be okay.

  She knew what she was doing … she’d been doing it a long, long time, after all.

  Angie Lassiter knew weird.

  She was an artist. She worked with writers. She knew weird. And she liked weird, for the most part. But this …

  Scowling, she read the email and then read it a second time. It was enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. It sounded like Shay. If Shay had been kind of cracking under the pressure. And yeah, Shay had enough to be stressed about.

  And the email address was definitely one she recognized. It had been one of Shay’s first, but Angie hadn’t seen her use that one in years.

  Oh, shit, Angie, I just can’t handle it. I think I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve been locked out of my site and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m freaked out and I’m scared and this is just so insane.

  You’re the web genius—isn’t there something you can do about this? You know how to get me back in, right? Please, you’ve got to say you know how to fix this because I’m going to really, really lose it if you don’t … lol … like I haven’t already lost it, but man, I’m going to lose it bad and I mean postal bad if I don’t get my website back.

  That crazy person is trying to ruin me or something. Can’t you do something …

  And the ramblings just went on. And on. Like insane bullshit. No. Not like insane bullshit. It was insane bullshit.

  No matter how much it sounded like Shay, the thing ranked so high on Angie’s bullshit meter, it was almost off the charts.

  Not to mention that the idiot writing this shit just had no clue what she was doing—she thought this would do it? That some freak trying to take Shay’s life over would be the thing to break her?

  After what Shay had lived through?

  No. She’d lived through the likes of hell people couldn’t imagine and it hadn’t broken her. This crazy bitch, whoever she was, didn’t have any idea just what kind of steel Shay had in her …

  “The steel,” Angie muttered. Sometimes, Angie let herself forget about the strength Shay had. Scowling, she leaned back and pulled up another email. She’d been ignoring it, unable to bring herself to answer it. Even after all this time, she wanted to protect Shay, shelter her from the bad shit. But there wasn’t any way to protect Shay when the bad seemed to hunt her down, when the bad came in the form of memories creeping out of her clouded mind.

  Was my name Michelline? I’m not talking about the name change after Mom. From before. When I was little.

  “Michelline …” Angie closed her eyes. “Steel, Ang. She’s got steel inside her.”

  Then she clicked back to the other email and printed it out. She’d keep a copy and she’d forward it to Shay. That was about as much as she was going to do with it. But she did need to answer Shay. She’d been holding back, tr
ying to figure out how to answer that question, but there was no right way.

  Yes … you were Michelline. That was the truth, but it wasn’t a truth she wanted to give to her adopted sister. It wasn’t a truth her mom had ever shared. Angie knew some of the details about Shay’s earlier years, but that was information she’d ferreted out on her own.

  She’d been eleven when Shay came to live with them. Old enough to remember, and old enough to understand that bad things had happened to the pretty little girl who hid from everybody except their mother.

  Virna told them to call her Michelle.

  But after a week had passed, the little girl had started to talk to Angie, and she had once whispered, “Michelle isn’t my name … it’s Michelline.”

  “Michelline …” Angie rubbed her hands over her eyes and then groaned, leaning back in the seat. “Shit.”

  Okay. She needed to handle one problem at a time. The crazy first, because that was easy. Or easier. Leaning over the desk, she studied the email again. It was from Shay’s imposter, Angie knew it. Shay needed answers … and Angie wouldn’t mind a few herself. And she was curious. Just how far would this person go?

  Common sense told Angie that she needed to be careful.

  And she would be careful—she’d learned caution the hard way. The attack on Shay, her mother’s murder. Yeah, she was careful.

  She didn’t leave the house all that often, and she didn’t open her door to strangers. Plus, she had an ace in the hole. Something not too many people knew: Angie lived with a big, mean cop and they had a big, mean dog. Plus, she was pretty mean herself, even if she wasn’t precisely big. This chick, whoever she was, was a stupid coward, hiding behind computers and lies.

  Hunching over the keyboard, she emailed back.

  Considering all the trouble you’re having, I’ll feel better if I call. I’m calling your house.

  She smiled thinly as she hit send and then grabbed the phone.

  She’d barely managed to dial Shay’s number before the response appeared.

  Oh, call my cell—please! I’m having some trouble with the number at home and … well, look. This is weird, but I think … I think somebody might be—Shit. You’ll think I’m crazy, or crazier, anyway! But can you call my cell? It’s a new one. I bought it a few weeks ago and you don’t have the number yet.