The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5)

by Krista Sandor

  The counselors at the shelter said this was common. Battered women often experienced moments where they were entirely positive their abuser was just steps away in a restaurant or walking down the street directly into their path. These faux sightings could happen anywhere, at any time.

  Lindsey dialed and waited.

  “Is that you, Lindsey?”

  “Claire!” The word came out in a tight sob.

  “Lindsey, are you all right?”

  She nodded, then remembered Claire couldn’t see her. “Where is he right now?”

  “He’s here, in Houston. It’s Wednesday. You know he’s in surgery.”

  Lindsey squeezed her eyes shut. The Brett Mathews the world knew was a talented surgeon. A man dedicated to his work and to his community. His office walls were lined with plaques and diplomas. Patients spoke of him as if he were a god. But Lindsey had known the other side of the good doctor. The dark side. The brutal side. The side that would hold a gun to her head and whisper, “If you ever try to leave me, I’ll hunt you down, and I’ll kill you.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I just wanted to make sure,” Lindsey said in a shaky breath. She opened her eyes and watched the man, who was not her ex-fiancé, pick up the last remaining pieces of glass.

  “I wish I could have done more for you, Lindsey—helped you before it came to this. I never imagined my brother-in-law could be so...”

  Lindsey pressed a hand to her belly. “He doesn’t know about my situation, that’s the important thing.”

  She knew not to mention anything about the baby over the phone.

  She had been living underground, in hotels and shelters, and off the grid for the last three months preparing to start a new life. With the help of the shelter’s free legal services, she had a new last name and a new social security number. But Claire was the only person, besides Rosemary, who knew she was pregnant.

  Claire had been with Brett’s younger brother, Mason, since she was fifteen years old and married him when she turned eighteen. Brett, Claire, and Mason were from the same dead end west Texas town and had all bounced around in foster care for the majority of their youth. They escaped their circumstances, studied medicine, and become physicians.

  Lindsey was terrified when she ran into Claire at the drugstore just as she was purchasing a home pregnancy test. But Claire had sworn she wouldn’t breathe a word of Lindsey’s pregnancy to anyone, not even to her husband.

  “No, he doesn’t know, but...,” Claire paused.

  “But, what?” Lindsey asked.

  Claire let out a breath. “Brett’s told people that you pawned all the jewelry he’d given you and stole pain meds from his office. He’s making you out to be a junkie who ran out on him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lindsey said, shaking her head. “I’m never going to see him again. I’m never going back to Houston. That life is over.” She paused. She needed to end the call. “Thank you for being a friend when I needed it most. I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I’m going. It’s part of my safety plan. I better hang—”

  “Were you able to get your camera bag?” Claire asked, sliding in the question.

  It was a risk, but last week, Lindsey had left a cryptic message with Claire’s office asking if she could retrieve her old Nikon camera bag from Brett’s home and send it to a law office that did pro bono work for the shelter. She didn’t even know if Claire had gotten the message, but a day before she departed Houston, the camera bag arrived at the shelter.

  “I did. Thank you. Brett kept all my camera equipment locked up. How did you get it?”

  “Just by luck. Mason and I were over at Brett’s last week. He put all your things into boxes. I saw the old Nikon camera bag and tucked it into my purse. There were some old film canisters tucked inside. Did you need those?”

  Lindsey swallowed hard. She’d documented each beating with that Nikon. The undeveloped film sat in silent spools. Its secrets locked inside light-sensitive silver halide crystals.

  Lindsey glanced down the hall as her waitress placed a mug and a plate with her sandwich on the table. She needed to get off the phone. There was a possibility Brett could get access to his sister-in-law’s phone records.

  “Claire, I’m sorry. I need to go. I shouldn’t have even made this call.” She took a steadying breath. “Goodbye, I’ll never forget your kindness.”

  “One last thing,” Claire said, urgency coating her words. “Keep the baby safe. That’s all that matters.”

  The breath caught in Lindsey’s throat at the mention of her unborn child. But before she could say another word, the line was dead.

  Welcome to Langley Park.

  Lindsey tightened her grip on the steering wheel as she passed the welcome sign and entered the town. This place was going to be her home. It all started coming back to her: the streets named after plant life native to the region, the quaint town center, and the surrounding neighborhood of charming Tudor, bungalow, and Federal style homes.

  Last time she had been to Langley Park, it was the height of summer. The town was vibrant with color and life. Now it was just waking up from winter’s dark slumber. The trees were just beginning to come back to life. Crimson buds lined the spindly branches of the red maples and shoots of green were visible on the bur oaks.

  Nature’s rebirth. Could it be hers, too?

  She headed north onto Aster Road, and the Langley Park Botanic Gardens came into view. The gardens were on the east side of the town center and beyond them, Lake Boley. She pulled over and stared at a large play structure on the grassy lawn. There was a chill in the March air, but a few children were out taking turns crossing the monkey bars as a cluster of men and women chatted nearby sipping coffee.

  She bit her lip. It was too soon to think she was in the clear, too early to assume that the safe, quiet life she desperately wanted was just within her grasp. She rubbed her arms and turned up the heater. It was much colder here than it was in Houston.

  She thought back to Claire’s words and the story Brett was telling to explain her disappearance. He wasn’t lying about one aspect of her escape. She had taken the jewelry he’d given her and pawned it. The thought of those diamonds and emeralds turned her stomach. Each gift had come after an assault. Each gift had come with the empty promise that he would never hurt her again, that he couldn’t live without her, and that if she would just stop pushing his buttons, he wouldn’t have to punish her.

  She earned those jewels. She paid for each sparkling gem with blood and tears.

  Lindsey shifted the car into gear and glanced at the children. She slowed down as she approached the intersection of Aster and Prairie Rose Street, and the Langley Park Community Recreation Center came into view. It had changed, the entrance looked different, but she had always remembered the giant oaks. They still towered over the building. She bit the inside of her cheek as the memories of her summer spent here as a camp counselor flooded back.

  Memories of Nick Kincade. Memories of his kisses. Memories of those blue eyes. Memories of that night in the boathouse. Memories of the sentence that crushed her heart.

  I never wanted to fall in love with you.

  She blinked back tears. It would be hard coming back to Langley Park, but she needed Rosemary. She had no other family she could depend on. With the baby coming, she needed to be somewhere safe. Langley Park was the best place for her child. And that’s what mattered.

  She had survived her father’s abandonment, Nick’s rejection, and Brett’s abuse. She would survive the ghosts of Langley Park.

  Lindsey dropped a hand to her abdomen. “No man is going to decide our fate. No man is going to dictate our happiness. No man is ever going to hurt us,” she whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s just you and me, little one. Let’s go home.”

  8

  “Are you about ready, Nick? We need to head over to Em and Michael’s.”

  Nick ran a hand over his face and pulled on a pair of jeans. He was thirty-two years old
and living out of a suitcase in his friend Sam Sinclair’s guest room in Langley Park. It could best be described as more of a storage locker than an actual bedroom.

  Sam knocked twice and opened the door. He looked Nick up and down. “I can see why you don’t have any lady friends. Blond hair, blue eyes, flies airplanes, ripped as fuck. It’s got to be hard being you.”

  Nick shook his head and put on a shirt. “I don’t know, buddy,” he called back, “I guess they all like the giant, ginger dudes with tats.”

  Sam ran a hand through his mess of auburn curls. “We’re just two bachelors who are unlucky in love, I guess. Would you have pictured us like this back when we were eighteen?”

  Nick laughed. “Those were good days.”

  Nick and Sam had met when they volunteered to go to Honduras and build schools the year after they graduated high school. Sam was a good friend, and he knew a lot about Nick—but not everything.

  Sam maneuvered his way into the room. “I have a ton of shit, don’t I?” Sam asked, moving a stack of old comic books off a chair and taking a seat.

  “You have lived in this town all your life. I’d imagine accumulating stuff is easy to do.”

  Sam nodded but didn’t give one of his trademark snarky replies.

  Nick grabbed a jacket and Sam followed him out of the bungalow.

  Sam zipped up his jacket. “You want to walk? You know what they say, ‘Walkable and family friendly, everyone’s clamoring to move into Langley Park.’ ”

  “That is what they say,” Nick echoed.

  The men fell into step. Sam lived in a 1930s bungalow on the west side of the town. It was about a fifteen-minute walk to Em and Michael’s Foursquare style home on the southside of Langley Park.

  “What does Michael need help with?” Nick asked.

  Sam let out a breath. “Something in the baby’s room. I still can’t believe my cousin and Em are expecting a baby. I mean, a baby, dude?”

  “They seem pretty happy about it,” Nick replied.

  “Yeah, they do,” Sam conceded.

  They walked a few paces in silence.

  “Have you ever thought about it?” Sam asked. “You know the whole ‘having a family’ thing.”

  A muscle ticked in Nick’s cheek. “You know how it was for me growing up with my dad. It’s not in the cards for me. I couldn’t face myself if I turned out to be like my father.”

  “Single pilot screwing stewardesses mid-flight doesn’t sound like such a bad gig,” Sam said.

  His friend was trying to lighten the conversation, but Nick had to set him straight. “First of all, they’re flight attendants, and second, nobody does any screwing mid-flight—especially not the pilot.”

  “You’re killing my whole Nick Kincade pilot fantasy, man,” Sam said as they rounded the corner onto Em and Michael’s street, Foxglove Lane.

  They stopped in front of the house. The front bedroom window was open, and strange moaning sounds floated out onto the breeze.

  Nick bit back a laugh. “Are they…”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Sam said, covering his ears and shaking his head.

  “Maybe we should take a walk around the block?”

  “One lap,” Sam said, then glanced up at the window. “Maybe two.”

  Nick threw his friend an amused grin. Sam was a big reason he had decided to make Langley Park his home. Years ago, when the two met in Honduras, he couldn’t believe it when Sam said he was from Langley Park, Kansas. Nick had almost told him about the summer he’d spent there, but he wanted to keep his memories of Lindsey all to himself, frozen in time. If he had spoken about her, Sam would have asked what happened. He would have wanted to know why the fairytale didn’t come true.

  This is just the beginning.

  There would be moments when he’d swear he had heard Lindsey’s voice whisper those five words, their five words. He would swear he smelled her scent, all sweet cream and summer rain. And when he was flying, he’d swear it was the blue-green of her eyes calling to him in the horizon.

  But it wasn’t the beginning. It was the end. It ended with his mother taking his father back. It ended with him not getting to say goodbye to Lindsey. It ended with a half-written letter he knew had broken her heart. It also ended with his father who punched him so hard in the gut on the way to the airport that he had three bruised ribs—all because he wanted to make sure Nick hadn’t gone soft after a summer living under his aunt’s roof.

  Nick and Sam finished their second lap around Foxglove Lane and walked back up the path to Michael and Em’s place, but the amorous couple wasn’t quite finished.

  Sam looked at his watch. “I’m knocking. I don’t know if they’re going to answer, but we can’t be huffing it around the block all damn day.”

  Things inside the Foursquare sounded like they were coming to an end, and Nick gestured for him to go ahead.

  Sam knocked and folded his arms. A few minutes later, Michael opened the door.

  “What the hell’s going on in there?” Sam asked.

  Michael joined them on the porch and pulled a ball cap over his tousled auburn hair. He looked like a Hoover had attacked him.

  Nick met Michael’s gaze and mouthed, “Holy shit, dude.”

  “Don’t let anyone tell you pregnancy is the pits, boys,” Michael said, adjusting his hat. “I may be making two a.m. trips to Pete’s Organic Grocer for ice cream, bananas, and bacon…”

  Nick and Sam grimaced in unison.

  “But, it certainly has its perks,” Michael said, grinning like an idiot.

  Sam gave his cousin a playful shove. “You and Em are the last hope for the ginger race. Science says we’re a dying breed. So by all means, go make all the redheaded babies you two possibly can.”

  Nick smiled as he watched the cousins’ exchange. He had grown to care about Michael and Em. They were starting to feel like family. But he sure as hell didn’t want to discuss their sex life. He gestured toward the house next door. “Have the new owners moved in yet? You know, into the Foursquare you didn’t sell to me.”

  It was Em’s old house, a lovely 1930s Foursquare similar to Michael’s. She needed to sell it so her father could purchase an assisted living cottage in the nearby Langley Park Senior Living Campus. He required more intensive medical care for a respiratory ailment, and the campus offered everything he needed to live a more fulfilling life. Mrs. G, a retired teacher who seemed to have been everyone’s third-grade teacher in Langley Park, purchased the home for a family member. Nick had only run into Mrs. G a few times, but something about her felt familiar.

  “Dude?” Sam said, feigning surprise. “You don’t like crashing at my place?”

  The last thing Nick wanted to do was hurt Sam’s feelings. “You know I appreciate your hospitality, buddy. But now that I’m going to be in Langley Park permanently, I need to find a place that doesn’t include waking up to you singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin!’”

  Sam threw him a cheeky grin. “You have something against Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, Kincade?”

  Em joined them on the porch. “You got the job?”

  He nodded. “You’re looking at the Kansas City Downtown Airport’s newest Director of Aviation. I start next week.”

  Most people had no clue what a director of aviation did—let alone, that the position even existed. When he’d told Sam about getting the job, his friend met him with a blank expression until he explained that he was in charge of all aspects of the airport: flight tracking, aircraft rentals, flight training, maintenance, fueling. The list went on and on. While the airport wasn’t as large as Kansas City’s main airport, the downtown airport was still an incredibly busy airfield with over seven hundred aircraft, from single-engine, two-seaters to sleek corporate jets, taking off or landing every day.

  Sam clapped him on the back. “Hearts are breaking at every port. Airports, that is. Captain Nick is putting down roots.”

  Em’s expression darkened. “Are you going to miss flying?”<
br />
  “I’ll still get to fly,” Nick answered. “I’ll run the airport, and I may pick up some corporate flights if the opportunity presents itself. Plus, I’ve always got my little four-seater Cessna Skyhawk I can take up anytime I want. Right now, I need to figure out a more permanent living situation.”

  “Seriously, man,” Sam said, all of his teasing tone gone. “You’re always welcome at my place. You know that.”

  Nick nodded. He never thought he would put down roots anywhere, but Langley Park was the first place that felt like it could be his home.

  “Wait a second,” Em said. She shared a look with Michael. “Nick, you should move into our carriage house apartment until you find a place in Langley Park.”

  Nearly all the homes in the town came with freestanding garages or carriage houses. Often, homeowners added a finished second-floor apartment to this space.

  “Absolutely,” Michael said. “Em and I grew up listening to Sam belt out show tunes. It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long.”

  Sam chuckled and shook his head.

  “What about your mom?” Nick asked. Em’s mother was coming in from Australia any day now for a visit. “Won’t she need the carriage house?”

  Em shook her head. “She can stay in our guest room in the Foursquare.”

  As much as Nick loved Sam, the thought of having a little privacy and some space to hunker down and prepare for his new position was too good to pass up.

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it. I’m ready to jump when something goes on the market in the area—so I shouldn’t be in your hair for too long. I do have an aunt nearby in Mission Springs. She’s offered to let me stay with her, but that would involve weekly Euchre games with her Junior League ladies. I politely declined.”