by Jen Talty
“What’s very concerning is that the company said they called both Destiny and the owner of the pet shelter, and both said it was an accident,” Blaine said.
“When? That doesn’t make any sense. She’s been with me since she closed up shop this evening.”
“Could she have taken a call you don’t know about?” Scott asked.
“No. We went home, took a shower—”
“Together?” Blaine asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. Let’s just say she couldn’t have taken a call and besides, why would she say it was okay?”
“The alarm actually went off at six fifteen,” Blaine said.
Mason glanced at his watch. “We left at six ten.”
“Why did we get dispatched an hour later then?” Scott asked.
“Because the owner of the pet rescue came back to check on something, and one of the puppies is missing,” Blaine said. “That made me check on Destiny’s place, and the door was jimmied.”
“You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?” Mason asked. “Especially since Destiny got a strange Ho Ho text.”
“Misdirection,” Blaine said. “We’re probably looking for nothing here, except a puppy is missing.”
“All a part of making sure we’re not looking at anything else,” Mason said.
“Which is why I’m leaving to go check on Trip and his associates while you take Destiny through her shop.”
“You got it, boss.” He waved to Destiny, signaling her to come over. She did so right away and was standing in front of him in five seconds flat.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Mason slid his arm around Destiny’s waist. “I need to know if anything was taken or tampered with.”
“Sure thing.”
He followed her through the store. “There isn’t much of value here. Just all these invitation and stationary samples.”
“Blaine mentioned a few filing cabinets were open in your office.”
“I always close them. I’m weird that way,” she said with tension dripping from each word as they slowly left her lips.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve watched you come up behind me and close a drawer I neglected to secure all the way.”
She pushed back the door to her office, glancing once over her shoulder. “What are you really thinking?”
“That we are wasting our time here.”
She sat down at her desk and lifted open her laptop. “Oh, my God.”
“What is it?”
“Sorry, it’s just an email from my Uncle Richard. Seems one of his best friends is in the hospital.”
That was a quick response, and if he was anyone else, he might believe her, but she was lying.
The question was: Why?
She closed the laptop. “I should have brought this home with me, but then I would end up working.”
“Bring it home tonight.” Because he planned on taking a look at it while she slept.
The rest of the evening had been filled with a bit of tension.
Destiny couldn’t put her finger on the source, but she suspected that Mason knew she was lying about the email. Another reason she should call things off.
“Are you cold?” Mason asked as they turned off Main Street, heading for home.
“A little,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands, though the goosebumps weren’t caused by the chill in the air. “If I never see another Ho Ho, I’ll be a happy woman.”
“I know what you mean.” He wrapped his arm around her waist.
“You have to have an opinion or theory about who broke into the pet store. I mean, who steals a puppy?”
“Normally, I would suggest teenagers. But things are too weird here right now, so I’m going to guess everything is connected to Trip, Charleston, and fucking Hostess Ho Hos”
She contemplated telling him the truth about the email, but she wanted to read it again and maybe call Sterling.
No, definitely call Sterling.
The night sky was filled with bright stars as they turned up the pathway to the cottage. Coop started barking, pulling hard on his leash.
“Knock it off, Coop,” Mason said.
“Why’d you give him your last name?” she asked, making clucking noises, trying to get the dog’s attention, who tried to drag Mason toward her house.
“My mom named him. She said at this point, it was the only way to keep the family name going, only I had him neutered, so that’s not happening.”
Destiny covered her mouth, laughing. “That’s kind of mean.”
“My mom is all about the grandbabies.”
“I guess most mothers are,” she mumbled.
“Coop. Heel,” Mason said, yanking on the leash.
The dog whined but relented. Coop jumped up on the front door, barking wildly, his tail wagging back and forth like spectators at a tennis match.
“What is up with you?” Mason asked.
“Big, old goofball, this one.” She snapped her fingers, and Coop turned his head.
That’s when she heard the yelp of a puppy.
Mason whipped his head in her direction. “Did you hear that?”
She nodded as Coop started barking again.
“Quiet,” Mason commanded.
She strained her ear, and the sound of a high-pitched bark echoed in the night air.
“It’s coming from inside.” Mason hit the keypad on the lock. He pushed open the door and out raced a little German shepherd puppy.
“What the hell?” She bent over, picking up the animal. “How on earth did you get in here?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Mason said with a deep scowl as he pulled out his phone.
She rubbed the dog’s head as she took a step toward the door.
“Stay outside,” Mason said, handing her the leash to Coop, who tried to jump up to get a good whiff of the puppy.
“Why?”
“This is a crime scene, and I need to call it in.” He glared.
“What?”
“That’s the missing dog.”
“Oh,” she whispered. Sitting down on the bottom of the stairs, she held the puppy in her lap. Coop sniffed and licked wildly while the puppy did the same. Fast friends, these two.
In the distance, a quick burst of a siren rang out.
That was fast. Well, the police station was only a few blocks away.
Why the hell would someone steal a dog and put it in her house?
Her phone buzzed. She snagged it from her back pocket, noticing she had a text message.
“What’s the matter?”
She jumped at the sound of Mason’s voice behind her. “Shit, you scared me.”
“Looks like something on your phone scared you first.”
Private Number: Like my present? Dad.
“My father is dead,” she stumbled over the lie. She had no idea where her biological father was and didn’t care.
Mason handed her the picture of her and Lucas with a sticky note attached that read: Where is my grandchild? “This was on the mantel.”
She swallowed a guttural sob. “Someone was in the house?”
“Someone who thinks they are your father.”
Mason knew without a doubt that Destiny hadn’t stolen the puppy or broke into her own business. That would have been impossible.
But what he didn’t know was why did someone think she was their daughter?
He glanced down at his phone and stared at all the images and information that had come up on Destiny. Nothing there linked her to George, Trip, or a girl named Heidi.
Mason let out a long breath. Crickets chirped their happy song, filling the air with the sounds of summer.
“Before Blaine gets here, I need to ask you something, and I don’t want you getting mad at me.”
“That sounds like I’m going to be pissed as hell.”
He let out a sarcastic chuckle. “What upset you on your computer earlier, and I don’t think it was
an email from your uncle.”
She sat on the porch in one of the new Adirondack chairs he’d purchased just a few days before her arrival with the puppy in her lap and Coop at her feet. He barely looked up at the weight of Mason’s feet on the steps.
So much for being his best friend.
He leaned against the post and crossed his arms. “Please be honest with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Excuse me?” he said, shoving his finger in his ear, because no way could he have heard her correctly. “Why not?”
Her eyelids closed over her blue orbs of sweetness. “I’m not allowed to.”
“What?”
“You know what a gag order is, right?”
“Of course I do, but what does one of those have to do with your computer and today’s break-in?” Mason asked, doing his best not to go full out interrogator on his girlfriend, because that would end very badly.
“The man in the picture. The father of the child I lost. He’s not a nice man, and I’m not allowed to discuss it.”
He had been dying to ask her who that man was and when she’d lost the baby, but he figured it would be best to do so in a week or so. Now he wished he’d done it on the spot. “Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said.
“Could he have something to do with Trip and George?” Mason rubbed his temples as his mind tried to connect all the dots.
“No.”
“And how can you be sure?”
“Because he’s in prison.” She stood, handing the puppy over to him. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
“Can’t until we talk to Blaine, and then we’re sleeping at my place tonight.”
“I want to sleep alone.”
“I have an extra room, you know that.”
Headlights cut through the trees, and Blaine’s truck pulled into the driveway.
He reached out, cupping her chin. “My trust for women isn’t very high, and you know why.”
“I wish I could tell you the entire truth, but I can’t. At least not right now.”
“My mother has always told me it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved; only I’ve lost a few times, and I don’t want to lose with you too.”
Destiny patted his chest. “Don’t let what Julia did to you control you like that. She’s not worth it, and you’re a good man. You’ll find the right woman.”
“Maybe I have.” He arched a brow. “But we’re talking about you here, not me here.”
She pointed toward Blaine who had just stepped from the vehicle. “Your boss is here.”
“Please don’t force my hand. I need to know who the man is in the picture. I want to see what upset you back at your shop. And I want to know why you think someone is sending you weird text messages, because I know you’re keeping something from me.”
“Do what you have to,” she said. “Can I go use the bathroom?”
He fished his keys out of his front pocket while the puppy licked his face. “Use the one in my house. You’ll need to give an official statement to Blaine.”
“All right.”
He watched as Coop followed her into his home.
“Where’s she going?”
“I think to use the phone.” Luckily, she’d forgotten to take her laptop.
Mason handed the puppy to Blaine and sat down on the steps, firing up Destiny’s laptop. It immediately asked for a password. “Shit,” he mumbled.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Something spooked her back at the shop. Not to mention when I asked her about this.” Mason handed Blaine the picture with the Post-It note. “When I pressed for information, she told me she was under a gag order.”
“More like witness protection order,” Blaine said.
“What?”
“That’s Lucas Montana.”
Mason searched his brain, but the name didn’t trigger anything. “I have no idea who that is.”
“Maybe a year and a half ago, he was arrested for a plethora of charges. He ended up pleading guilty to a few lesser charges, but it was his girlfriend who gave the Feds enough to make the arrest.”
“How do you know that?”
“Emma filled me in on the case, but Lucas’ girlfriend is supposed to be dead.”
“Fuck me,” Mason said under his breath as he started to put two and two together. He snagged his phone and did a Google search for Lucas Montana, and there he found it.
Heidi Storm.
“So, I guess this fucker just found her.”
“Maybe. But to my knowledge, Lucas has no ties to George Charleston. Two completely different organized crime rings.”
“They are all connected,” Mason said.
“Lucas and his girlfriend ran illegal poker tables.”
“Jesus. Do you know why she turned on him?”
“A lot of the details are redacted. There was no media allowed in the courtroom. But I do remember hearing that his little poker tables weren’t the brunt of his business, and he went down for drug smuggling as well.”
“I bet her Uncle Richard is her handler.” God, it all made perfect sense now. She had to lie or risk losing the protection of the FBI. And of course, there was her asshole ex-boyfriend, Lucas. The more he scanned the information on the internet, the more he wanted to strangle the man himself. “And if I know Destiny like I think I do, she’s going to try to leave.”
“Well, then, stop her. For now, I’m going to bring this thing back to the pet store before I decide to take it home to Hannah. That’s all she wanted for her birthday, and Daddy is in the dog house because I got her a little brother or sister, and that’s just not good enough.”
“Keep the pooch,” Mason said.
“I’ll be back in fifteen.”
Mason laughed, knowing full well that the puppy was headed to Blaine’s house, not back to the pound.
He made his way inside the cottage and settled himself on the sofa. He did another Google search of Destiny and her uncle.
Then he did one of just her uncle.
All the same stuff came up.
The Feds were good.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Destiny might not be exactly who she said she was, but she was a good person stuck in the middle of a bad situation, this he knew for sure.
Now, all he had to do was get Destiny to trust him with the truth.
12
Destiny swallowed the bile that smacked the back of her throat like a water balloon exploding, stinging the skin before the warm water trickled down. She took out her phone and pulled up the email that had come from a man by the name of George Charleston.
The same man that was being investigated by the FBI.
He had to have something to do with Lucas, or why bother fucking with her?
Destiny? That’s what you’re going by now? How awful for a father to know that his only daughter changed her name.
Destiny scrolled down to the jpeg attachments. Her heart beat out of her chest and into her throat like a jackhammer.
“Shit,” she held back a scream as she stared at a picture of Kate and her youngest child asleep in her lap. The image had been taken just a few hours ago.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Whoever this George guy was, he was watching her, and that couldn’t be good.
If you want the children to stay safe, you will get in your car, drive to the address at the bottom of this email, and meet with your father.
She glanced to the bottom. The location was only about a half hour away.
Her life certainly wasn’t worth saving over three innocent children that had nothing to do with Lucas, his shady dealings, or his family.
And she knew without a doubt that Lucas was behind this. Very few people knew the truth about her father running off and her mother killing herself. She’d rewritten that part of her narrative long before the FBI gave her a new identity.
“You win, Lucas,” she whispered, resolved to the fact she’d do exactly what
George asked. No questions.
You have until six in the morning. Fail to meet me there, and Kate’s children start dying. It won’t end there, either. Kate, her husband, Mason’s parents, his dog, and then him. They will all die because you and your stupid mother left me without a word.
“What?” For her entire childhood, her mother told her that her father had run out on them. Her mother constantly claimed that she looked for him for years but could never find him. She blamed him for all their financial troubles and told Destiny that her father was a deadbeat dad.
What troubled her, however, was that her name hadn’t been Charleston.
It had been Storm.
None of this made sense, but she couldn’t let anything happen to Mason’s family. Not because of her.
Rubbing her stomach, she bit back the tears. One minute she was about to embark on the most important job she’d ever have as a human being, and with the swift kick of her boyfriend’s boots, it all disappeared.
The first beating Lucas dished out resulted in a black eye, a split lip, and a concussion that prompted a trip to the ER where she found out she was two months pregnant. Lucas swore it was the drugs that made him hit her, and he swore he’d give them up.
And he did.
But that didn’t last.
The second beating landed her in the ER where the doctor informed her that the blows to her stomach had caused the placenta to separate from the uterus, and her baby had died.
That’s when she knew she needed to leave Lucas, only that proved to be near impossible.
Enter the FBI.
Only she didn’t think the FBI could help her this time.
Turning off her phone, she collected the cross-stitch she’d started for her little girl along with the picture of her and Lucas and stuffed them in her purse. She didn’t need anything else. She had gas in the car, and since she’s going to meet someone who was most likely going to kill her, she figured she looked nice enough in her shorts and summer top.
Witness protection was nice while it lasted.
She peeked through the window. Coop whined at her heels. “You be a good boy and stay inside.”