Secrets at Cedar Cabin

by Colleen Coble

  Ava had a sinking feeling this was the last stop before she and the rest of the girls were loaded aboard a ship and sent overseas—something that didn’t bear thinking about. The compound sat on a promontory overlooking the water, and from the bank of windows in the back room, she saw steps leading down to the water. Oh to be able to run down those steps and swim to the island in the distance.

  She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and ran through her options. She used to be a strong swimmer, and she thought she could make it if she could just get out of this house. The waves didn’t look that big, and there was no storm brewing. But her despair made the attempt already seem impossible. It had been years since she’d been in the water.

  The warehouse itself was cold and austere with concrete walls and floors. Their rooms were like prison cells, but even they were preferable to what awaited them.

  The thought of being forced to dance in a strange country made her shudder. If she ever got away from her captors, she’d be unlikely to find help. Six other girls were with her and Jessica, two in each bedroom. They were all tense, but Ava wasn’t sure if they would help her escape. They might think they’d be moved before she could get back, and it was a distinct possibility. More likely she’d be killed trying to escape. Or caught and punished.

  She wetted her lips and looked around at the other girls as they chowed down on the pizza their captors had brought. A man was stationed outside at the front and one at the back. She probably could outrun both of them. She couldn’t ask any of the girls for help though, not with Maly sitting there with her pursed lips and evil eyes like some kind of deadly spider.

  And that’s exactly what Maly was—a spider who preyed on the pain of others.

  She swallowed the last bite of her pepperoni pizza, then washed it down with Pepsi. It was already cold by the time they’d gotten here with it, and it probably wasn’t very good when it was hot. It was no Rocco’s, that was for sure. She skirted past Maly and headed for the bedroom.

  “Where you going?” Maly called after her.

  She held up her hands. “To wash up and go to the bathroom.”

  “Not gone long.”

  Did Maly suspect something from her manner? Ava grunted and moved on down the hall. She didn’t dare act too pleasant or conciliatory or her captor would be sure to know something was up. If there was one thing Ava was known for, it was her spark, that last little bit of rebellion they’d never quite squelched. Even training her hands and feet to flex as far as necessary for the Apsara dancing had taken great determination and practice.

  She shut the door and locked it behind her, then studied the window. From here she couldn’t see the guard at the back, and she guessed he was closer to the back door. She stepped into the tub and fingered the lock on the window. It flipped easily without a sound, but she didn’t dare open it, not unless there was some way to make a commotion to cover the noise.

  Maybe later tonight she could talk Jessica into helping her. Jessica was new and fresh, so she might be brave enough to help. Maybe she was a strong swimmer too. It was worth talking about.

  Ava relocked the window in case Maly checked it out, then went back to the living room. It would take patience and careful planning, but Ava might be able to pull this off now that they were in the country. She had been a top track star in high school as well as winning most swimming competitions she’d entered, but that had been so many years ago. So many years without practice.

  She had to try, but she suspected she’d be food for the fishes by the time it was all over.

  Shauna couldn’t take her eyes off her sister as Bailey took in her and Zach’s house and studied the pictures of Alex on the end tables. It had taken all Shauna’s persuasive skills to talk Bailey into staying here tonight instead of going to the cabin by herself. Lance and Zach had left to gather the cat and a few things for Bailey for the night while the girls went home to get the room ready. Ellie had vanished into the spare room, ostensibly to ready it for Bailey, but Shauna knew her friend was trying to give her time with her new sister.

  She could sense Bailey still hadn’t fully accepted the truth of what her mother had done, and she couldn’t blame her. Bailey’s mom had buried so many secrets Shauna wasn’t sure they’d ever know the full truth of what all she did and why. And they could never ask her.

  She set the kettle on to heat milk for hot chocolate and plated some Rainier cherry-almond crumble she’d made earlier in the day. Bailey followed her into the kitchen and hopped onto a stool at the island bar.

  She curled her fingers around the mug of hot chocolate Shauna slid her way. “Thanks. That wind got cold.” She looked at the crumble. “Are those yellow cherries?”

  “Rainier cherries have a lot of yellow in them along with some red. They’re wonderful.” Shauna warmed a square of crumble in the microwave, then put it in front of Bailey.

  Bailey took a forkful of the treat and smiled. “Delicious.” She put down her fork, and her smile faded. “I can’t quite wrap my head around all this, Shauna. If there’s no record of my birth, why are you so sure Mom kidnapped me? I mean, you were only eight. Maybe the baby died.”

  Or maybe you aren’t remembering correctly. Though Bailey didn’t say the words, Shauna saw the thought hovering in her eyes. Though her doubt shouldn’t have stung, it did.

  Shauna pulled out her phone and reversed the camera for a selfie. She stepped around to Bailey’s side and snapped a picture of the two of them together, then handed the phone to Bailey with the picture on the screen. “You tell me what the truth is.”

  Bailey stared at the picture. “I’m not denying we look a lot alike. Don’t they say everyone has a double?”

  “You’re the right age, and we look exactly alike.” She’d saved one piece of information as the nuclear option, but she hadn’t wanted to use it because it would show how far Olivia had gone to hide the truth. Bailey had to hear it though. “Grayson got a copy of your birth certificate from the school and then checked the official records. The birth certificate the school has is a fake.”

  Bailey gasped. “You mean Mom bought a fake certificate somewhere?”

  “It appears so. Or she knew how to forge it herself. When Grayson followed up with the official records, he found the hospital had no record of your birth.” Shauna touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I know this has to be hard for you. It was hard for me to believe what our father had done too.”

  “This is the first time you’ve mentioned your father. What did he do?”

  “The earthquake was his fault. He had built a fracking well, and it triggered the earthquake twenty-four years ago. He couldn’t admit it and basically went into a major depression, from which he never recovered. H-He told me you both had died, and I found out he simply didn’t look for you and Grayson. He felt he couldn’t care for me, so he was sure he couldn’t care for two more.”

  Bailey went white. “Mom would never talk about my father. I thought maybe if what you were telling me was really true, then maybe I’d find out about my father after all. This is worse than I ever imagined. I don’t think I even want to meet him.”

  Shauna looked away. “He’s dead, Bailey. He died in September, killed for the technology that could start an earthquake. Zach and I barely took down the ones responsible.”

  Bailey didn’t react but her pupils dilated, and she eyed the contents of her mug.

  Shauna touched her hand. “But I’m here. Grayson is here. We want to get to know you. I already love you and have from the moment I first held you.”

  Bailey looked up with a stony expression. “You don’t know me, Shauna, so I don’t understand how you could love me. I know you mean well, but you have no idea how I feel. How can I trust anyone now? My mother was a liar and a thief. She stole me without compunction from my family. My so-called husband was a liar and a cheat. He went through with a marriage simply to get me into bed, but he was already married. Everyone I thought I could trust has clearly shown me I can’t.�
� Her voice broke, and she became fascinated by her mug again.

  This was the first Shauna had heard about a bigamous husband. “I’m sorry, honey. I had no idea of all you’ve gone through. I won’t push you. You can think about everything I’ve told you. We can get a DNA test. I have one in the office. Once you know the truth, I hope you’ll let Grayson and me into your life. If you can’t handle that yet, we’ll be patient.”

  “I think I’d like to run the DNA test. Maybe once I see it in black and white, I can begin to accept everything you’re saying. I don’t want to believe my mom would do something like this. I admired her all my life. She saved lives and cared about other people. It’s hard to reconcile something like this with the woman I thought I knew.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Maybe you can never fully know anyone.”

  This revelation had shaken her poor sister to the core. Shauna wished she hadn’t had to destroy her faith in humanity.

  “I’ll get the DNA kit. It’s just a mouth swab, and we’ll receive the results in a few days.” She left her sister alone in the kitchen and went to the office, praying as she went.

  Chapter 31

  Lance eyed the other men with him as they stood in Cedar Cabin’s tiny living room. “I’d say this was a little overkill, guys. Between the three of us, we could take down a whole gang of traffickers.”

  Zach grinned. “I know my wife. She needed time alone with Bailey. How do you think she’s taking all this?”

  Lance wanted to ask why Zach was asking him when he’d only known Bailey a few days longer than the rest of them, but he couldn’t deny the two of them had a special bond. “She’s pretty floored by it all. I’d guess right about now she’s questioning everything she thought she knew about her life.”

  The thought dropped a boulder in his gut. She was probably even questioning what was starting to happen between them. Everything in her life had been a lie. Who wouldn’t be shaken by this kind of news?

  Grayson dropped onto the sofa and coaxed the cat to him. “Can’t blame her. I know how I felt when I found out my parents adopted me, and I still haven’t fully come to terms with it. At least they simply withheld the fact I was adopted. They didn’t steal me right out of my mother’s arms.”

  “To be fair, I’d guess Olivia knew Shauna’s mom had died before she took Bailey.”

  Zach sat beside Grayson and reached over to scratch Sheba’s ears. “But she knew she had a brother and sister. She still had a father. Granted, he was a lousy excuse for one, but Olivia didn’t know that.”

  Even from here Lance could hear Sheba’s purr. “Unless she did know. Maybe she knew the family somehow. There’s so much we don’t know about Olivia. As soon as I find those traffickers and my sister, I thought I’d dig more into Olivia’s past.” The stepbrothers’ alibis checked out, but he hadn’t gotten any further than that.

  He went to Bailey’s bedroom and stepped inside. It had already taken on her scent, a light floral note mixed with vanilla. The aroma took him right back to how she’d felt in his arms, how her lips had tasted. He flexed his jaw and pushed away the memory to attend to business.

  The room was spotless, and the bed didn’t have so much as a wrinkle. There was a small satchel in the closet and he opened it, then tossed in a pair of jeans and a red top she’d look great in. The top dresser drawer held underwear, and he scooped up some without looking too closely.

  He stepped across the hall and grabbed her toothbrush and toiletries. He brought the perfume bottle to his nose and took a quick sniff of the clean scent. Just smelling it brought warmth surging to his neck. He was like some love-struck teenager.

  He shook his head, then took the items to the bedroom and dumped them in a suitcase. Anything else? He scanned the room and stopped when he saw her journal and Bible. He grabbed them, too, and put them in the case. She needed some strength from the Lord to deal with this.

  A flicker of light out the bedroom window caught his attention. He frowned and stepped to the glass. The light was moving and seemed like it was down by the dock. Leaving the suitcase, he ran out of the bedroom to the back door.

  “Light outside, could be a boat,” he told the other men.

  They leaped up and followed him out the back door and down into the yard. Even from here he heard the faint chug of an outboard motor. His phone had a flashlight app, but he couldn’t give away their position to the occupants of the boat. He picked his way through the downed trees and thick brush toward the pier as quietly as he could with the other two men on his heels.

  He paused at a large tree twenty feet from the edge of the water. The waves lapped at the pilings, and the wind brought the scent of salt and kelp to his nose. The moon glittered on the whitecaps and illuminated the small boat motoring closer to the dock. Two men occupied it.

  Lance motioned for Grayson and Zach to stay down, and the three of them crouched behind several large trees. He unsnapped his holster and put his hand on his gun.

  These two could be innocent of anything except a moonlight ride, but it was suspicious they were here at this spot. He prayed he’d learn something that would lead him to Ava. One comment might be all he needed.

  The man in the bow of the boat leaped onto the dock and secured the rope, then steadied the craft for the other man to disembark. Even with the moon it was too dark to do more than make out their shapes. One was taller with wide shoulders, and he wore a cap that put even more shadow on his face. The other figure was smaller and slighter. It could even be a woman. Maybe they were here for some kind of tryst.

  He strained to hear, and the words that drifted to his ears chilled him more than the wind.

  The slimmer figure spoke and the female voice confirmed his suspicion. “I’ll go knock on the door, and you wait at the back door. See if you can get in quietly while I keep her distracted at the front door. Got it?”

  “Got it. What if she’s armed?”

  The woman gave an inelegant snort. “She’s not the type to carry a gun. You get in and stick her with the drug. We’ll carry her to the boat, and we’re in and out before anyone notices.”

  “What if she’s got company?”

  “It’s ten o’clock. Look, you want to do this or not? I can tell the boss I need a partner with guts.”

  The man straightened. “I’m ready to do it, but I thought we should talk about what to do if it doesn’t go smoothly.”

  “If someone’s there, we wait until they leave.”

  “I’m ready.” The man took something out of his pocket that glimmered in the moonlight.

  A lock pick? A gun? Lance couldn’t tell, but he withdrew his gun and waited as they went past him toward the cabin. Once they were out of earshot, he directed Grayson to grab the woman while he and Zach took down the man. Then he’d take them in for questioning. They were clearly here to take Bailey.

  He’d stop them and find his sister.

  Bailey went into the bathroom and did the mouth swab for the DNA test, but in her heart she knew everything Shauna and Grayson had told her was true. It explained so much about how often her mom had moved around, and she remembered how upset her mother had been after the late call a few weeks ago.

  She stared at herself in the mirror. Her green eyes looked enormous in her pale face, and she hated her purple hair now. It was as much a lie as the rest of her life.

  How did she come to grips with all this? Her entire life was a lie. Every person she loved and trusted had lied to her. Was there no truth anywhere? No honorable people? The thought of getting close to these new siblings was laden with a minefield as well. They’d betray her just like everyone else. And Lance. How ridiculous that she’d thought she might find a relationship with him or any man. All the pleasant dreams she’d hoped might come true were like fog rolling in over the strait that dissipated in the light of day.

  Finding out Kyle had been faithless was bad, but this was so much worse. This struck at the core of who she was. How did she even accept this? Maybe she should
just leave, get Lily settled in a nursing home, then go off by herself somewhere and find a job. Try to keep to herself and not let anyone get close.

  It sounded both horrible and enticing.

  She couldn’t do that until Lance caught the men who were after her, and she wanted to see him find his sister. She sighed and opened the door. With the DNA kit in hand, she walked toward the crackle of the fireplace in the living room. Shauna added logs to the fire that blazed with color and warmth.

  She put the poker away and turned to smile at her. “All done?”

  Bailey nodded and handed her the plastic bag with the kit inside. “I think we both know how this is going to turn out. Do you know someone who could change my hair color back to normal? I can’t stand one more lie in my life at the moment.”

  Shauna’s expression softened. “I’m so sorry, Bailey. I know how you feel, you know. Our dad lied to me for years too. I hate lies.” She approached Bailey and touched her shoulder. “I’m here for you, always.”

  Bailey wanted to respond with warmth—she really did—but the wounds were too fresh and raw. She stepped back. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  She rushed for the exit and stepped out into a misting rain that touched her face like soft, wet feathers. There was no wind though, and she walked down the steps to the waves rolling to the shore. The sea spray mingled with the rain and touched her lips with a salty kiss that tasted of her unshed tears. She sat on a wet rock two feet from the water and stared at the dark sea.

  Once upon a time she’d been a teenager enthralled with the Twilight series. She’d thought love was eternal and could overcome anything. She’d never dreamed that maybe real love didn’t exist in the world. That it was all a mirage, a way of twisting the world into something that seemed appealing, when in reality nothing was good here.

  An image of Shauna and Zach and of Ellie and Grayson standing hand in hand sprang to mind. Maybe she was being too cynical. True love did seem to exist for some, just not for her.