Undone: The Untangled Series, Book Two

by Layne, Ivy

  Griffen met us at the airport with a Sinclair Security SUV and a house key. He'd even remembered a booster seat for Adam. We exchanged few words as he took our place in the plane and we took his in the SUV. A few minutes after we'd landed, we were on the road to our destination.

  Lily waved to Griffen but didn't say anything until we were belted in.

  “Okay, where are we? I know this isn't Atlanta.”

  “The middle of nowhere in Tennessee. Close enough to get to Atlanta quickly if we have to, far enough away that no one will think to look for us here.”

  “Okay.”

  And that was it. Okay. Her trust meant more than she could know.

  I followed our GPS to the small cabin I'd borrowed from a friend.

  I wanted this business with Tsepov resolved. I wanted answers about Adam from LeAnne Gates. I wanted a normal life with Lily and Adam by my side.

  Normal life would have to wait. The next best thing was having Lily and Adam all to myself. No Deputy Dave, none of Tsepov's goons, no nosy friends to interrupt. Just the three of us, safe and secluded.

  The cabin was rustic, but it sat in the center of a hundred and fifty acres on the side of a mountain. A stream bisected the property, carrying water that was biting cold and crystal clear.

  A stone's throw from the cabin, the stream ran into a pond big enough for swimming and fishing. It was a far cry from the modern monstrosity Trey had built on Black Rock Lake. I wondered if Lily would mind. The cabin was better than sleeping in a tent, but not by much.

  Lily and Adam piled out of the SUV. Adam started for the water. I caught him with a hand on the shoulder and redirected him toward the cabin. “Let's get settled in, bud. Then we can check out the lake.”

  Lily stood in front of the porch, taking in the small, A-frame cabin. Built of pine stained dark brown, with a covered porch that looked like it had been tacked on as an afterthought, the cabin was unimpressive at best. I braced for Lily to climb back into the SUV and ask me to take her anywhere else.

  I shoved my hands into my back pockets. “It's basic, I know, but it has everything we'll need. It's completely off the grid. Solar panels, no Internet.”

  I climbed the steps to the porch and opened the door, wincing at the wave of stale heat. The cabin had been closed up for weeks, the air inside musty. Lily followed me in, taking in the main room.

  Old, patched couches surrounded a cast iron wood stove we wouldn't need this time of year. I flipped a switch by the door. The ceiling fan hanging from the peak of the roof spun lazily to life. It didn't do much to clear the stuffy air.

  I made my way around the room, opening the windows and inserting the screens left leaning against the walls. This high in the mountains a good cross breeze would make it bearable inside, even in the first week of August.

  Lily found the narrow hallway off the kitchen that led to the small bedrooms. One had a set of bunk beds. The other bedroom was almost completely filled by a queen-size bed.

  Lily turned to look at me. “We're going to stay here?”

  “It's nothing fancy, but—”

  “How long can we stay? Will it just be the three of us?”

  I realized Lily wasn't complaining about the accommodations. “We'll stay until Cooper gives us the okay to come back. At least a week, maybe more.”

  Lily leaned into me, her arms wrapping around my waist. “We're safe here?”

  “I'm going to set up the perimeter alarm we had at your parent's house and add some more security to the windows and doors. I don't want you and Adam going into town for groceries. But, yeah, we're safe here.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Adam ran down the hall shouting, “Can we go swimming?”

  “Not yet, bud.”

  It took the rest of the afternoon to get moved in. After we got the rest of the windows open and our things unloaded, Lily splashed with Adam on the rocky shore by the little dock. There was a canoe in the shed I promised I'd clean of spiderwebs and dead bugs. First things first.

  Once I had the security bolstered by my equipment, I left Lily and Adam to run to town and stock up on groceries. I was only gone an hour and a half, but every minute was an eternity.

  They were secure at the cabin, as safe as I could make them short of locking them up at Sinclair Security. I wouldn't be comfortable with them out of my sight until Andrei Tsepov was neutralized.

  I returned to find them working on a puzzle laid out on the coffee table. Lily jumped up when I entered, taking the first set of grocery bags from my hands.

  “There's a ton of things to do here. Piles and piles of paperbacks, puzzles, board games, cards.”

  “So you won't get bored?”

  “Between the pond, and the woods, and all those books and puzzles? Nope. Neither will Adam. What about you?”

  “This place belongs to a friend. I've never made it up here, but he swears the fishing is great. There's trout in the river and the pond. I've got you and Adam and a fishing pole. Sounds like heaven to me.”

  Lily beamed up at me. After we put the groceries away, I grabbed a beer and joined her on the couch to tackle the puzzle.

  If I'd known how good those weeks at the cabin would be, I would have kidnapped Lily that first day.

  You learn a lot about a person after three weeks of isolation. Without distractions, it doesn't take long to figure out how compatible you are.

  I already knew Lily and I were a perfect fit in bed. Not much could top getting Lily naked. Day to day life with her was a close second.

  Cooking. Washing dishes. Putting Adam to bed.

  Take away the distractions of TV, cell phones, work, and there were no barriers. I'm not what you'd call a chatty guy. I could go days, and have, without talking to anyone.

  I liked talking to Lily. Liked talking to Adam. What I liked more was knowing that we didn't have to talk at all. We could sit for hours, working on a puzzle saying barely anything, then pull out a board game and find ourselves talking half the night.

  Between hiking, learning to fish, and swimming, Adam went to bed early every night, sleeping deeply, his nightmares a distant memory.

  Once he was out, I had Lily all to myself. It was a good thing Adam slept like a rock, because our bedrooms weren't that far apart.

  Lily and I made ample use of ours, and the rest of the cabin besides. I fucked her everywhere I could get my hands on her after Adam was asleep.

  In the lake under the glittering moonlight.

  On the dock.

  In the hammock we'd found in the shed and hung between two pine trees.

  Once in the canoe, though that ended with us both drenched and me dragging the canoe out the next morning, grateful we'd swamped it near shore.

  Adam had almost grown out of naps, but the few times he fell asleep in the middle of the day we took advantage.

  It was hot. August in Tennessee usually is. Lily and Adam never complained. We didn't spend much time indoors during the day, anyway. When it got too stuffy inside, we moved to the covered porch, taking our puzzle or board game with us.

  On the few days when the heat grew too oppressive for the mountain breezes to chase off, we floated in the pond on cheap blow-up floats I'd grabbed in town. The pond was small, but the mountain stream running through it kept the water fresh and crisply cold, even on the hottest days.

  I could have stayed at the cabin for another three weeks. I could have stayed forever.

  After only a week in Maine, I knew I wanted Lily and Adam for my own. Hell, I'd seen Lily's picture in a file and known. Her face had tugged on something deep inside me, the answer to a question I hadn't known I'd asked.

  The day she opened the door to the house she'd shared with Trey, I started to fall. By the time we arrived at the little cabin, I'd accepted all of that.

  Those lazy weeks together sti
ll changed everything. I wasn't falling for her, I was long gone, in so deep I'd never be able to let them go. Life without Lily and Adam was unthinkable.

  I wanted this, all of it. Lily. Adam.

  Adam already felt like he was mine. It didn't matter that I wasn't his father. I was the one who taught him to bait a hook, steadied his hands while he reeled in his first fish. I was the one who helped him beat his mom at cards, smiling every time he cried out, “Go Fish!” with unabashed glee.

  I could have stayed forever.

  The end came far too soon.

  I went to town every few days to check for messages on a burner phone. Every time, Cooper had nothing. We learned only two things in the weeks we were gone.

  One, that the accounts Lucas tracked down were empty. Every cent was gone. Tsepov was looking for millions of dollars that had vanished into thin air. Or my father's pockets.

  And two, the birth certificate on file with the state of Alabama was the one bearing Lily's name as his mother. The original birth certificate, the one with his biological mother on it, was sealed, following Alabama's procedure for handling adoptions. As far as the law was concerned, Lily Spencer was Adam's mother.

  Bad news and good news, none of it enough to bring us home. Not until the morning I checked my phone after grabbing fresh donuts and saw Cooper's name on the screen.

  If I'd known where his brief message would lead, I would have barricaded us in the cabin for the rest of eternity.

  Even in my ignorance, I thought about it. I wouldn't abandon my brothers. Couldn't turn my back on my family.

  Sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store in town—the only place I got cell reception—I read Cooper's message. Everything inside me wanted to erase it, to turn off my phone and drive back to the cabin, pretend I never read his text.

  Gates and Tsepov surfaced. Time to come home.

  I couldn't run from this. Lily couldn't run. Neither of us would be free until we talked to LeAnne Gates and dealt with Andrei Tsepov.

  Wishing I could do anything else, I tapped out a message into the burner phone.

  On our way. First thing tomorrow.

  Then I went to tell Lily and Adam our vacation was over.

  We weren't ready to face the real world, but the world was ready for us.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Lily

  Iwas almost as nervous as I had been on the way to see my parents. At least I was used to my parent's disapproval.

  Knox's family was a whole new set of people who I desperately wanted to like me and who had good reason not to.

  I already knew his brother Cooper wanted me nowhere near Knox. Griffen, Lucas, and Charlie had been great, but they weren't his family.

  I had a temporary stay of execution. Knox wanted to take us home, to his house, before we braved the Sinclair Security offices and figured out what to do about LeAnne Gates.

  The transition from the highway to the congestion of Atlanta was abrupt. We descended from the mountains into miles and miles of rolling green hills, exits only popping up here and there, and then Knox got off the highway and we came to an abrupt stop in dense traffic.

  He lived here? I couldn't see Knox surrounded by all this concrete and exhaust. He'd been so at home in the woods of Maine, content with the isolation of the cabin.

  I knew he lived in Atlanta, but I'd never been to the city before, hadn't spent a lot of time in cities in general, and I had no clue what to expect.

  A few miles after we left the highway, Knox turned off of the main road, took a right, then a left, and we found ourselves on a two-lane byway shaded by tall, old-growth trees.

  “How far is it to your house?” I asked. I'd completely lost my bearings. First, we were in the country, then the city, now it felt like we were in the country again.

  “This is Buckhead. I live close by, a few miles from the house I grew up in and Winters House. The Sinclair offices aren't far, so it made sense to stay in the area.”

  Knox was nervous, too. Because he was worried what his brothers would say? That they wouldn't like me? He already knew Cooper wanted me gone.

  I couldn't think of any other reason for Knox to be nervous about bringing me home.

  We turned onto an even narrower road with mailboxes set every few hundred feet. Knox slowed in front of one and turned down a smoothly-paved driveway, the dark strip of asphalt curving to disappear into the trees.

  “The, uh, lot is a good size, but the house is small. I didn't need much. And anything in Buckhead is expensive so—”

  Knox trailed off. We turned the corner of the drive and a house came into view. Nothing like what I'd expected.

  “This is it?” I asked, too surprised to be more gracious.

  Knox cleared his throat. “I, uh, yeah. This is it.”

  Knox lived in a fairy-tale cottage. Steeply peaked eves slanted down, framing diamond-paned mullioned windows trimmed in dark wood. Rough siding was stained a dark green—forest-green—with lushly overflowing planters hanging off the rail of the covered front porch. Stacked stone detailed the foundation and corners of the house, an earthy contrast to the copper gutters glinting in the sun.

  This wasn't at all what I'd expected, and it was utterly charming. Better than a fairy-tale cottage. It was real, and it was so completely Knox, I was already in love with it.

  “Did you do the planters on the porch?”

  I had to ask. Not once had I seen him show any interest in gardening. Rubbing the back of his neck, a ruddy flush on his cheeks, he said, “I have a service. It's—do you like it?”

  “You have to ask? Knox, it's beautiful. It's just not what I expected. It's so pretty.”

  “Did you think I lived in a dump?”

  “No.” I slapped his arm on a laugh and turned to unfasten my seatbelt so I could get out and explore in person. “This is just, honestly, not the kind of place I'd guess a single guy would live in. Like I said, it's pretty. It's gorgeous.”

  Knox didn't say anything, the red staining his cheeks speaking for him. He let Adam out of the SUV and preceded us to the door. “I'll unload the car. You can take a look around.”

  Good, because I was planning to.

  Knox swung the door open, saying, “I reset the thermostats and checked everything before we left the cabin, so it should be good. Just, uh, make yourself at home.”

  I wasn't sure I liked the way the Sinclair's technology meant they could see and hear everything everywhere. The number of cameras Knox had at my house was a little creepy. On the other hand, it was awfully nice to walk out of the Atlanta heat into a cool, air-conditioned house.

  I stepped through the front door, admiring the way it was curved at the top instead of square, how it appeared to be made from roughly cut wood held together by black iron straps. It looked like something from a movie about hobbits or witches and wizards.

  A small wood and iron peek-through door was cut in at eye level, so if someone knocked, you could open it to see who was there without opening the whole door. I was sure there was more sophisticated surveillance I couldn't see—this was Knox, after all—but the peek-through door was too cute.

  Inside, the walls were roughly-finished plaster painted a dark cream, the style bringing to mind a house centuries-old. The cozy front entry had stairs on one side leading to the second level and opened into a two-story great room that looked out into the woods behind the house.

  A wide stone fireplace dominated one wall of the room. The other side flowed into the kitchen and eating area with more stone, granite, and gorgeous chestnut cabinets.

  The inside was as much fairy-tale cottage as the exterior. Not in a feminine way. There wasn't an overstuffed throw pillow or scented candle in sight. Furnished in shades of brown and green with blue accents, the cottage was Knox through and through.

  I was still standing in t
he middle of the great room when he came back carrying two duffel bags. “The bedrooms are this way.”

  I followed him up the stairs by the front door. At the top, we turned right, and I found myself in a short hall, a bedroom on each side.

  One of them was decorated in shades of blue, with a double bed tucked under the eaves. “Adam, this look okay for you?” Knox asked.

  Adam took in the cozy, slanted roof, the armchair with foot rest in the corner and the double bed, bigger than the one he’d left at home. “Cool, Mr. Knox. Can I put my stuff in here?”

  Knox sent me a questioning look.

  Was I going to pretend we’d stay anywhere else? No, I wasn’t. I didn’t think I could bring myself to leave Knox. It would have been hard enough after we left Maine, but now?

  Three weeks of being at his side and the idea of sleeping without him, living without him, was unthinkable. Not going to happen.

  Still, I had to give him an out. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Lily, don’t even ask. I want you here. Both of you.”

  “Okay, then. By now you know what you’re getting into.” Unzipping the duffel bag where Adam had shoved his stuffed animals, I said, “Here you go, kiddo. I’ll do your clothes, but you can unpack your toys. We’ll get the rest in a little bit.”

  Adam was instantly distracted. I followed Knox back to the top of the stairs and across a walkway overlooking the great room, bordered by the slant of the roof on one side and a black iron rail on the other.

  I’d been so distracted downstairs I hadn’t noticed the walkway above. At the other end, Knox opened a door into the master bedroom.

  A big wooden bed dominated the wall opposite the door. Tall windows with more of those diamond-shaped panes looked out into the woods. The open door to the bathroom gave me a peek of a huge soaking tub and oversized walk-in shower.

  “Did you decorate this?” I could not see Knox picking out furniture.

  His laugh answered my question. “No. No way. I bought it from the family who built it, and they had good taste. It's a lot newer than it looks, so I didn't have to update anything. Jacob—Jacob Winters—has a good decorator. I told her what I liked, and she did all the work. Anything that doesn't fit probably came from my old place.”