by Donna Hill
She made a face and stepped aside. “What are you doing here?” she asked, walking behind him into her dual-purpose living and dining room.
“I have something you need to see. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been feeding details to Jasmine.”
Her heart began to race.
“Between what she found and what was pulled from the Ettinger’s home, I’ve been working on putting this together all night and most of the day.”
“Working…on what?”
He went into the inside jacket pocket of his FBI windbreaker and took out a rolled-up manila folder. He handed it to her. Her hand trembled as she reached out to take it.
Some time later she gazed up at him, her eyes teary from emotion and fatigue. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I’m pretty sure,” he said, nodding his head.
The tears fell freely now. “So, what do we do?” she asked, her voice breaking like a scratched CD.
“You need to decide what you want to do with the information, Ash…” He paused and sat down beside her. “Whatever you decide, I’ll support you. I promise you that.”
Ashley broke down and sobbed. He gathered her in his arms and held her, letting her release all the years of hurt, and guilt and loss. He knew that whatever decision she made it would change lives for better or worse.
Chapter 21
The campus of Brooklyn College was in full swing as students rushed from one building to the next and geared up for the Homecoming Weekend. Located in Brooklyn’s Midwood section, the sprawling campus was one of the borough’s crown jewels. They walked toward the graduate buildings and the President’s office.
It had been ages since she’d walked the halls of a college campus, Ashley thought as she and Elliot navigated their way to the administrative offices. The closest she’d come to being back in school was on her last assignment where she posed as a high school student.
“Should be around the next corner,” Elliot said, referring to the college president’s office.
Ashley’s heart thumbed in anticipation. She’d spent two weeks of sleepless nights debating about what was the right thing to do. It had been a painful, but thoughtful decision. She only hoped it was the right one. And during that two weeks when she’d wrestled with what to do, Elliot was there to support her, just like he’d promised.
Elliot opened the door to the outer office, and they stepped into the reception area.
An auburn-haired receptionist greeted them. “President Stevenson is waiting for you. You can go right in.”
Elliot tapped lightly on the door and they walked into President Stevenson’s office. The elegant gentleman, surrounded by plaques and degrees, was seated behind an enormous cherrywood desk. The young woman, seated in front of his desk turned to look at them when they walked in, and Ashley’s heart nearly stopped. They were her mother’s eyes, wide and almost see-through brown. Her knees wobbled and Elliot held her tight around her waist. The birthmark, a dark circle the size of a quarter, rested by her right ear, which she didn’t bother to hide with her hair. She remembered asking her mother if the mark would go away. Her mother had hugged her and told her no, saying that birthmarks were little touches from God as He sent each of us out into the world.
President Stevenson rose from his plush high-backed leather seat. He extended his hand to Ashley and Elliot. “Please, have a seat.” He waited for them to get settled. “Ms. Temple, Mr. Morgan this is Simone McDonald. Simone, these are the people that I told you about.” He cleared his throat. “My secretary can get you anything you need. I have a meeting.” He walked past Simone and squeezed her shoulder before walking out and closing the door softly behind them.
After several awkward moments of silence, Ashley angled her chair toward Simone.
“You don’t know me from the man in the moon,” Ashley began, speaking softly and deliberately. She looked Simone directly in her eyes. “But I know you.”
Over the next hour, Ashley held Simone’s hand as she told her about the months leading up to her birth, her arrival and the agony when she disappeared. She told her about the toll that it took on their parents and on her.
“We’ve never forgotten you,” Ashley said as she wiped away Simone’s tears and then her own. “Never stopped wanting to find you and believing that you were out there somewhere.”
“What’s my real name?” Simone finally asked.
“Layla. Your name is Layla.”
Bernard, Ashley, Jasmine, Jean and Elliot were gathered in Jean’s office a week later for a debriefing.
“According to all the documents that have been confiscated there are more than eight hundred children that have been abducted by this network alone over the past twenty years,” Jean said, the disgust that she felt evident in her tone. “I hope those S.O.B.s rot in jail. The devastation they’ve caused is incalculable. Unraveling this mess is going to take a while. And reconnecting the stolen children with their biological families…that is an even bigger nightmare.” She took a long breath. “But the birth families deserve to know, they deserve some closure.” She turned to Ashley. “How is Layla handling the news?”
“The DNA results came back.” She turned to Elliot and smiled. He’d worked magic to push it through quickly. “She’s definitely my sister. She wants to meet our parents. She’s pretty much taken care of herself since she was eighteen. Her adoptive parents divorced when she was twelve and her mother died four years ago. Our road will be rough but certainly not as rough as other families. I’m planning to take her out to see them as soon as she finishes her thesis.”
“Ettinger, or rather Herman Lester, had a smooth operation going,” Elliot said. “He and his wife were not the only ones involved. We have indictments coming down for nearly a dozen more individuals. But I have to take my hat off to Jasmine for putting a lot of the pieces together.”
Jasmine lowered her head. “Once I saw so many similarities between Dr. Ettinger and Dr. Lester, the time period and location and how one person ceased to exist and the other started, everything kinda fell into place from there.”
“Excellent job, Jasmine,” Jean said.
“I’ll need everyone’s final report in ten days. Try to do it as soon as possible as details tend to dim.” She took off her glasses, a clear indication that the meeting was over.
Everyone stood and began to file out. Ashley was the last to leave. She waited until she was the only one in the room besides Jean.
“Forget something, Ashley?” Jean asked without looking up.
Ashley walked back over to Jean’s desk. “I need to ask you something.”
Jean glanced up.
“Did you know about my family situation? Is that why you assigned me to this case?”
“What’s important is that the right people were chosen and the job was done.” She waited a beat. “Anything else?”
Ashley pressed her lips together. “No. I guess not. Thank you.” She walked toward the door and opened it.
“Oh, and Ashley…”
She turned partly around. “Yes.”
“If you tell him how you feel, it will change your life.”
Ashley’s stomach did a three-sixty as she stared into Jean’s all-knowing eyes, an instant before she slipped on her red-framed glasses and looked away.
Chapter 22
Ashley checked and rechecked the food. She’d looked in the mirror more in the past hour than she had in her entire lifetime. It had taken her nearly a week to get up the nerve and now she wished she had more time.
What if she was wrong? What if Jean was wrong? What if it was too late?
The bell rang and goose bumps ran up and down her arms. She took a long, deep, cleansing breath, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment then walked to the door.
When she saw Elliot standing on the other side, tall, dark, handsome, edible and looking at her as if he missed her as much as she missed him, she wondered why it had taken her so long.
She took his hand and gently pulle
d him inside. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’ve never been one to turn down a free meal. And from what I can remember…from our time together, you’re a pretty good cook.”
She stopped short and turned to him. The muscles in her throat worked up and down. “Do you think about us at all?”
His finger reached out and stroked her cheek. “All the time.” The deep timbre of his voice reached inside to that empty place in her soul and filled it.
Her eyes glided over his face, recommitting every inch of it to memory.
“I love you, Ashley. I love you with all my heart. You gave me a reason to want to live again, really live life. To feel again, to want someone in my life that matters, who was there out of desire and not necessity. I’ve been going crazy these past weeks. I never knew how empty my life was until you weren’t in it.”
“I love you, Elliot Morgan,” she said with all the eagerness and passion that had lived within her for months. “And I don’t care if you want to travel to the moon. I want to be with you.” There, she’d said it and she was certain that she’d never said anything more true.
He kissed her then—long, deep and sweet and she willingly gave of herself to him. The explosion of their need for each other made them dizzy with desire.
Elliot slowly broke the kiss, leaving Ashley trembling in his embrace. “Marry me, Ashley,” he said in an almost urgent whisper. “Travel with me, wake with me, sleep with me, be my friend, my lover, my reflection.” He dug in the front pocket of his jeans and took out a diamond ring set in white gold. He held it in front of her. “I didn’t come for the free meal. I came to claim my woman.”
Ashley’s eyes filled with tears of absolute joy. “Yes, yes, yes.”
She knew that the road ahead wouldn’t be easy, but it would be full of excitement and adventure. With Elliot by her side, and her family united, there wasn’t any challenge that she couldn’t face.
As she rested in the warmth and security of Elliot’s arms, she smiled and silently thanked Jean for knowing just what she needed.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5224-4
LONGING AND LIES
Copyright © 2010 by Donna Hill
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