Athena Force 7: Deceived

by Carla Cassidy

  Lynn frowned. “I guess. I never really thought about it much before.” She reached a hand up to touch the side of her head where Jonas had hit her. It was still tender to the touch, but not bothersome.

  She looked at Dawn once again. “If Rainy was our mother, then who is our father?”

  “We think he’s a man named Thomas King. He’s a Navy SEAL commander and his sperm was stolen from a fertility clinic around the time that Rainy’s eggs were mined.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Very much so. I don’t know how much you watch the news, but he was held captive for a year in a secret prison on the island of Puerto Isla in Central America.”

  “Puerto Isla!”

  “You know it?”

  “I’ve been there many times. It was one of Jonas’s favorite places to visit.” Imagine, the last time she’d been there her biological father had been there as well—as a prisoner. “Small world, I guess.”

  Dawn flashed her a dark look. “Or huge conspiracy.”

  They fell silent after that. They drove for about an hour leaving behind the Phoenix/Glendale area and arriving in Athens. They drove down Olympus Road, the main street, and Dawn pulled into a motel parking lot.

  “Good, Kayla is already here.”

  Lynn tried to remember which one Kayla was…the six Cassandra women had become jumbled in her mind. “And what does she do?”

  “Kayla works as a police lieutenant on the Youngstown, Arizona, police force. Part of her area is Athens.”

  As they got out of the car nerves jittered through Lynn. With her past burned to ashes, she realized how important it was that these women accept her, like her.

  Kayla had been friends with the mother Lynn would never know, and more than anything Lynn wanted Rainy Carrington to be proud of the woman Lynn had become.

  A beautiful, tall woman with long brunette hair, brown eyes and a honeyed complexion to envy answered Dawn’s knock on room 1. She wrapped her arms around Dawn in a hug and at the same time eyed Lynn in open curiosity over Dawn’s shoulder.

  “You must be Lynn,” she said as she released Dawn. She held a hand out to Lynn. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I’m Kayla, and I loved your mother very much.”

  Together the three of them went into the room, and Kayla motioned them to the small table in the corner of the room. “I’m expecting Darcy at any moment,” Kayla said to Dawn. “She called a little while ago and said she had news for us.”

  While they waited for Darcy to show up, they talked, letting Lynn and Kayla get to know each other.

  Lynn learned that Kayla was a single mother. She had a daughter named Jazz who was twelve years old. Jazz was starting Athena Academy in the fall. Kayla explained that she was half Navaho and had grown up on a reservation with loving parents.

  Kayla also gave her more information about the other Cassandras and about the woman who was Lynn’s surrogate mother, Cleo Patra. Lynn learned that Cleo was a beautiful African American.

  “Years ago she was a prostitute in Phoenix,” Kayla explained. “She answered a newspaper ad about becoming a surrogate and was placed in the care of Dr. Henry Reagan and Betsy Stone, who was also the nurse for Athena Academy. Cleo’s been frightened for a long time by what happened the night the baby was stolen from her, but now she’s helping us get to the bottom of all this.”

  “I want to help. I’ll do whatever is necessary to take down the people responsible for our mother’s death,” Lynn said.

  “We need all the help we can get,” Dawn said. At that moment a knock sounded on the door.

  Kayla jumped up. “That must be Darcy.” She opened the door and hugged the woman who stepped in.

  Lynn looked at the woman with interest. She knew from what Kayla and Dawn had told her that Darcy was a former Hollywood makeup artist who now worked as a beautician and a private investigator.

  Darcy Steele was fragile looking, with dyed brown hair that she was growing out, judging by the blond roots, and blue eyes. She greeted Dawn with a hug, then turned and smiled at Lynn. “I can see the resemblance,” she said, and gestured toward Dawn. “It’s amazing. You both have the very same eyes.”

  For the next couple of minutes it seemed as if everyone was talking at once as the three caught up with each other, and Lynn sat back and watched. She knew from Dawn that Darcy ran a sort of underground railroad for abused women and realized the woman’s appearance of fragility hid a wealth of inner strength.

  They also told Lynn more about Lab 33, that it was built underground with an entrance in the side of a rock formation. It was Dawn who told her about the many levels of the structure that went down into the earth, and to Lynn it sounded like something from a science-fiction novel. However she knew from the look in Dawn’s eyes when she spoke of the place that it was very real and the people who worked there could be very dangerous.

  It was a conversation of discovery for Lynn as she learned more about the Athena Academy and the women who had been Rainy’s friends.

  “You mentioned on the phone that you have news,” Kayla said to Darcy.

  “I got a late response to the ad,” she said.

  Lynn looked blankly first at Kayla then at Dawn. It was Dawn who explained. “Darcy has been hunting down the surrogate angle. She found ads in some of the tabloids in the Phoenix area and decided to place an ad of her own.”

  “I offered a reward for anyone who might have information about surrogate mothers from about twenty years ago. It’s through the ad we found Cleo. And now I found somebody else.”

  “Who?” Kayla asked and leaned forward.

  Darcy looked at all of them. “A woman called me. She told me that years ago she worked with a woman who answered an ad for surrogate mothers. She also said that this woman, Tamara Hallwell, paid her to give her a urine sample at the doctor’s office. According to the woman who called me, Tamara Hallwell had unusual pale blue eyes. She sounds like a woman Cleo remembered seeing in the doctor’s office.”

  “When Cleo went to the doctor’s office for her pregnancy test, she remembered seeing a nervous-looking woman with startling blue eyes,” Dawn explained.

  “What are you thinking?” Lynn asked. “Why would a woman pay another one for a urine sample?”

  “So that nobody would know she was pregnant?” Kayla said.

  Darcy nodded and leaned back in her chair. “I’m thinking that maybe this Tamara Hallwell was a third surrogate and she didn’t want anyone to know that the pregnancy was a success.”

  “So she paid a woman who wasn’t pregnant to provide a urine sample—and then what happened to her?” Kayla asked.

  “She disappeared. Or maybe was killed,” Darcy replied. “I’ve tried to find her and there’s no trace.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, then it’s possible there’s another one of us.” Dawn looked at Lynn. “We could have another sister.”

  Hours later Lynn sat in her motel room alone. The four of them had talked until after ten, then Kayla and Darcy had left to return to their homes, and Dawn and Lynn had gone to separate rooms for the night.

  It had been a night of revelations, ending in a new mystery. Someplace there might be another sister, and if that were true then they needed to find her. She and Dawn needed to find the rest of their family.

  Family. She got up from the bed and undressed. As she slipped her silk nightgown over her head, she thought of the women she’d met tonight and the rest of the women she knew she’d meet in the future.

  Funny, but in a matter of hours she’d felt as though they were family. She’d felt the bonds that tied them together, bonds of love and respect for each other.

  Their obvious love for Rainy Carrington, and their commitment to each other, was as strong a bond as any family could ever offer, and Lynn wallowed in the warmth of knowing that she was now a part of such a warm, caring, strong group of women.

  She’d found her place among these women, and she shared their common goal in finding out what had happened
so many years before at the Athena Academy and discovering the secrets of Lab 33.

  She slid into bed and tried to blank out the neon buzz of the motel sign just outside of her room, the noisy tick of the clock on her nightstand and the sound of water running in another one of the units.

  As she quieted the noise of her mind, she heard Nick’s deep, sweetly familiar voice telling her that all she needed to do was call him and he’d wait for her.

  He hadn’t been far from her thoughts throughout the day. Even as she had listened to the women talk about mysteries and potential siblings and danger, Nick had remained in the back of her mind.

  She had no idea what the future held. She had no idea where the winds of fate might carry her. She certainly didn’t need Nick in her life.

  But she wanted him. Eventually, hopefully, the answers they sought would be found, the mysteries all solved and Rainy’s children reunited.

  It would be nice if she and Nick could pick up the pieces of what they’d only just begun—a relationship that had felt good and right and wonderfully real.

  Magic. That’s what he’d told her they’d had, a magic they had just begun to explore when she’d had to say goodbye.

  She thought of his smile, that slow, sexy grin that warmed her from the inside out. He’d listened to her like no other person had listened in her life. Her opinions and thoughts had been important to him.

  He’d asked her to stay, but when she’d made it clear that she had to go, he hadn’t tried to change her mind. He’d cared enough about her to let her go. He’d allowed her wings, and she’d known that he hoped eventually those wings would bring her back to him.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the telephone. It was after ten here in New Mexico, which meant it was after midnight in Florida. Too late to call him, she thought, even as her hand reached out for the phone receiver.

  She didn’t realize she’d memorized his number until she punched it in. She held the receiver tight against her ear as she waited for him to answer.

  It was possible that the words he’d spoken to her had been spoken in the heat of the moment, with the adrenaline of Jonas’s escape still rushing through him. It was possible now that he no longer needed her to put Jonas behind bars, that he would realize he hadn’t meant what he’d said.

  If that were the case, she would survive. She had learned in the past couple of days that she could survive many things and, if she had to, she would survive the loss of Nick.

  His deep voice filled the line. “Hello?”

  She gripped the receiver even tighter, surprised by the depth of emotion that swept through her at the sound of his voice. “Nick? It’s me. I know it’s late…”

  “Lynn. I’ve been hoping you’d call. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not sure why I called.”

  “Because you miss me?”

  She smiled, her heart warming. “Yes, because I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Has Jonas been arrested? Did they find him?” This wasn’t why she’d called him, wasn’t really what she wanted to hear from him.

  “So far he’s managed to elude us, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that you know that my bed isn’t the only lonely place right now. My life is lonely without you in it.”

  She gripped the receiver so tightly she was afraid she might shatter it. This was what she had wanted to hear.

  “I don’t know any more now than I did this morning. I don’t know when I’ll be back to Miami or when I’ll see you again.”

  “Lynn, honey, I don’t know what demons are chasing you, but you slay them, then you come back to me.”

  She closed her eyes, her love for him filling her up. “Thank you, Nick. For believing in me.”

  “I told you, you’re an amazing woman. I’m a patient man, Lynnette, when it comes to things that matter to me. You matter. I’ll wait.”

  In those simple words Lynn knew whatever her future held, it definitely included Nick.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carla Cassidy

  Carla Cassidy is an award-winning author who has written more than 55 books. In 1995 she won Best Silhouette Romance of 1995 from Romantic Times Magazine for Anything for Danny. In 1998 she also won a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times Magazine for Best Innovative Series, and her 1998 release, Pregnant With His Child, was both a nominee for Best Silhouette Romance from Romantic Times Magazine and a RITA nominee in the Best Traditional category.

  She has been a professional cheerleader, an actress, and a singer/dancer in a show band before settling into her true love…writing.

  Carla loves to order items she’ll never use from catalogs and believes all exercise should be banned. She lives in the Midwest with her husband, Frank, and their dogs, Sabra and Spooky. She believes the only thing better than reading a good book is creating a good story.