Daring Hearts: Fearless Fourteen Boxed Set

by Box Set

  “It’s important that we present ourselves appropriately for the activity we will be participating in.” She smiled.

  Kate wanted to yell in her perfectly calm face.

  “Fine, Mom.” She ran upstairs and pulled on a pair of jeans, feeling a touch triumphant that her mom hadn’t noticed she wasn’t wearing a shirt under her thin hoodie. She ran downstairs. Her mom waited for her at the bottom.

  “Bye, Mom.” She decided at that moment, this woman she called Mom, was not her mom and she wouldn’t address her as such ever again. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to disappear out the front door, never to return.

  Kate was in a funk all day, until meeting Ellie at lunch. Ellie didn’t try to cajole her or get her to look at things from her parents’ perspective. Instead, she offered Kate exactly what she needed—a plan for how she was going to find out the truth. She laid out the three items Kate had found in the attic—the locket, the gold cross, and the receipt.

  “Okay, our first step is to find out everything we can about each of these items. I think we’re safe to assume that these things—along with the clothes and shoes you found—were on you at the time you were adopted. Oooh—or maybe abducted?”

  Kate’s heart did a flip-flop. “You think I was kidnapped? Like, Tom and Abrie stole me?”

  “I think we can’t rule anything out right now.” Ellie’s face was deadly serious. “We know they have been lying to you, and so they are 100% suspicious at this point.”

  Kate pressed her lips together but didn’t argue.

  “Also,” Ellie continued. “We need to get back in that attic so I can look at the other items.”

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “There’s no way I can investigate this without seeing all the evidence.”

  Kate thought Ellie was taking the detective thing a bit far, but she knew it was probably futile to argue. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Okay, for now, let’s see what we can learn about the evidence we have in front of us.” She picked up the gold cross and turned it around in her hands. Her eyebrows knit together and she held the cross out for Kate to see. “Hey, did you notice this?” She pointed to some small lettering that was stamped into the bottom part of the T.

  “I didn’t really look at the cross,” Kate admitted. “I was paying more attention to the locket.” She examined the lettering. It read, St. Catharine of Siena. She dug into her messenger bag and pulled out her new search journal. “What do you think?”

  Ellie took it from her. Kate had scrapbooked the front with various pink crafting papers and in the very middle on a piece of baby pink paper was written The Truth About Me. “Very nice. I love it.”

  “Turn it over.”

  On the back was white paper with a flowery pink print and down at the bottom was a picture of Kate and Ellie together with the words, Ellie and Kate-Girl Detectives.

  “Love the logo, Kate. Great job.”

  The two huddled in their spot near their lockers and used their phones to research St. Catherine. Lots of churches and colleges were named after her. There were many St. Catherines, but not as many results for St. Catherine of Siena.

  Kate scribbled the information down and after reading it over said, “Well that led us nowhere.”

  “Not nowhere. We have more information than we had before. And if we get another piece of information and cross it with the information we have about her, we could get very different results.” Ellie had learned all her snooping skills from her parents as they researched and sought out information about people on TV. Together with Colby, the four of them made a formidable team when it came to uncovering everything there was to know about someone. Ellie continued. “For example, let’s put Italy plus St. Catherine and see what comes up. You use the default search engine, and I’ll use another.”

  They both put the words in. “You see, now we’ve narrowed the information down. Siena is a city in Italy and there are only a few results that come up this way. Man, she gave herself to God when she was so young.” After many moments of reading, Ellie continued. “Totally gross. They took her head and put it in a bronze bust. Grosso. Such violence after a person’s dead. Ick. I don’t get this Catholic thing. What does it mean to you?”

  Kate continued to read and then spoke allowed about what she read. “Catholics consider her one of six Patron saints of Europe. She had a truly adventurous life. She basically died of starvation.”

  “Mine says she died of a stroke.” Ellie stared intently at the little screen.

  “Hmm.”

  “How do you get those crosses?” Ellie gazed at Kate, focusing on her.

  Kate frowned. “You can buy them at churches and people can give them to you. My grandma gave me one of St. Christopher before our trip to Rome a couple years ago. He’s the patron saint of travel. She wanted me to be safe.”

  “Interesting and kinda sweet. The question is where did the owner of the diaper bag get the cross?”

  The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. Kate gathered up the necklaces and her journal and placed them carefully in her bag. She paused a second, then pulled the locket back out and put it around her neck.

  “Okay, we’ll follow up on this tonight.” Ellie said. “I can come over—maybe get a look at the attic?”

  Kate ignored the nervous, guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach and nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  After school, Kate hurried to the car, hoping Ellie would, too. She’d only have a few minutes to chat before the boys arrived. Kate couldn’t use her phone in her last class, Mr. Duffin was a Nazi when it came to unauthorized use of cell phones. And she wanted to keep her phone. Braxton was already leaning on the mini-cooper when she arrived. She hated that she didn’t have a single class with him all day. She never got to see him while at school unless there was an assembly or something. She felt a stab of regret that she wouldn’t be able to spend time with him today.

  “Hey, Cutie. I missed you.” Kate’s insides melted when he talked to her with that deep, gravelly voice. She hurried into his arms. His solid warmth calmed her. She wished she had more time to spend with him, but with her parents not allowing boyfriends, she had to settle for more quality time than quantity. Braxton was one of the best things in her life. Kate would have found him perfect but for one thing, his dislike of Kate looking for her birth parents.

  “Can you go to the play tonight?”

  She started to say yes but then thought better of it; she wanted to spend time with Ellie investigating the things from the attic. “I don’t think I can. You know my parents.” She didn’t want to outright refuse him, she wanted him to know she’d like to go.

  “They usually like you to go to the cultural things, though. Play it up. I want some private time with you.”

  “And a play with hundreds of people is private?”

  “You know what I mean.” He grinned.

  “I do, but I don’t think it’s going to work out tonight, sorry.” Kate frowned. She wished she could tell him everything that was going on, but she knew he’d just get upset.

  Braxton shrugged and pulled her in for a light kiss. “All right. I just wish I got to spend a little more time with you.”

  “I know. Only another month and it’ll be summer, and we won’t have to worry about my parents as much. I’ll be a free agent.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Ellie and Masters arrived hand in hand. She let them in the car and they drove home. After the boys got out of the car and walked away, Ellie asked, “We’re still on for tonight right?”

  Kate nodded. “Of course.” She felt a little bad about blowing Braxton off, but the excitement she felt at finally learning about her birth parents overrode the guilt.

  6

  That night Kate let Ellie into the house at ten-thirty. To Kate’s knowledge, everyone was sleeping away. Kate retrieved the attic key from the spring cleaning folder and they tiptoed their way into the attic, flashlights in hand. “We have to
use our quietest whispers, okay?”

  Ellie nodded. Kate pulled up on the panel and Ellie climbed in. Ellie then pushed out on the panel to help Kate climb in. They crouch walked over to the back of the crawl-space, where the two boxes waited in exactly the same state Kate had left them. She carefully peeled back the tape on each box. First she pulled out the outfit and shoes for Ellie to examine.

  “Maybe we can learn something about these clothes from the tags,” Ellie explained as she snapped pictures of the clothing with her phone. “If you were kidnapped, maybe your real parents put out a description of what you were wearing. We should look for that on the internet. There might be a copy of it in a newspaper archive or something.”

  Kate grimaced and whispered back. “I really don’t think Tom and Abrie stole me.” Her parents might have lied to her, but they weren’t actually bad people—not criminals anyway. The idea made her insides squirm. “I don’t think it’s really a likely explanation.”

  Ellie pressed her lips together. “If it’s too painful for you, I’ll follow that line of investigation for you. Don’t worry about it.” She finished taking pictures and folded the clothes up neatly and placed them back in the box. “Okay, now the bag. It might have a tag, too.” Ellie pushed the little box of clothes back toward the wall to give them more room.

  Kate complied, feeling a little silly. She had a hard time believing they were going to learn anything useful from tags. She pulled out the dusty pink bag and handed it over to Ellie, who examined it meticulously, looking into each section and feeling for a tag. When she didn’t find one, she looked at the strap. Her brow creased as she ran her fingers over it.

  “What is this?”

  Kate leaned in. “What’s what?”

  “This brown stuff?”

  “No idea,” Kate said. “Chocolate?”

  Ellie scrapped a fingernail over it and it flaked off. She dropped it.

  “What?” Kate asked, alarmed.

  “It’s blood, Kate.”

  “No. Why would blood be on it?”

  “It’s blood. I’d bet my life on it.” She picked it back up and took a picture of it.

  Kate ran her hand over her forehead and through her hair.

  “That cross didn’t do much to protect the person carrying this bag.”

  Kate’s hand went the locket around her neck. Her mother had been wounded? Bleeding? The implications swirled around in her head.

  “She didn’t want to give me up,” she whispered, almost to herself. “She was in some kind of danger, and that’s why she had to.” She scooted toward Ellie to get a better look, her hand landing on a piece of paper on the floor where the box had been only moments earlier.

  Ellie squeezed her arm. “Let’s not leap to any conclusions. But I have a bad feeling about this Katiekins. A really bad feeling.”

  Kate took hold of the paper and shined the flashlight on it. It was a faded lime green sheet of notepaper. “Where’d this come from?”

  Ellie moved over to look at it. She read the words out loud.

  “Here is the information you requested, Savino. Constanzie. Southern Ocean County Hospital. A date, but I can’t read it. And a signature. It starts with an A, but I can’t read the rest and the last name starts with M-a-r-c, but the rest is too sloppy to make out. A man must’ve signed this. Terrible handwriting. Another clue. The same name from the back of the picture, Constanzie.”

  “I was thinking Constanzie had to be my mom’s name, but you were right, it could be my given name, but what are these other names?” She rubbed at her forehead and blinked several times. She couldn’t think, couldn’t make any connections that made sense. Heat enveloped her and she had to get out of there. She scrambled out, breathing hard and fast.

  Kate and Ellie spent the next few days speculating about the source of the blood, uncovering what the green note was all about, and trying to learn more about St. Catherine’s of Siena. She kept meticulous notes in her new journal. Ellie got prints of all the pictures she’d taken on her cell and they dedicated a page to each picture, keeping them in groups determined by where and when they were found.

  Ellie Googled and Googled. “OMG, Kate. You’ve got to see this. There is a church in Seaside, New Jersey called St. Catharine’s. It’s spelled differently than the others. Quick. Look at the picture we took of the stamp on the cross. This could be the clue we’ve been waiting for.”

  “What?”

  “Just read me what is stamped on the back of the cross. Spell St. Catherine’s.”

  Kate opened the page in the journal that had the picture of the cross. “C-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E.”

  Ellie squealed. “How did we miss this? St. Catharine’s with an a is in Seaside, New Jersey. The same place that pizzeria is. I bet you anything you’re from Seaside.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes. You most likely attended that church with your parents.”

  “I was probably christened there.” She lay back on the bed and kicked her feet in the air. She didn’t care that it made her look hyper or immature. A lightness filled her chest. She was from Seaside, New Jersey. Her parents, if alive, lived there.

  “Most likely.”

  The name Savino hadn’t turned up anything, but the hospital in question was near the church and the pizzeria, too. “I can’t believe we know what hospital I was born in. Today just keeps getting better and better.”

  They couldn’t figure out the signature. They had come up with ten different possibilities, none of which could be found with a Google search—at least none in or around Seaside, New Jersey, which seemed to be the nexus of the clues and most likely her birth place as well as place of residence until she was adopted.

  Kate was so wound up, she had a hard time concentrating on anything, including Braxton. Ever since they’d gotten together, she’d split her time up between Ellie and him or they all hung out together. Now, because so much was going on that Kate wanted to keep from Braxton, she’d been avoiding him. It was hard, but she thought it was the only way. She had too much on her mind to add Braxton nagging her that she should stop looking for her birth parents. She texted him a ton and called him whenever the opportunity arose, but Braxton was getting a bit peeved.

  “How about I come help you with the yard work?” Braxton said during one of their rushed phone calls. “It’d get done so much faster, and we’d have time together.” Kate’s spring cleaning yard work only took her about half an hour a day, but she used that as an excuse for why they couldn’t hang out.

  “Yeah, like you coming over and working wouldn’t send up a huge red flag? They’d know we were seeing each other for sure. Don’t worry, after next week, the chores will be done.” She hoped they’d have some more answers before then, but she thought she better give herself a little cushion of time.

  “I guess I can wait, but seeing you before school and after school only on the drive home is killing me.”

  “Me, too,” she said. She did miss him and wished she didn’t have to keep what she was doing secret, but it couldn’t be any other way at the moment.

  “Braxton?” Ellie said.

  “Yep.” Kate slumped in her chair.

  “You need to give him some attention or you’re going to lose him. And you don’t want to lose him. He’s hot. Kind. Adores you. Puts up with all your crap and your parents’ crap and and and. I know I don’t need to go on. And don’t be mad, but I think you should tell him what you’ve been up to.”

  Kate sat up straight in her chair. “No way. I have to have found my birth parents before I tell him. He gets so upset whenever I tell him about my search.”

  “Well, I’m going to do you a favor. You are not allowed to come over here to work on sleuthing until you’ve spent some quality time with Braxton.”

  “Please. You don’t mean it. You want to find my parents as much as I do. The mystery is killing you.”

  “I do want to find them. For you. Not for the mystery of it. Although I do love a good intrigue.
I’ll compromise. You spend half of your time with Braxton, as usual, and I won’t cut you off.

  “Are you sure your parents don’t mind me crashing dinner again?” Kate asked Ellie as they ran down the stairs to eat. Ellie’d been acting a little sullen today and she wondered if she was tired of Kate being around so much. They’d spent the afternoon brainstorming ideas. They’d decided to write the hospital, but quickly found the hospital was no more. It had been demolished five years previous. They tried to figure out where the records were now, but had been unsuccessful. “Let’s write to the church,” Kate had suggested, but Ellie had said, “I think it would be better if we could look the priest in the eye when we ask. If something did happen to your mom, he might not want to tell us about it. But if we’re there, we’ll be able to see all the non-verbal clues and tell if he’s lying or something.” Colby had come up to tell them dinner had arrived.

  “Of course not. You know my parents. It’s take-out around the TV. The more the merrier, as far as they’re concerned.” But, Ellie didn’t act excited about it. Kate thought about confronting her and getting everything out in the open, but the thought of going home kept her from saying anything. Hanging with an irritated Ellie was better than being with the lying liars for sure.

  The Lamberts, while hard workers, spent most of their free time watching one reality TV show after another or researching their favorite ones and the characters on them. TV wasn’t a simple hobby for them, but more of a second job. They not only got caught up in the characters, but what they had to do in order to land a spot on such a show.

  As Kate and Ellie entered the family room, Ellie’s mom said, “Do we get to have you for dinner again, Kate? It’s Chinese today.” She looked like she’d come from a TV set. No one would ever guess she was nearly forty and had two teenagers. She and Ellie were often mistaken for sisters, and looking at them at that moment, Kate could understand why. Both had flawless makeup and clothes straight out of a magazine, were tan and had thin bodies with curves in all the right places. Their big, clear eyes and voluminous sleek hair made men’s hearts fail. And Ellie’s mom had no pesky signs of aging at all.