by Casey Diam
“Careful. I’ve always prided you for having your head on your shoulders. You’re changing. I can see it. You’re becoming stronger. You could make a lot of money. It might not be what you want to do, but the offer is still there should you change your mind.”
My jaw clenched as I shook my head. “I’m good. Can I go now? There’s something I need to take care of at work.”
He stared at me for ten seconds. I counted.
Then he nodded. “My driver will take you back to the hotel. I’m trusting you won’t go digging your own grave.”
“No. I remember,” I said, not needing to hear his threats or reminders of how fast he could put a bullet in my head.
Of course, he wasn’t my father, but why adopt someone he clearly didn’t give a shit about?
I glanced at the cam as I walked out. I needed to remove it the next the chance I got.
❧
I’d never known Connor to use wiretapping, but since I’d found out he had contacts in the police force, I wasn’t in any hurry to find out should I contact Paige or Calvin. It was smarter to wait until I retrieved the other phone I’d hidden inside my suite. But it took a half hour to get back to the hotel, and I was on edge by then, needing to get to Paige.
I was hurrying toward the elevator when the receptionist called out, “Mr. Connor?”
“Morning,” I called out, not bothering to pay her any attention.
“Mr. Connor.”
I continued to the elevator but stopped in my tracks at her next words.
“There’s a girl in your room. I—”
With a sharp inhale, I turned around and started for the desk, and in my calmest, deadliest voice, I asked, “What did you just say?”
Her eyes widened and lips trembled. “I—she—I—she said you invited her over.”
I cocked my head, and between gritted teeth, I asked, “Who said that?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t—”
I held my index finger up and shook my head as I started toward the elevator. After being in the woods just hours ago, I didn’t know the urge to strangle someone could be this strong. She was so fucking fired.
The whole time up the elevator, all I could think was: How the fuck is someone in my room? Did she actually go up and let this person into my suite? Had she lost her damn mind?
I pressed my thumb to my temple. I was going to lose it. I knew I was.
I swiped my key card and burst into the room, out to grab and toss whoever the hell had the audacity—
Within a few steps, a very familiar blonde stepped out in the center of the living room with a gun pointed in my direction.
“Hello, Caleb.”
That smile, her eyes.
Ah! Fuck.
Chapter Forty
Paige
Caleb looked relieved, which was confusing. My gun was aimed center mass on his chest... relief wasn’t the reaction I was going for.
“Start talking.”
“Paige”—he shook his head—”I don’t know how you got in here, but you shouldn’t be here.”
My thumb moved to the bump at the top of the weapon and pulled downward, sending a sweet I’m-not-bullshitting sound through the air.
“Paige”—he moved forward—”you shouldn’t be here. You need to go. Now.”
I would believe he was looking out for me if I hadn’t found his phone, which conveniently held a website history. A site I’d clicked on led me to security feeds in my apartment and some other office he’d obviously just come from.
“Don’t push me, Caleb. Because, before I let you kill me, I’ll shoot you. Now, first question. Why are you spying on me?”
“I wanted to keep you safe.” He hadn’t denied watching me, but he also wasn’t answering my question.
“Wrong answer. Let’s try another question. Did you know the Sawyers?”
His eyebrows crinkled, and he asked in a low voice, “What?”
“You heard me. Answer me,” I said, barely able to keep the emotion out of my voice, but the look on his face said it all. He knew who the Sawyers were. My head jerked from left to right as my eyes watered. “Answer me.”
With a slow, confused shake of his head, he said, “They were my family. How do you know—”
His family?
“What?”
He raised his hand and ran it through damp hair, as if he’d showered not long ago. “How do you know the Sawyers, Paige?”
“They were my parents, my sisters...” I tried for a breath as emotion clogged my throat.
“Oh God.” He shook his head. “No. Paige, no.”
He wouldn’t stop shaking his head, and I didn’t know why he was starting to look so devastated.
“What—” Then it hit me.
He had been adopted. They hadn’t wanted him...
I lowered my weapon.
My dad. Caleb playing the guitar. The singing—
It couldn’t be...
Bile rose in my gut, and I rushed to the bathroom, throwing up anything and everything I’d consumed in the past twenty-four hours.
It can’t be. It just can’t be.
What felt like ages later, I flushed the toilet and padded back out to the living room. Caleb was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. I walked to the cream chair across from the couch and sat. He didn’t move, but I’d been so quiet, he probably hadn’t heard me re-enter the room.
“Um,” I began, “are you sure they are your family?”
He didn’t look up, but he nodded.
My eyes filled with tears, and I curled my feet beneath me in the chair.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “The Sawyers weren’t really your parents, right?”
He looked at me, and I couldn’t stop the tears.
I fisted the sleeve of my sweatshirt in my palm and brought it to my mouth. “But they were.” My voice broke, and I looked down.
His gaze was too much. Sickness stirred in my stomach again.
He doesn’t look like me. It isn’t possible. He can’t be... we can’t be...
I couldn’t even think about it.
“Paige, focus. We need to figure this shit out.”
“Um...” I shook my head and thought back to the words I’d heard that night.
“We have the evidence to plant if it comes to that. It’s too easy... everyone will think they had kidnapped her.”
Those words were one of the things that had kept me from listening to the police or anyone else involved in the case. Evidence had been planted to make the police believe I’d been kidnapped. I’d clearly heard the man that night when he’d stated that. Which, if the evidence had been planted, of course it would point there. But I hadn’t been kidnapped. Because the other reason I didn’t listen to anyone was because my parents wouldn’t have done that. Mom and Dad loved me. I had known them. But when I’d told the police what I’d overheard from that man that night, they’d said I probably misheard because the Sawyers had kidnapped me.
Oh my God, I’m so confused.
“Paige, talk to me. You’re trying to figure this out in your head. But I need to know. Were they really your parents?
“I don’t know. The men who killed my family wanted the police to believe the Sawyers had kidnapped me, that I wasn’t really theirs. It’s all lies. All of it. I’m not Madelyn Wells.”
He leaped out of the couch and started to pace behind it while scrubbing a hand over his face. “I thought I’d been through enough shit. Now this? Fuck!”
“Caleb, why were you watching me? And for how long?”
He stopped, looked at me, and then walked to an accent table in a corner where he picked up a box of tissues. “I know who’s after you.”
Walking toward me, he paused, and my heartbeat sped up, the same as it had been doing each time he came close, and it made me cry even more. He handed me the box of tissues before resuming his seat on the sofa across from me.
“It’s my dad.”
“What?�
��
“Alex Connor. He’s the one who killed your family.” He shook his head, as if not wanting to accept that they were his family, too. “It’s why you shouldn’t have come here.”
“But you—were you supposed to kill me?”
“No,” he whispered. “I’m not supposed to know about you. I overheard a conversation, and I followed Connor’s men one night. It’s why I didn’t really know who you were. So, I wanted to figure out who you were and why they were after you.”
He shook his head and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head and ran his hand through his hair. “I need a drink,” he growled. “This is so fucked up. And, fuck, you need to go. We can’t be here. You... you can’t be here.”
“Okay.” I got my backpack and placed my weapon inside. “Please, don’t fire the receptionist.”
Smiling, he shook his head. Picking up the room phone from the accent table by the couch, he punched in a single digit, most likely the one connecting him to the front desk.
“You’re not fired. I understand completely, but don’t ever let it happen again. It would also be in your best interest not to mention this incident to anyone, including my brother, or you will be fired.” Ending the call, he dialed another number and looked at me. “About what time did you get here?”
“Around four thirty.”
“Hey, man, I need a huge favor,” he said into the receiver attached to the coiled telephone cord. “A blonde girl came to reception this morning around four thirty, and she needs to be invisible. Yeah. All right, thanks, and if Brad comes up there and gives you any shit, just let me know.”
He left the living room and came back with a hoodie. “Put this on. Yours is known. When we leave this room, keep your head down until we get in my car. Don’t look at anyone. I just need to grab my phone. Hold on.”
“It’s in my bag,” I said.
“My phone is in your bag?” he asked, enunciating each word as if he didn’t understand. As if it were some impossible task for me to have found it in the first place. I nodded. “You know what? I don’t even want to know how you found it. Let’s just go.”
I did as Caleb had directed, quickly navigating the long hallway to the elevator, my body hiding behind his for the walk. It wasn’t until the elevator doors opened on the garage level that what he’d just told me began to sink in. His father owned this hotel, and I was here. All these years, I’d been running from danger, yet here I was, walking right into it. Goose bumps traveled over my skin as chills ran down my spine.
A whispered curse came from Caleb, and his hand moved back to hold me in place behind him.
“Who’s that?” a male voice nearby inquired. Whoever he was, he was too close and Caleb didn’t want him to see me. “Come on, even after our little bonding, you’re going to treat me like this?”
Caleb moved forward but slow enough to keep me in place behind him as he exited the elevator. He then made a slow turn, and I followed his lead so I stayed behind, my heart pounding. Whoever it was must have been getting on the elevator, but until he did, Caleb and I were stuck this way. Listening keenly, I moved my head, dying to look around his broad shoulders.
Chapter Forty-One
Caleb
A smug look slid over my brother’s face as he stepped to the side, trying to see who was behind me, but I shifted again. I wasn’t budging and only hoped Brad would get on the elevator and not push this.
“Caleb, dude, come on. Are you really hiding someone from me?”
A woman hurried to the elevator, holding the hand of a small boy. Brad moved to the side to let her in without looking at her, though we both knew she wasn’t blind to what was happening in front of her.
He slapped his palm to his chest. “I’m so hurt.”
“Do you blame me?” A tense smile formed on my lips, more to put the woman at ease, but I was failing horribly.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed a button, and the door closed on his smoldering face.
“Come on, and don’t forget to keep your head down,” I said to Paige.
As we neared the private garage, I pressed the button on my key ring, so it would be open by the time we got there, and then the Start button for the car.
“Who was that? Why are there matching sets of cars? Is this the same car that—”
“No. It’s new, and it helps us to avoid attention. That’s why we have our own garage, too. That accident, for example, no one knows about it because I have a backup car. Everyone thinks I’m still driving the same old car, but I’m not. And cops never check the VIN number if I’m stopped, so switching out the plates and registration from one vehicle to the other hasn’t been a problem.”
“Oh my God, you’re like them.” She turned her head to the window, and her voice came out as a pained whisper. “Why do you do this?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “But I didn’t want to go to jail, knowing they would still be out here. And then you came into the picture, and I thought this would be my chance to have something on them. I figured, if I had proof they were trying to hurt you, it would be something I could anonymously turn in to the police or something. But then, I realized it wouldn’t have been enough, so my main goal became keeping you safe and out of their reach until I could come up with another plan. I’m sorry.”
I glanced at her, but her attention was through her window.
“There has to be an explanation, Caleb. We can’t be related. We can’t be.”
Fuck, I wanted to touch her, tell her it would be okay, but I couldn’t. It felt wrong. Nothing had felt wrong when it came to her before today. I had taken her virginity, for Christ’s sake. There was no fucking way I could live with myself if it turned out that we were related. There was no way...
I looked to her small frame swallowed up in my jacket and her long creamy thighs that had been wrapped around me so many times when I was—
I steered the vehicle off the road and over the bump leading up to the sidewalk. Jumping out of the car and ignoring the horns beeping around us, I threw up in the street. Catching my breath, I waited a second before I went back in the car.
Paige handed me a tissue. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Me neither.”
“Do you work today?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good. I’m going to stop at the grocery store and get you some food for the apartment and lots of alcohol for myself. I’ll stay at the hotel until we can figure—”
“It’s fine,” she said, cutting me off.
I bit my lip and shook my head. “If you need anything, I’m here and Calvin... fuck, he can’t know about this. No one—”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t you think I know that?”
I inhaled. “Yeah. Okay.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest in the seat and hugged her arms around them. “Maybe, tomorrow, we can do a blood test to see if there are any matches in our DNA or something. I don’t know.”
“Yeah, that’s a good start,” I agreed, reversing into a parallel-parking spot at the side of the road. I relaxed my head onto the headrest as I shifted the gear into park. “I don’t have a birth certificate, but the reason I know they were my family is that... I overheard one of my dad’s men saying how they couldn’t believe my dad would have them take out my entire family, so I asked him about it. He told me that I shouldn’t feel sorry for them because they didn’t want me. He also said they had illegally taken a girl to replace me because I was shameful to the family. He said it wasn’t personal but a loose end that needed to be tied up and that I shouldn’t worry about it because they were bad people.”
That wasn’t exactly how it had gone down, but that was the prettiest picture I could paint for her.
“He was wrong. They weren’t bad people. They would never have taken me, Caleb, and they would never have le
t you go.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it could be, but something isn’t right, and I didn’t see those guys that night. So, for them to still want me dead, it means they think I know something, and I don’t know what it could be. But, now, I think it has something to do with you, too.
“Also, I know you’re related to the Sawyers; you have to be. Just the way you play—it was like déjà vu. But, then, I don’t know where that leaves me. Why would they plant evidence that I was kidnapped? It makes no sense.” She pressed her palms to her forehead. “God, I’ve tried not to think about this for so long. I haven’t even gone to their graves since the funeral. I don’t want to go back there. I can’t...”
I had known she was hurting, but I’d had no idea it was this much. Reaching over, I squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll figure this it out. I don’t care what it takes,” I consoled, understanding that not only had she been running from those men but also from her past.
She didn’t want to go back, and she had every right not to. But, if we were going to figure this out, I needed her to.
Chapter Forty-Two
Paige
Caleb and I sat in the doctor’s office the next day, both of us wrecked with nerves over what we might discover.
The doctor’s mouth seemed to move in slow motion as he clarified, “We can do a test. However, for a sibling, it is always tricky in determining if you are indeed related. The genetic markers carried down from parents to child tend to fluctuate from one person to the other. It is what makes everyone so unique. We all have different markers that we either take from the mother or the father, and without the father’s or mother’s DNA, it’s hard to determine which markers would connect the two of you. Therefore, the results of the test won’t be conclusive.”
Caleb exhaled. “I understand.” He looked at me. “Do you still want to do it?”
I sighed. “It seems pointless now, but might as well. We’re already here.”
After we got our blood drawn, we walked out of the clinic. It was midday, and the sun was shining brighter than I’d seen in days. I sank down into the passenger seat of Caleb’s car and searched my brain, looking for answers to questions I’d stopped asking myself since I was sixteen.
