Trust

by Casey Diam

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yeah. What’s up? Is everything okay?”

  I loved how concerned he got over me as much as I hated it. I liked doing what I wanted, when I wanted. And, with him getting so close to me, I didn’t want him ever to have the ability to change that. The only family he’d known was after me, and when all was said and done, whose side would he choose?

  “Bailey called. I’m meeting her at one today.” Walking over to the front door, I checked the lock again. I could never be too sure.

  “I have this lunch meeting to attend, but I’ll send someone to make sure it isn’t a setup or anything. You won’t even know he’s there.”

  “What do you mean someone? Who are you sending?”

  “Someone I trust. It’s fine. You’re going to be okay.”

  My heart rate picked up. “Caleb, don’t just send anyone.”

  After a pause, he replied, “Calvin. I’m sending him.”

  I sighed.

  Three days since my visit back to the house, but of course, he’d caught on to how it had affected me, how much more anxious I’d become.

  ❧

  After the longest three hours of my life, I arrived at the coffee shop and stopped dead in my tracks at the entrance. Bailey wasn’t alone. A man in casual clothes and a baseball cap was seated next to her.

  What the hell? Who is he, and why isn’t she alone?

  Before I could make a quick exit, she looked up and signaled me over. Taking in the rest of the café, I tried my best to appear fine as I walked to the table. My heart was pumping so hard that it made the sprint session I’d had on the treadmill earlier seem like a piece of cake. Baby stuff. Just a warm-up.

  I pulled out the chair in front of Bailey and sat down, keeping the mysterious man in my peripheral. He looked to be in his forties with a mustache, and his resting bitch face suggested constipation rather than boredom.

  I don’t like this. Why is he here?

  “Madelyn, this is Agent Langley.”

  Should I tell her I go by Paige?

  “I can’t dig more into this case since it isn’t in our jurisdiction—the police force. After what happened a few years ago with the Sawyers’, it’s been moved over. However, Agent Langley is a good friend of mine, and he has access to things in the FBI that I don’t. He wants to help.”

  Agent Langley nodded at me, and I slowly returned the nod while pursing my lips. This was a bad idea.

  “Sergeant Bailey gave me the details, but I would like to hear it from you. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Do I have to? I don’t know you, and honestly, I don’t trust you.”

  “So, he’s my husband as well,” Sergeant Bailey blurted.

  My head swiveled to her and then down to her ringless finger.

  Husband. Right.

  “You can trust him, I promise,” she convinced.

  I still didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of someone else knowing I was searching for information, but I needed to know why they had summoned me here, so I recounted as little as possible to him.

  “There are some things that are classified that I can’t tell you. However, with you being the connecting point after the murder of the Sawyers, my department had reopened and taken over the case for your parents’ murder. Though we still ended up hitting dead ends each time we tried to search for any reason that would show how both incidents might or might not be connected,” Agent Langley explained.

  I couldn’t help but be thankful that he was the straight to the point type.

  “Carrie and Peter Wells did not commit suicide. They were murdered right after their child went missing. You are the daughter of Carrie Wells, Madelyn.”

  My heart started to punch on my rib cage, and chills ran through my body.

  “Nearly five years ago, DNA samples were taken from David Sawyer and Leanne Sawyer. The samples were then analyzed to see if there were any matches to the labs we’d obtained while you were... in the hospital’s care. We needed to rule out you having any relation to them since you’d been in their care for all those years. I’m sure your psychiatrist would have spoken to you at the time about the Wells being your real parents...”

  The blood rushing to my ears blocked out anything he might have continued to say, and then I was sitting on the earth’s axis while the world spun around me. My fists were clenched so tight in my lap beneath the table that it was a good thing I didn’t have nails because they would have dug a set of deep wounds into my flesh. The pressure in my chest increased.

  I needed to calm down. Caleb. I needed Caleb.

  Breathe...

  “This is a lot to take in. If you need help...”

  And there it is, the crazy look. I’m not crazy. I’m pissed. I’m frustrated.

  ❧

  My feet pounded against the pavement as I ran to the apartment building. I barely recalled the journey from the coffee shop to here, but before I could shove the key in the lock, Caleb was opening the door for me. Without making eye contact with him, I pushed into the apartment and paced to the kitchen. Then, I turned and headed back to the door to remove my sneakers. I’d been confused on the way here, but as I stood, my shoulders dropped. My emotions, reaching out to the pain, were plunging to a deeper fury.

  “What happened? What’s going on?” Caleb asked.

  He’d taken off his suit jacket, and he was standing in a white dress shirt tucked inside the belted waist of his gray pants. A blue tie hung snug around his neck, and that was as close to his face as I allowed myself to look.

  Taking a short breath, I steadied my voice. “Where does he live?”

  “Who?”

  My mouth barely moved. “Your father.” I sounded so calm that no one would know of the torrid state of destruction taking place inside my rigid body.

  Marching to the other side of the room where his kickboxing bag hung from the ceiling, my feet did a quick shuffle on the surface of the wooden floor in front of the bag. Without my knuckles wrapped, the first few jabs I threw should have been painful, but I didn’t feel it. I needed to neutralize myself, my emotions. My fist struck the bag with an audible smack. My anger. I struck again with a right hook. My pain. This was the only way I knew how to make it stop.

  “Paige, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Caleb’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my mind.

  My right knee rose, giving the bag a powerful high knee. It was swinging away with my relentless abuse.

  It’s becoming useless. I need it to hit back. I want it to take my pain and give it back. I don’t understand.

  This used to make me feel better, so why wasn’t it working?

  As I raised my dominant hand to deliver a more brutal punch, strong arms wrapped around my waist and lifted me into the air, moving me away from the bag. My legs kicked while I aimlessly reached out, trying to get back to the bag.

  “Paige, stop.”

  “No.”

  “Paige.”

  Why did this feel like losing my parents all over again?

  A sob caught in my throat, but I refused to give in to what my body needed. Release. And that came about in one of two ways. Tears or exhaustion, and I was opting for the latter.

  “Caleb, let me go!”

  With my back flush against his body, his grip tightened under my rib cage. I assumed my feet swung a few inches from the floor. My first thought was to attack, sink my thumb and index finger into one of the many pressure points on his hand so that he would release me, but this was Caleb.

  A broken voice started talking before I realized it was mine. “They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve to go like that.”

  “What are you talking about? What happened?”

  All because of Alex Connor, it was happening again. I needed to find him. My control. My sanity. It was in his blood. He needed to suffer. I needed to make him suffer. My parents. Both the ones who had raised me and the ones I’d never met. Gone.

  “My real mom and
dad and the Sawyers, they’re dead because of him,” I murmured.

  Lowering my feet to the floor, he turned me to him. “Carrie and Peter are your parents?”

  Didn’t he hear what I was trying to say?

  “They didn’t commit suicide. Your adoptive family took care of them, too. There’s no other explanation for why they were killed.” I shook my head. “I’m done, Caleb. I can’t not do anything.”

  My eyes focused on the grip I had on his biceps, which was so harsh indents were forming around my fingertips. That couldn’t feel pleasant, but I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. I released him and backed away, needing blood from the asshole who had done this to me, and I knew someone who could lead me straight to him.

  Brad.

  “I need to go.”

  “Where?”

  I remained silent.

  “Paige?”

  One look at him, and he knew.

  “No.” He grabbed me as I tried to head toward the kitchen where I kept my pistol sometimes.

  “Caleb, don’t push me,” I snapped, yanking my arm out of his grip.

  “You need to calm down. We’ll come up with a plan, but right now, you’re upset. You can’t go like this.”

  As I moved forward, I reacted the same time he tried to stop me from behind, sweeping my foot behind his heel and shoving my elbow into his rib cage, knocking him off-balance that he landed on the floor.

  “Goddamn it, Paige, you’re not thinking straight. I’m not letting you do this.” He was already back on his feet and coming toward me.

  “Try to stop me,” I warned.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  He went for my arm again, but I latched on to his, right into a pressure point on his forearm. I yanked him back with my body weight as I stepped back, taking him to the floor on his side, but this time, I followed, twisting his shoulder joint as I burrowed my knees in his ribs. I didn’t cause him as much pain as I could have because this was a warning for him to leave me alone. Before I could tell him how this was a preview and how he might be underestimating me, he pulled his arm down and swiveled his hips around, causing my body to be yanked forward. Tucking my head, I rolled over his body and landed on my back.

  Son of a bitch.

  For some reason, I hadn’t thought he knew Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but he had been raised by a killer, so I didn’t know what I had been thinking.

  For a man in a tailored suit, he moved with swiftness, but I rolled to the side as he tried to pin me to the floor. And, for a few minutes, that was all we did—roll around, trying to gain dominance over each other’s techniques. His tie benefited me in the beginning until it disappeared from his neck. When I rotated onto my stomach to get away, it screwed me over because he was much stronger than me and used it to his advantage, pinning me facedown with my arms behind my back.

  “Stop and listen to me,” he demanded. “They’ve been doing this shit for years. You think you can just walk in there and stop it? Stop him? Are you fucking crazy?”

  “I can’t take this. I can’t hold it in anymore. This rage,” I shouted. Like a captured wild animal, I wanted to be freed, and as my skin and insides caught on fire, my temper sizzled. “I can’t fucking take it!”

  After a few minutes of my arms in an aching constraint behind me, cheek pressing to the floor, I finally surrendered. When Caleb felt it, he released my hands but kept me pinned to the floor with his solid physique atop my less sturdy one. In addition to all the emotions peeling through my being, a deep-seated need tightened in my belly when his groin made contact with my bottom.

  Thrusting my hips back, I whispered, “Caleb, I...”

  My butt grazed him again, and the noticeable heavy length in his pants made my insides coil. He wasn’t even erect, but I remembered everything about his body, and it wouldn’t take long. I wanted to feel him. I needed him to make this all stop, make me forget, if only for a while.

  “Paige,” he sighed, “that isn’t a good idea.”

  “Fuck everything, Caleb. I don’t care. It isn’t fair.” My voice cracked, and a single tear spilled from my eye onto the floor. “Argh,” I groaned, trying to release some of the agony and fury erupting inside me.

  “I’m sorry this is happening to us, to you. I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  He slid both his forearms beneath my head, creating a pillow for me, and then rested his head between my ear and shoulder. We stayed like that for a while, letting the hurt pass between our flush bodies. Though I didn’t want to think he was hurting, too, each time it crossed my thoughts, a new fury would awaken, making me want to leave the comfort of his hold and deliver the bullet I’d wanted to before he stopped me. But, right now, he was here, and I needed this. I needed... him. He was the only one I had.

  “I’m sorry.” I frowned, realizing I’d propositioned him. “Do you think we still could be related?”

  He slid from my back to the side of my body and stared at the ceiling, his hair disheveled. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure who my parents are.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All of this is fucking ridiculous.”

  “And traumatizing,” I added.

  “Yeah, that.” He turned his head to me.

  As a sense of calm settled over me, I mulled over what Agent Langley had said while I stared at Caleb.

  My psychiatrist had told me the Wells were my real parents, but I didn’t want to hear it at the time. I didn’t want to believe it. If I believed it, then I would have had to believe that the Sawyers had kidnapped me. But at this moment, I knew. It hadn’t been them. Alex Connor was the one. He did all of this.

  And the puzzle of it is so complicated that I’m certain he wants to make sure no one figures it out.

  “You know, even if it turns out we aren’t related,” I said, “you’re the closest I’ve come to feeling like I have a family again. I think it’s because, even without me saying anything, you still see me. How?”

  His chest expanded as he drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Caleb

  Calvin and I sat on the leather couch, facing Paige, who sat on top of the ottoman, her shins crossed and feet resting beneath either of her knees. Her hair was caught in a messy bun, and she was in her work uniform. The whole afternoon, we’d been brainstorming together, fitting together what we already knew versus what still remained a mystery.

  Leaning forward, Paige supported an elbow on her thigh and then rested her chin in her palm. She sighed and looked at Calvin. “So, we know that Carrie and David were my parents, but why would Connor have needed to kidnap me from them and then hand me over to the Sawyers, who accepted me so willingly? At least, I don’t think it was with a fight. The Sawyers had never once treated me like I wasn’t one of theirs. Ever.”

  My fingers moved through the trimmed hair above my ear as I processed what she was saying. “But why would Connor have kidnapped me? To replace me with you?”

  Paige’s eyes shifted to me as she massaged a thumb into her temple. It worried me when she did that. She’d been doing it a lot over the past few days, and two times this week, I’d heard the shower running between two and three in the morning when I knew for certain that she’d taken a shower before bed.

  “Could be,” she said, “but you’re five years older than I am. Mom and Dad—” She sighed, shaking her head. “The Sawyers had a lot of friends and were very social people. I’m sure one of my sisters or I would have heard something if I was brought into the family without her being pregnant.”

  “So, maybe she was pregnant,” Calvin said. “Just not with Caleb or you.”

  As I muttered, “Holy shit,” Paige’s eyebrows rose. “Shit.”

  “Man, I feel bad for you two. This is fucking complicated.” Calvin picked up his phone from his lap, grinning at whatever was on the screen.

  When what Calvin had said registered, my lips pressed together. “So, there might be someone else out there who I could also b
e related to. Great! I guess I’ll have to hope I haven’t fucked her already.” Leaping out of the sofa, I muttered, “Just fucking great.” I headed to the bathroom and slammed the door shut before pounding my fist into it. A small dent appeared in the wooden surface, and I turned to the mirror but instantly looked away. I didn’t want to see myself like this, whatever this was.

  I was the calm one.

  The obedient one.

  I liked peace. Never destruction.

  My jaw tensed as I heard a soft voice on the other side of the door. “We’re going to head out.”

  Paige.

  This had started with her. It should have been simple. Find her. Figure out if she was innocent. Get proof Alex Connor was after her and then turn that information over to the police or use it as leverage so I could terminate my involvement in whatever the fuck kind of operation Connor had been running. Only I hadn’t known the amount of power Alex Connor possessed. I had known his men were skilled, but as far as his power of influence went, he’d kept that information from me. It hadn’t taken Connor long to reach the conclusion that I wasn’t “fit to be in the field.”

  But at least I knew his cards, knew that my earlier plan wouldn’t have worked since he had a friend in the police force. One with quite possibly the highest ranking in her department if he’d been working with her for over nineteen years.

  I stared at the door, fist clenched, until I heard the front door close.

  It was logical that the more we found out, the closer we should be getting to the truth, not further away. Right?

  Interlocking my fingers, I moved them to the nape of my neck and pulled, frustrated with how complicated this had become. No wonder justice could never be served. He had someone on the inside, and the ones who weren’t working with him were clueless... and missing all the players.

  I had all the players.

  ❧

  “Look, I’m no mastermind. I’m just good at taking orders,” Calvin mumbled hours later at the local bar where we were having a few beers.