Lost Summer: A Gripping Romantic Suspense

by M T Stone

  “Why do you keep lying about your age?” Dylan laughed out loud. “I know you and Olivia are the same age, and she’ll turn forty-two this year.”

  “Whatever,” Carson grumbled. “You haven’t been ‘roiding, have you? Based on your old man, I wouldn’t have guessed you had the genetics to put on muscle like that.”

  “Nope. Creatine and protein powder is as hardcore as I get.” Dylan opened the door to a cupboard and showed Carson his supplies. “I’ve always had an easy time putting on muscle. After twenty months of good gains, I’m hitting a plateau though.”

  “You’re big enough anyway. Any more and I’ll have a hard time kicking your ass.” Carson smirked, grabbing an apple from the counter and heading out to the den. Carson had set up a makeshift bedroom in that room the last time he stayed with them, and from the looks of it, he was doing the same thing this time. All the couch pillows were stacked in the corner of the room, and he had put a fitted sheet on the couch along with blankets and a pillow. He had slung some of his clothes over a makeshift clothes rack and had his collection of cologne, shaving cream, shampoo, and other necessities neatly displayed on the coffee table. Maybe that’s what he and Mom had been arguing about last night, Dylan thought as he headed out the door. He knew the last thing she wanted was Carson as a long-term houseguest.

  As soon as he backed out of the driveway, his thoughts quickly shifted back to Summer and his overwhelming urge to see her. He found it strange that regardless of the circumstances, just being with her made him feel better. No one had ever made him feel that way, and it was actually starting to drive him nuts. Hopefully, she would be moved to a private room soon, and with any luck, her parents would give them a little space. It would be nice to have a real talk with her. Ever since he nearly lost her, he had been feeling a strange compulsion to tell her the depth of his emotions. His heart ached for her, and even though it was too early in their relationship, he wanted her to know.

  Nurse Julie was back on duty when Dylan arrived at the hospital, so once again, he made a beeline for her. “How’s she doing?”

  “Well, considering what she’s been through, she’s doing pretty well,” Julie replied with a smile. “She had a few pins placed in her foot just before noon, and we just moved her out of the ICU.”

  “So, she’ll still be in a cast?”

  “For several weeks. It was a pretty bad break. She’s the second door on the right,” she told him, pointing to an open door. “She was awake the last time I checked on her.”

  Everything was quiet when he walked into her room except for the beeping of the machine that was still monitoring her vitals. Her eyes were closed, so he just stood there for a moment, admiring the angelic look on her face. She looked so peaceful, and the red bumps that had been covering her skin seemed to be fading. “How long have you been standing there?” she asked, cracking her eyelids open.

  “I just got here. I didn’t want to wake you,” he replied, reaching over the bedrail and taking her by the hand.

  “Well, you shouldn’t have worn that cologne if you didn’t want to wake me.” She giggled before a more serious expression stole the glimmer from her eyes. “I remembered something a little while ago.”

  “What?” The tone of her voice caused a stab of uncertainty in his gut. She tugged at his hand, pulling him closer.

  “He had a picture of me,” she whispered with an incredulous look in her eyes. “It was that picture of us that you have on your Facebook page.”

  “Really?” Dylan pulled back, completely bewildered as to how a guy like him would’ve gotten ahold of one of his pictures. “I’ll have to double-check my privacy settings.”

  “He had it in a drawer next to his bed,” she confided. “He had ripped it in half so you were gone.”

  “That’s understandable. I probably ruined it for him,” Dylan replied with a chuckle.

  “He had a jar of Vaseline in there too. I wanted to use it to get out of that leg cuff, but I couldn’t quite reach it. I practically ripped my shoulder out of the socket trying to grab it.”

  “He had Vaseline and a picture of you in a drawer next to his bed?” Dylan asked, breaking into a full-fledged laugh. “Then I was definitely ruining it for him!”

  “Gross!” Summer pulled her hand free and hit him with it. “Get your mind out of the gutter. This isn’t funny!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It just sounded funny hearing you say it.” Dylan reached over and caressed the top of her head. “I had never laid eyes on the guy before yesterday, so I have no idea how he would’ve found my Facebook. That’s actually a little creepy.”

  “It’s very creepy!” Summer exclaimed. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Where was he while you were going through his drawers?” he asked out of curiosity, finding it odd that he would’ve allowed her access.

  “He was passed out.” Summer smirked. “I showed him how to play quarters and I kicked his ass. We were using straight whiskey.” She cringed, remembering how nasty the stuff tasted.

  “I didn’t realize being good at quarters could be considered a survival skill.” Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Where did you learn to play that?”

  “Jana and I have practiced a few times since graduation. Her brother warned us that freshman girls always throw up at college parties because they don’t know how to play drinking games, so he showed us a few of the basics,” she explained. “I’ll have to let him know that it most likely saved me from being raped.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad to hear that didn’t happen,” Dylan replied, feeling relieved that she hadn’t been subjected to that. “I assume we won’t be drinking anytime soon.”

  “I definitely won’t be drinking wine . . . or whiskey,” she concurred, cringing again at the thought. “Is there any way to find out who printed that picture from your Facebook page?” The look in her eyes told Dylan that it was more than a passing concern.

  “I’ll have to check on that. There’s probably some software that can tell me if someone has been creeping on my account,” he said reassuringly. Hanging out with Carson had left Dylan intrigued by the idea of becoming a detective, and this seemed like it would be the perfect place to start. They both wanted to know whether someone had been stalking her. “Do you remember anything else that was weird like that?”

  “Umm . . . he had a lot of hundred-dollar bills. I think he said it was five thousand dollars’ worth, and he kept them in the refrigerator.” Her eyes lit up once again. “I grabbed two of them before making a break for it, just in case I needed money for a ride or anything.”

  “That’s a lot of cash for a guy who didn’t have a job.” Dylan reflected on the fact that he didn’t have a hundred bucks to his name, much less five thousand. Both of these recollections were major curiosities, but at first glance he couldn’t see any correlation between the two. The guy most likely didn’t have a bank account, so keeping cash would be the only way of storing money. “Did he sell anything?”

  “He did taxidermy and made homemade whiskey, so I suppose he got paid for some of that stuff. I just thought it was weird that they were all hundred-dollar bills,” she added with a puzzled look.

  “What are you two talking about?” Ryan asked as he came back into the room, startling Dylan.

  “She was just telling me that her kidnapper had lots of hundred-dollar bills and we were just trying to figure out where he would’ve gotten so much money.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you mention that to Detective Thomas earlier?” He walked up to the bed and stood uncomfortably close to Dylan.

  “I just thought of it. Things are coming back to me in flashes,” she explained. “I’m not so sure I really want to remember all of it, but my brain seems to be slowly reconnecting some of the dots.” She gave him a look of concern. “I wish I wasn’t so tired,” she added in a drifting voice before reluctantly closing her eyes.

  After several long seconds of dead air, Dylan was the one to break the silence. “Mr. Benne
tt, I apologized to your wife this morning for my behavior last Friday night, and I wanted to tell you the same thing,” he said, backing up slightly to create a little breathing room between them. “We shouldn’t have been drinking and stuff.”

  “And stuff?” He gave him a crossways glance and shuddered as if he were trying to shake off any thoughts about what had happened that night. “I owe you an apology too for the way I’ve been treating you. I was just so angry at the situation and so worried about her. Deep down, I knew that you didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance. I’m sorry for putting you through that.”

  “Thank you, Dad,” Summer whispered softly. Her eyes remained closed, but a cute little smile burst across her lips.

  Dylan suspected that Summer may have used her tiredness to manipulate the situation, but he was relieved to have it over with. He was tired of avoiding Ryan and had hoped they could clear the air without an altercation. Even though he was quite a bit bigger than Ryan, he knew that any kind of scuffle would permanently damage their relationship, and that was the opposite of what he wanted.

  Summer appeared to go deeper into sleep, leaving the two of them with little to do but compare notes and talk about her ordeal. Dylan didn’t mention that the guy had printed out one of his Facebook pictures though. He needed to find out more about how in the hell that had happened before saying anything. When Olivia came into the room accompanied by Ryan’s parents, things started to feel a little claustrophobic. Since Summer was sleeping, Dylan excused himself after a few more minutes of small talk with the four of them. There really wasn’t much to talk about beyond their mutual relief that Summer seemed to be doing better.

  On a normal day, he would’ve gone back home, clicked on the TV, and spent the rest of the afternoon surfing on his laptop. The girls were now old enough to pretty much take care of themselves, so he could do whatever he wanted until his mom came home from work. Now, however, he knew he would most likely have to deal with Carson if he went back there. He decided to head over to the library instead and do some research on Facebook privacy and whether he could figure out who had printed one of his pictures.

  After waiting twenty minutes in a sweat-tainted room to access one of the Jurassic-era PCs, he sat down and logged into his Facebook account. He was surrounded by a few dozen older guys, most of whom were trolling Craigslist in search of work or willing females. He clicked on the privacy tab and began to check the settings on his account. Just as he thought, only his 463 friends were able to view his pictures, but anyone was able to view his profile picture. Unfortunately, he had used that picture of Summer and him as his profile picture for several months, so that didn’t narrow anything down. He pressed the Print button, and a printer on the table behind him sprang to life. It occurred to him that if Leo had used one of these computers to print out the picture, it would have printed out on the very same printer. What an eerie thought.

  He launched Google to search for apps that could tell him who had visited his Facebook page, but he quickly learned that Facebook doesn’t allow them. There were a dozen different references to tracking software, but each of them had been squashed by the internet giant. Even though Facebook itself was obviously tracking everything, they didn’t allow the actual user to access any of that data. Those apps had obviously worked. Otherwise, Facebook wouldn’t have shut them down. That meant that the data was in there somewhere and he just had to figure out how to access it. Maybe it was time to ask for a little help.

  The DEA obviously used the most advanced online and offline surveillance techniques, so Carson would undoubtedly be qualified to help him. He pressed the Logout button, sprang from his chair, and grabbed the photo off the printer. Suddenly, he was looking forward to talking to his uncle. He had already learned from him how to track down someone in the physical world. Hopefully, he could do the same thing in the cyber world.

  Summer awoke to a conversation between Detective Thomas and her father. At first, she kept her eyes closed, just listening to the conversation. Even though she had been sleeping on and off for the past eighteen hours, both her eyes and body were still exhausted. She was starting to feel as if she had been run over by a car. Every muscle and every joint ached like never before. She decided that the next time she talked to a nurse, she would ask for something stronger to dull the pain.

  “Where would a kid like that get so many hundred-dollar bills?” Detective Thomas was wondering out loud. “That’s really suspicious . . . unless he was making some pretty spectacular whiskey.”

  “If someone bought a whole batch from him, I could see it,” her father replied, sounding as if he were deep in thought.

  “That would be a lot of whiskey,” Detective Thomas countered. “I can’t imagine him being able to get more than five bucks a bottle wholesale. A thousand liters of whiskey? I just don’t see it.”

  “He wasn’t selling it.” Summer groaned, struggling to sit up in the bed. “He told me that he just made enough each fall to last him for the year. He seemed to drink a lot.”

  “That makes more sense,” Thomas agreed wholeheartedly. “He could easily make a hundred bottles with that little still, but it would take forever to make a thousand. Did you actually see the money?”

  “Yeah . . . he showed me a whole envelope full of hundreds and said it was five thousand dollars. I took two of them before I escaped, just in case I needed anything. They’re probably still in my capris if you want them.”

  “Where are they? he asked, looking back at Ryan. “Not that we can get much information from your average hundred-dollar bill, but you never know.”

  “I’ll go check with the nurse. I’m sure they’re here somewhere.”

  After Ryan left the room, Detective Thomas pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down. “So things are coming back to you in bits and pieces?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of weird. Out of nowhere, a picture of the hundred-dollar bills popped into my head and then the memory of him showing them to me came right after it.” Summer had noticed that things were starting to flood back into her mind at an increasing pace. She was glad that things were coming back, but at the same time, some of the memories were causing a serious spike in her anxiety level. She reached up with both hands to wipe the tears from her eyes, but the IV tubes caught her right hand so she was forced to wipe both eyes with her left. She let out a sigh, letting the detective know that she was struggling with her emotions.

  “Don’t worry, it’s pretty normal for someone who has had a near-death experience,” he replied. “You’re doing very well considering all that you went through. Have you remembered anything else since we last spoke?”

  “I remembered teaching him to play quarters . . . with whiskey.” She giggled, suddenly feeling a rush of blood to her cheeks since she wasn’t even eighteen.

  “Don’t sweat it. I’ll let the minor consumption slide in this case.” The detective chuckled after noticing her flushed cheeks. “Who won?”

  “I did. He ended up passing out, thank God. I’m pretty sure it saved me from . . . you know.” Tears once again streamed from her bloodshot eyes. “I hate that I start to cry every time I talk about it.”

  “It’s just healthy that you can actually talk about it.” The detective reached over and gave her hand a pat. “You don’t want to carry all of those emotions around with you. I’ve seen things like this completely ruin people’s lives, so it’s good to talk it out. Even if it’s hard.”

  “He had a picture of me,” she blurted out as the thought reoccurred to her.

  Thomas sat in silence for several seconds before muttering, “Where would he have gotten that?”

  “It was a picture from Dylan’s Facebook,” she told him, immediately feeling reluctant to share the fact. “He went to find out if there is any way to tell who printed it.”

  “Unfortunately, he won’t find anything,” Detective Thomas informed her. “Facebook most likely knows who printed it, but they’ll never share that with us. If he wer
e still alive and you were dead, we could maybe get a court order, but that’s not the case. You actually saw the picture?”

  Summer nodded. “He had it in a drawer next to his bed. I was searching for a key to the cuff or anything slippery to help get it off while he was passed out. He had some Vaseline in the same drawer, but I couldn’t reach it.”

  Detective Thomas smirked, obviously having the same perverted thought as Dylan, but he held his tongue. The smirk quickly dropped from his face, however. “I knew we should’ve spent a little more time going through that place, but there didn’t seem to be much of a case. I’ll get ahold of an investigator, and we’ll make another trip out there. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “He kept the money in the fridge,” she added before wiping a few remaining tears from her eyes.

  “I’ve got the pants,” Ryan announced as he walked back into the room. “I’ll let you fish around in the pockets. I don’t want to mess up any possible evidence.”

  Detective Thomas smiled. “Well, I don’t expect there to be any fingerprints or anything.” He pulled the two crumpled, wet bills from the front left pocket and slipped them into a small plastic bag before handing the pants back to him. He glanced back at Summer before leaving the room. “You get well, Missy. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  Chapter 21

  By the time Dylan got back to the house, his mind was going a thousand miles per hour. Even if Leo had gone to the library and used one of the computers, that still wouldn’t explain why he would’ve gone to his Facebook account. If he wanted a good picture of Summer, he should’ve gone to her account. There were dozens of pictures of her on there, so he wouldn’t have had to rip the picture in half. Dylan knew this from first-hand experience, as he had spent plenty of time gazing at them in recent months.

  “What’s up, little guy?” His uncle cocked his head and smirked, knowing that the phrase had irritated him earlier.