Dylan was in on the plan and thought it sounded like a good idea to him, anything to get Baylee’s mind off Connor. “It’s fine with me, but does Jake know about this?” No one could accuse Dylan of not playing his part to the max.
“Knowing Jake won’t let Kit out of his sight right now, I’m pretty sure he knows. It’s Reese that thinks we’re nuts.”
“Reese is just being a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry, Dylan. I should have mentioned it to you before now. But it was the only time we could get together and include Quinn. It’s a rare day off for her. Who knows when she’ll have another? I don’t think we’ll see her on Memorial Day.”
“I’m not upset, Baylee. You don’t have to clear everything you do with me.”
She thought she did; it was his house after all, but she changed the subject. “Can you believe Jake and Kit are moving in together?”
“No. This thing between them moved really fast.”
Baylee laughed and shook her head. “Men. Glaciers move faster than Jake Boston. Think about it, they’ve known each other for ten years. Kit’s been hoping this would happen since she was fourteen. Personally, I think it’s great he finally got off the pot. Kit’s the best. She’s loyal and loving. She’ll be wonderful to him.”
“Hey, if it works for them, I’m all for it. His first marriage to Claire was a disaster, a joke. The woman was a…” He tempered his words. “Claire slept around. It’s always been Jake’s theory that she was sleeping with whoever killed her.”
Baylee was no prude, but her mouth fell open. “I had no idea. Were they ever happy?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sarah’s pacifier fall out of her mouth and Baylee reached into the back seat to retrieve it, stuffing it down into the diaper bag. When she turned back around she pointed out, “Jake won’t have to worry about that sort of thing with Kit. Like I said, she’s loved him for such a long time, she won’t hurt him. Does Kit know that about Claire though? She thought Claire was the love of his life.”
Dylan laughed at that and shook his head. “Oh God no. Claire told him she was pregnant, so they got married. Two weeks after the wedding he caught her taking a birth control pill. There was never a baby. There was, however, Claire wanting Jake’s money. But Jake suspected she was never faithful. So, when she ended up murdered, the police thought he had motive.”
“How terrible for Jake. He was never charged, though. You know Dylan, Kit isn’t really into the whole money thing. She isn’t into material stuff. She’s about as down-to-earth as you can get. But I’ll tell you right now, Kit wants a family more than anything. That’s what I think is behind this whole idea of finding her long lost brother in Ireland.”
Dylan had grudgingly revised his opinion of Kit somewhat as he had gotten to know her a little better over the past few weeks. Okay, Kit wasn’t the money hungry viper Claire had been.
He also didn’t think Baylee was into the whole material thing either after inventorying her clothes. The clothes weren’t out of style exactly, they just weren’t the latest in trendy fashions, no designer labels or flashy party dresses for Baylee.
But then he realized she was staring at him, waiting for him to say something. “I take it you aren’t sold on the idea of Kit finding the long lost brother.”
“I wasn’t at first. But I see her point. Family means a lot to her. Now that she knows Alana wasn’t her real mother, I think she’ll want to start a family with Jake. Right away.”
“You mean she didn’t want kids before?”
Baylee shook her head. “Sadly, no. She was convinced that she might…she was afraid she might turn out like Alana.”
“Ah, got it. The whole child abuse cycles theory.”
“Something like that.”
“And you don’t feel that way even though your father…”
“Knocked me around. It’s okay to say it, Dylan. That’s why I was in therapy for so long. I can say it. As bad as things were at my house, Kit had it a hundred times worse. At least my father didn’t lock me in a closet.”
Dylan’s eyes drifted from the road and zeroed in on Baylee’s. “A closet? You’re kidding?”
“I wish I were.”
“Jesus. After finding all the porn in Alana’s attic that day I can only imagine what it was like for Kit to grow up in that house.”
When Baylee didn’t say anything, Dylan realized she had her own childhood demons to fight off. He changed the subject. “So Kit hasn’t seen hide or hair of Collin?”
“No. All of them seem to be keeping a low profile or as Quinn says, it’s as if all three roaches have gone underground or something.”
It was the “or something” that had Dylan glancing in the rearview mirror once again to make sure no one trailed them from Beverly Hills.
True to his word, that night Dylan got on his computer, Googled the name Sarah Moreland, and was disappointed in the lack of hits. After trying several websites that promised they kept the best bios and trivia on celebrities, both past and present, he found an article that gave a four-line history of Baylee’s mother, but not much else.
One thing Dylan couldn’t get past was the vanishing off the face of the earth thing. A talented actress doesn’t just give up on her career. And couldn’t she have picked up her acting career once she got to Europe? But there was no mention of Sarah’s work or films after the year she vanished.
The bio told him that Sarah Moreland had been born in Glendale, California. She was a local girl who had gotten her first break in show biz when she’d landed a small part in the movie Happy in Love. From there she’d been cast in a supporting role in the comedy drama Growing up Dead with Alana Stevens playing her older sister.
The article went on to say that she’d given up her promising career for marriage to director William Scott, and later had a child. The footnote to the story said that she’d given it all up to run off with a young tennis pro with aspirations of joining the European circuit. The article didn’t elaborate on the tennis pro.
But for some reason, Dylan refused to buy the story. It just didn’t add up.
Connor had spent three days trying to locate Baylee, only to come to the conclusion she wasn’t in San Madrid, wasn’t at Kit’s, wasn’t with Quinn. Her Range Rover was still parked in the driveway at Gloria’s guest cottage but hadn’t moved in days. That left staking out her father’s place. He would have to send Cade out to do it. If she spotted him lying in wait, she’d take off for sure.
A bit distracted, his hard, cold eyes chanced a glance down at the nude, petite woman lying on the bed, waiting for him, waiting for him to get into the mood, waiting for the Viagra he’d taken to kick in.
Since he’d first experienced sex at the ripe old age of fourteen, he had had a penchant for a particular kind of woman. They had to be very feminine, very petite, almost delicate-looking―and beautiful. A therapist had once told him his taste in women probably had something to do with the fact that the women he desired were the polar opposite of his domineering mother.
Connor didn’t doubt the guy had nailed it on the first try, because it wasn’t so much their coloring that got him hard, they could be blonde or brunette or redhead, it made no difference to him, but they absolutely had to be petite—and lately they had to be young. At thirty-seven, he had a penchant for this particular call girl, who was barely nineteen. He knew that for a fact since he’d been using her services for a year. As he stared down at Lola, he didn’t care what name she used, he did his best to focus on her body.
He had to concentrate. His headaches were back. The blackness wanted to descend. Through the black edge of vision, he realized how much Lola resembled Baylee.
He’d had a fondness for Baylee Scott since the first time he’d looked at her that way. At the time she’d been fifteen, a visitor to his parent’s house, and a guest at Collin’s birthday party. Connor had been twenty-seven.
He remembered that brown shit she’d had all over her hair the other day and settled
on the memory of her golden blonde hair, her fine-boned features, and those sultry deep aquamarine eyes.
Once again, he did his best to focus on the image of Baylee’s natural B-cup breasts, not the augmented ones under him. He remembered the one night he’d spent with her in that hotel room. He’d made it count. After all, after years of trying to get close to her, he’d finally played out his fantasy, a fantasy he’d been savoring in the back of his mind for years.
The Viagra finally kicked in, or it might have been the memory of having Baylee in bed beneath him that did the trick. But the more he thought of Baylee now, the more he wanted to strangle the bitch.
Through the migraine beating its own drum in his head, his mind wandered to the e-mail he’d received that morning. The message had been simple and direct and effective, a one-line threat that read: You will die just like the Parkers.
The e-mail had royally pissed him off. Things were spinning out of his control. He didn’t like feeling out of control. When that happened he sometimes blacked out and didn’t remember doing things.
But the e-mail made him all the more determined to protect what was his. They would all be better off when Baylee and Kit were out of the picture. But first, they needed to find the hit man, the killer responsible for bringing this whole thing to a head. The guy seemed to know everything about them. Jankovic was supposed to work on that. As soon as the son of a bitch got into town—he was taking his sweet time getting his ass to L.A.
Connor’s mind was on other things, splintering into pieces in fact. His migraine came back with a vengeance. The blackness descended as it so often did these days, and he lost himself inside the hole that the blackness brought with it.
By the time he’d come back to reality and looked around the room, he’d already finished fucking the hooker. He crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom to flush the condom.
When he came out, he walked to the bar in the bedroom and poured himself a stiff shot of Johnny Walker Blue. He stood there drinking, letting his mind clear. It would all work itself out; with planning, with precision, he would find Baylee. He’d let Jankovic deal with Boston, Kit and maybe even Quinn. That’s another bitch that had caused them problems in the past and would definitely pitch a fit when her two best friends ended up dead.
After downing the drink in one swallow, he felt a little better. He grabbed a robe, threw open the door to the bedroom, and told Cade, “Your turn, little brother.”
CHAPTER 7 Book 2
The mean people had come back.
Terrified, three-year-old Baylee Scott cowered under the covers, clutching her blue bunny.
Her little body shook as the shrill angry voices coming from outside her bedroom door grew closer―and louder. To block out the noise, she put both of her hands over her ears to muffle the sound as the shouts grew meaner.
She huddled further down in the bed. But the loud, mean people wouldn’t go away. And she could still hear the words as they got uglier. She could hear two women yelling bad words at her mama, words she knew she was not supposed to repeat.
Every so often, Baylee recognized her mama’s voice as her mama shouted back at both women to leave, to get out of her house before she called the cops. But both women were so angry they yelled right back at her mama. Baylee could tell by the tone in her mama’s voice that she was really angry. But despite her mama getting madder and madder; the mean people weren’t leaving.
Baylee thought the argument was about her daddy. But that couldn’t be right because her daddy wasn’t even at home. He’d gone to some place called Francisco to make another picture. That’s what her daddy did; he made pictures for Hollywood. People could see his pictures if they went to theaters or they could sometimes watch them on television.
The day he’d left to go out of town, he hadn’t taken her with him, even though she had cried and begged when he had loaded his bags into the yellow car that had taken him to the airport.
He had promised if she stopped crying and helped her mama while he was gone, he would buy her a superstar Barbie. Even though she wanted the doll more than anything, she still would have liked to have gone with her daddy.
As she listened to the grownups continue to scream at each other, the little girl desperately tried to get her mind on something else. She missed her daddy. She closed her eyes and remembered the time he had taken her to the studio with him. She had eagerly crawled into his lap while he sat in his director’s chair and watched the other people he called actors say their lines. Then her daddy would yell “cut” and the actors would stop talking until he yelled “action” again, and they’d say more lines until the picture was done.
But this time he’d gone out of town and Baylee had stayed home with her mama. She loved her mama, but she wished her daddy were here now. If her daddy were home he would make the mean people stop yelling at her mama.
She closed her eyes tight to shut out the argument. She tried hard to picture the superstar Barbie at the toy store. Her mama had promised they would go shopping tomorrow to pick out the doll. The only reason they hadn’t gone today was because today had been Mother’s Day and you weren’t supposed to spend mother’s day at the mall shopping but doing stuff together, spending time together.
That’s why Baylee and her mother had spent the day baking cookies and planting seeds in the garden and making pretty construction paper cut-outs.
At that moment, the little girl heard hitting noises, a slapping sound. It sounded like her mama was in trouble and needed her help.
She bit her lip, trying to work up her courage to crawl out of bed. When the argument grew louder, she slowly made her way out from under the covers and ran to the door, opening it just wide enough to peek out.
Sure enough, she saw her mother arguing with two women. The taller woman had blond hair. Baylee recognized her as Kit’s mother. But Kit’s mother was mean. She almost slammed the door shut because she didn’t like Kit’s mother at all.
Wide-eyed, mesmerized by the scene on the landing, the little girl kept her eyes locked on the other woman with long black hair and dark eyes. She’d never seen her before, but she looked mean because she was yelling mean things in her mama’s face.
Baylee knew she needed to move, to go outside into the hallway to help her mama. As the three of them stood on the upstairs landing, Baylee could tell her mama was mad. Her mama demanded they get out of her house again, or she’d call the police.
And then all of a sudden from the other side Kit’s mother moved in and slapped her mama. Terrified, Baylee cringed. She wanted to move, to run out into the hallway to make them stop. But her stomach tightened. Fear locked her throat. Her feet refused to budge. She tried to push the fear away. But she couldn’t move.
Just as she started to open the door further and step out into the hallway to yell at them to stop, the woman with black hair shoved her mama, and Baylee watched her mama fall backwards down the stairs.
She heard her mama scream, a shrill cry that lasted all the way down to the bottom step. She heard a dull thud hit the floor. And then nothing. She saw the two women look at each other. She saw them smile before they turned to walk down the stairway.
Baylee opened her mouth to scream. But no sound came out. Instead, she ran back to the bed. Terrified, in a desperate attempt to hide, she scooted underneath the bed just in case the mean people came to get and hurt her, too.
She only hoped they wouldn’t look under the bed.
Trembling, Baylee stayed hidden like that for a long time. She finally fell asleep.
At dawn the next morning, when she opened her eyes, the first thing she remembered was her bad dream. It still scared her to think about the mean people. But despite her fear, she crawled out from underneath the bed. She listened, waiting to hear any little noise outside her room. Slowly she opened the door and peeked out into the hallway. She didn’t hear a sound. The mean people from her nightmare were gone.
She crept to the landing and looked down, fearful of wha
t she might see. But her mama wasn’t there. Baylee rubbed her eyes and looked down at the bottom of the stairs again.
All of a sudden Baylee started crying, “Mama. Mama. Mama. I want my mama.”
Alarmed, Tanya Lincoln, the housekeeper, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. The small black woman started walking up the steps toward the child. “What’s the matter, baby girl? What’s wrong?”
“I had a bad dream.”
As soon as Tanya reached Baylee, she crouched down in front of the child and lifted her chin to get her full attention. “Well, for goodness sakes, baby girl, tell Tanya all about it. What happened?”
It was then she noticed Baylee shaking like a leaf, trembling so hard as if she were scared to death. She scooped her up. “It’s okay, baby girl. Bad dreams can’t really hurt us. They’re just dreams and not real.”
Baylee rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “My mama fell; she got hurt.”
“Oh baby.” Tanya brushed the hair from Baylee’s face. “We’ll find your mama. Let’s go see if she’s still sleeping.” Tanya hugged the child to her chest and tweaked Baylee’s nose. “It’s still early. I bet your mama’s still snuggled down under the covers just where you should be. It’s not even seven o’clock yet. I just got here myself a little while ago.”
As Tanya made her way down the hall toward the master bedroom, she told the little girl, “You’ll see your mama’s still sleeping, that’s all. And then you’re going back to bed for a little while.”
As Tanya knocked on the door of the master bedroom, Baylee’s arms snaked around the housekeeper’s neck. If only her mother were on the other side of the door. They waited and waited, but her mother wasn’t in bed at all. In fact, she wasn’t anywhere in the house.
She and Tanya looked and looked and looked, searching every room.
But little three-year-old Baylee had seen her mother for the very last time.
Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set Page 47
