Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  Reese slapped Dylan on the back. “Make the call. I’ll go get my gear. Quinn, if you’re coming with me, pack up. We leave in twenty minutes.”

  “Sure, how else am I going to bug the hell out of you to do what you promised?”

  As it turned out, Dylan’s friend couldn’t fly them over to the island, so they went with a commercial helicopter charter out of San Pedro harbor for a hundred-and-seventy bucks a pop that promised to get them to the island in just over fifteen minutes.

  For Quinn it had been a long time since she’d indulged in a trip—anywhere. Immersed in med school for the past several years, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d packed a bag for an overnight stay.

  As she crawled into the leather seats of the Eurocopter AS-350, she felt a little like a competitor on Survivor, off to an unknown adventure to some exotic place. Sure enough, once they lifted off and became airborne, she knew she’d definitely left her comfort zone as nerdy doctor. In minutes, they were out over the glistening, sapphire water.

  The only other times she’d flown to Catalina, they’d made the excursion in William Scott’s little plane.

  The ride in the helicopter wasn’t that much different, other than it was far noisier. The charter had promised a soundproof cabin, but there was no mistaking the whoop whoop whoop of chopper blades. Now, without thinking, she gripped Reese’s hand in exhilaration.

  Once out over the ocean, Reese leaned into her ear. “What are you thinking?”

  She leaned back. “This was a good idea, to get away. After last night…”

  He nibbled her ear and said, “Let’s make the most of having the house to ourselves then.”

  Their eyes met. Quinn turned her mouth to meet his so she could kiss those sexy lips of his. They stayed hugged up against each other, like lovers, her head on his shoulder for most of the trip.

  As they got closer to the Island, though, her sense of adventure kicked in. She sat up straighter to gaze out the window. The first thing she noticed was how green the hillsides were this time of year. She might not know a whole lot about blossoming plants, not like Kit or Baylee, but she could differentiate a daisy from a tulip. Thanks to spring rains, these slopes were bursting with an array of golden lotus, purple chia, and white mariposa lilies.

  After all, she’d hiked these same trails and terrain as a kid, exploring its rocky slopes and climbing its peaks and valleys. She’d once made a point of studying the vegetation, the indigenous plants and wildlife, too.

  She smiled at the memory of the teasing she’d endured from Kit and Baylee. They’d pretty much tagged her as a nerd even back then. But her friends couldn’t possibly understand the freedom she’d felt at trekking those hills, getting outside, enjoying nature after spending so much of her early years confined to grungy surroundings.

  Her mind deep in thought remembering those carefree days of summer, before she knew what was happening, they were touching down at the Avalon heliport.

  As dusk fell, as the sun started its descent over the horizon, the summer sky became a burst of dazzling oranges and reds, a view Quinn often missed while inside the hospital on duty.

  Crawling out of the cabin onto the asphalt tarmac, they both took the time to stand there a moment and marvel at the atmospheric conditions that would turn a simple setting of the sun into such a brilliant sight.

  “We might have found something else we have in common,” Quinn commented and nodded her head in the direction of the skyline. They watched, mesmerized, as the sun completed its drop below the horizon.

  “Who knew the lawyer and the doctor could find common ground,” Reese wisecracked.

  “Yeah, I was starting to wonder if we might kill each other in our sleep,” Quinn agreed.

  Since the price of the charter flight included ground transportation, they jumped in a waiting taxi, one of the rare vehicles allowed on the Island, and headed off to their destination.

  Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up in front of William Scott’s Spanish-style villa, a place Quinn knew well since she’d spent several lazy, laidback weeks of blissful summer vacation here.

  Standing there on the street looking up at the house, it didn’t take long for a big dose of nostalgia to hit her.

  The beach, the mountains, the house itself, reminded her how many hours she and her friends had whiled away at this very spot, either boogie-boarding, snorkeling in the pristine water, or exploring the surrounding hilly campgrounds, scavenging for all kinds of treasures campers had inadvertently left behind.

  The Island had been a kid’s outdoor paradise.

  Somewhere between MCATs and surviving med school, she’d forgotten all about those special times.

  A jolt of flashback took her to third grade and the very first time she’d seen this place.

  Spring break that year had finally arrived the third week of March, when she’d been shocked to learn her new friends, Baylee and Kit, wanted her to come with them to someplace called Catalina Island.

  All Quinn knew was it sounded tropical and a little bit like heaven to go away for a week anywhere without Ella or Ross bugging her.

  The fact that Kit and Baylee had invited her to tag along with them to someplace called Avalon and to a beach house, no less, had been nothing short of a gift. No one had ever invited her anywhere. It hadn’t required a great deal of persuasion on her part to get Ella or Ross to agree to the trip. They’d been as eager to get rid of an eight-year old as the eight-year-old was to get rid of them.

  At the Santa Monica airport, with her two friends chatting the entire time, Quinn, a little awestruck to be included, had taken her first airplane ride. She’d climbed into a compact cabin crowded with enough stuff for ten people and listened as the occupants bubbled with more enthusiasm than she’d ever witnessed firsthand.

  For a child who hadn’t known much stability up to that point, to go from roach motels to the grandeur of Beverly Hills was a journey in itself.

  Since August, she’d gone from eating store-brand peanut butter spread on stale crackers to devouring three healthy meals a day, some of which were now prepared by an expert, five-star personal chef. And now, to be included on a weeklong sojourn six months into the school year with two new friends was a lot to digest over a short period of time.

  As compelling as that all was for Quinn, the icing on the cake seemed to be leaving behind that feeling of oneness forever and actually having friends, friends who seemed to experience their own challenges at home.

  It hadn’t taken more than that first month of September, when the school year was still brand-new, or a genius mentality for Quinn to recognize black and blue marks on both of her classmates.

  To sit and listen as Mrs. O’Malley talked about math or spelling while Quinn did her best to acclimate to her new surroundings, she’d noticed things. Things like how terribly shy Kit was about raising her hand to answer questions—about any subject. The only activity the tall-for-her-age Kit seemed to like doing was when she got to use her crayons. Then there was Baylee, so much shorter than both of them but unwilling to contribute anything of her own to the conversation, especially whenever an adult was nearby.

  Those little details tipped the scales for Quinn.

  She could certainly tap into their mindset. All three girls seemed reluctant to pipe up and join the discussion.

  After all, history had told Quinn adults could not be trusted.

  When the grown woman thought back now to those first couple of weeks of a new school year as she struggled to adjust to getting up every morning and heading off to class on a regular basis, she could pity that little girl.

  Finding a comfort zone in the exclusive Beverly Hills private school they had chosen for her had been anything but easy.

  Back then Quinn Tyler hadn’t just felt poles apart from the other kids. She’d even looked the part. Her Native looks had caused more than a few pushes and shoves in line. The insults and slurs she’d tried to mostly ignore were the main reason she’d had a
couple of fights by the end of September.

  So months later, when she’d found herself standing at this very spot as an eight-year-old guest…no one had been more surprised than reticent Quinn Tyler.

  CHAPTER 11 Book 3

  “Let’s go down to the beach, see if we can spot any fish,” Kit suggested the minute they hit the front door to the beach house on the run.

  “Okay, but let’s grab towels to put under us so we don’t get all sandy,” Baylee proposed.

  “Who cares if we get sandy? This is a vacation. I can get dirty if I want and not have to take a bath,” Kit countered. “And I’m gonna do what I want. It took a lot to get Alana to let me come and I’m not spending it scrubbing my skin off in a stupid bathtub. I’m getting outside and I’m staying outside.”

  “You have to take a bath, otherwise you’ll stink. Who wants to smell bad?” Baylee pointed out.

  “I’ll wash off when I go swimming. You just wait and see. I intend to stay in the water all day tomorrow,” Kit emphasized. “That is, when I’m not looking for shells or rocks or fossils.”

  To Quinn, exploring the Island looking for shells and rocks and fossils sounded a lot better than getting in the water. Since Quinn didn’t know how to swim it was the only downside to coming on the trip.

  As the newest member of their trio, she listened while the other two did what they usually did. They bickered good-naturedly like best friends, like they were comfortable with each other because they’d already been together for years.

  Quinn didn’t want to admit it, but she was a tad jealous of their closeness.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ll take a bath—eventually—if you don’t rat me out beforehand.”

  Insulted, Baylee declared, “You know darn well I’m not going to rat you out.”

  “Good. Besides your dad won’t stand over me with a hairbrush and whack me every time I don’t scrub the right way. But it doesn’t mean I’m taking one until your dad makes me.”

  Baylee nodded, knowing full well how awful Alana treated Kit. “But you better hope he doesn’t pull out a bottle, otherwise we’ll all get it for sure ’cause Tanya didn’t make the trip this time. She isn’t here to intervene and help us like usual.”

  Even though she was revved up, Kit took the time to lay her hand over Baylee’s. “We’ll be on our best behavior. We won’t make him mad.” She didn’t want Baylee to start worrying about it.

  “I’m just glad he let me come,” Quinn admitted.

  “Tanya put in a good word for both of you,” Baylee confessed. “She sort of made him bring all of us.”

  “Remind me to hug her when we get back then. Hey, time’s wasting. Hurry up, will you? I told you I wanted to go see if the treasure box we buried at the campground last summer is still there.”

  “Oh, good idea. I forgot about that,” Baylee said. “Let’s pack sandwiches and juice boxes and eat them on the trail. They’ll tide us over to dinner.”

  “Now we’re talking. Come on, Quinn.” Kit dragged her along the long hallway into a sunny kitchen. “We need to remember to bring shovels so we can dig up the treasure box.”

  Kit ran into a laundry room as if she knew exactly where to look and came back with two garden spades. She sat them down by the back door and took off her backpack.

  While Baylee started digging around in the pantry for peanut butter, Kit poked her head down into one of several sacks of groceries sitting out on the counter.

  “Boy, you are so lucky, Baylee. Tanya thinks of everything. Look at all this food she had delivered already. Come on Quinn, don’t just stand there. Find the fresh loaf of bread and anything else that looks good enough to take with us.”

  Kit emptied her backpack to make room for some of the supplies, including the garden trowels for digging. Quinn dutifully dug into the bags and began pulling out various items. When she got to the Oreos, Kit swooped in and jerked them out of her hand. “Good find,” she yelled as she crammed them down into her own pack.

  When Quinn pulled out a bag of M & M’s, Kit did a little happy dance. “I’ll carry these, too. See what else you can find in those sacks to snack on.”

  After throwing together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and stuffing them into plastic baggies, Baylee stood at the counter going through an assortment of apples.

  When Kit saw what she was doing, she grabbed Quinn’s arm, yanking her through the back door and headed down to the water’s edge all the while yelling at Baylee. “Leave the stupid fruit. We have a bag of M & M’s so there’s no more room in my pack for apples anyway.”

  Baylee shook her head. “But Tanya says we should eat fruit at least once a day.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that’s regular days? That’s for when we’re back at home. This is spring break, where you throw out all the rules and do what you want.” Looking for an ally, she turned to Quinn. “Right?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Baylee harrumphed out in frustration, took off after her friends, stuffing three apples down into her own backpack for good measure.

  “Look at how clear that water is,” Kit stressed to Quinn. “Where else can you see so many bright orange fish swimming around in the ocean? Those are called garibaldi damselfish. The baby ones have blue spots. Wait until you get in the water, go snorkeling, get up on a board for the first time. We should go swimming,” she announced after finally managing to take a breath.

  For someone who didn’t say a whole lot in class, Quinn thought Kit sure made up for it outside of school. When she wasn’t around adults the girl became a chatty Cathy that refused to shut up.

  “I told you before I came that I don’t like the water,” Quinn reminded her.

  “We’ll fix that,” Kit gushed as she traipsed off in the direction of the campground. “Now let’s go dig up our treasure.”

  She took off leaving Baylee to explain to the newcomer about their cache.

  “It’s an old metal box my dad used for fishing lures before he got a new one. It’s full of stuff we found all over the campgrounds, stuff no one else wanted.”

  “Like what?” Quinn asked.

  “Like a bracelet made out of plastic beads and a mood ring and one gold earring. We find a lot of jewelry. ’Course it’s usually junk stuff. And last summer we found a couple of shark teeth and some fossils. Then there are all the cool shells we pick up.”

  From up ahead, Kit concluded, “Sure it’s junk, but it’s ours. We found it and no one knows about it but us. That makes it special. It used to belong to just me and Baylee, but we’ll share our treasure with you, Quinn.”

  “Why?” Quinn wanted to know. No one had ever shared anything with her before. There had to be a catch.

  “Because we’re pals now,” Kit revealed while she ran back toward Quinn and slung an arm companionably around her shorter friend’s shoulder. She left it there while they hiked into the hillside away from the beach, pointing out each time she recognized a familiar shrub or flower along the way like a helpful tour guide.

  Quinn didn’t have the heart to tell her she got half the native shrubs wrong. Quinn might not have spent any real time in the wilds before today, certainly not enough to know the Island the way Kit and Baylee did, but she had asked Mrs. O’Malley all about Catalina. The teacher had picked out three books for Quinn to read before making the trip.

  Kit didn’t seem to have any idea what manzanita looked like. And it was all over the place. But just when she had decided to set her straight, Kit changed subjects entirely and started talking about an old shipwreck off Ballast Point.

  By the time they passed a ranger station, tromped the length of the camping area before coming to a small clearing, they were all sweaty and the only one who still seemed excited about the trek was Kit.

  But as if recognizing the glade, both Kit and Baylee dropped to their knees while Kit pulled out the trowels from her backpack.

  The two began digging in the dirt near a grove of fern and lupine.


  Woots and shouts went up the minute the spades connected with metal. After that, uncovering the infamous battered green tin box became a mission. Lifting it out of the hole, Kit unlatched the metal lock and flipped open the lid.

  Like Indiana Jones showing off his loot, Kit proudly displayed a plethora of shells, a mismatched assortment of rhinestone jewelry, fossils that resembled seaweed imprints, and an array of oddly-shaped small pieces of driftwood they’d found washed up on the beach.

  “It’s still here. Now we just have to find a better place to bury it.” With that, Quinn watched as they took off to scout the immediate campsites.

  Quinn didn’t understand why they had needed to dig up the box, let alone re-bury it, but she trudged after them anyway until Kit spotted an ancient ironwood tree about twenty feet in height laden down with new white blossoms and long, scalloped tooth-like leaves shooting out abundant with spring growth.

  Kit took out her trowel again and dropped to her knees. At its narrow base, she began to brush away twigs along with the reddish cinnamon bark collected there so she could get her shovel in the dirt.

  The three of them watched as a family of red squirrels scattered up the trunk of the tree in retreat. Kit took their flight in stride and announced, “See, this is a better spot. Come summer, we’ll remember it here because by the time we make it back the babies will be a lot bigger. I bet they make their home in this tree year round. When we come back this summer, all we have to do is look for that same family of squirrels and this tree.”

  Baylee shook her head. “They won’t still be at the same tree, Kit.”

  “Sure they will. Where else they gonna go?” Kit reasoned.

  Instead of arguing the point, Baylee grumbled, “You sure get bossy when you get away from Alana.”

  “Shhh, do me a favor, for the next week, don’t mention her name. I don’t want to think about that woman again until we go back Sunday night. Okay?”

  Leaving Sunday night? Quinn didn’t want to spend her precious time thinking about going back to Ella or Ross. Not now when they’d only just arrived. From what little she knew about Kit’s mother, the woman sounded too much like Ella, mean-spirited with a foul mouth.