by Blair Young
Secret Bay High Lies
By Blair Young
Copyright © 2019 by Blair Young
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Prologue
Sutton
I know who your real mom is, and if you don’t stop looking for her, you’ll see your no-good parents real soon.
That’s a promise.
My hands shook as I read and reread the note over again, taking in each word as though my life depended on it. But there wasn’t a name, and there wasn’t any indication anywhere that would bring any single person to mind.
Though my initial reaction was to think Molly would plant the note, I would be willing to bet anything Molly didn’t know I was adopted, let alone who my real mother is, so I could rule her out pretty quickly.
But, that thought only made me question who had planted the rest of the notes I’d received. After all, if Molly had planted one, then it was only logical to think she’d planted the others. I knew she was out to get me again in whatever way she could manage, but I didn’t think she’d have the resources to know something like this would really bother me.
I hadn’t even known I was adopted for most of my life, and when I brought up the information to Susan, I’d gotten the impression she really would have been happy if I had never found out the truth. If it wasn’t for the counselor to ask me how I felt about being adopted during one of our sessions, I never would have found out the truth.
And, when I did learn that my parents weren’t my biological mother and father, I was really careful with what I did with the information. I didn’t want just anyone to know, and I knew Susan was more than happy to continue keeping the secret to herself.
Like so many other things in life, she didn’t like being open or entirely truthful about what was really going on behind the scenes. It didn’t matter to her that it was details about my own life she was holding back, as long as she didn’t have to deal with the consequences.
I didn’t have anything against Susan as a person. Well, I didn’t try to anyway. I did resent the fact she wasn’t my real mother – she was my guardian, my foster mother who my parents named in their will as the one who would take care of me if something were to happen to them.
Of course, it wasn’t her fault that they had been murdered, but the fact of the matter was that I’d never so much as even heard her name before I was forced to move in with her and her other foster child, Damon.
I hated the entire situation. I hated that I had to live with a woman I’d never even heard of, and one who only gave me the explanation that she was a good friend of my parents when they were alive. But, I felt that was a pile of crap.
My father was a private investigator. He kept things close to the vest, and he had few friends. Most of the people he did call his friends were others in the same field. Members of the police force or other branches of the legal system. He didn’t make friends with many people in the general public, and with good reason.
His job, though he tried to tell me and my mother it was safe, wasn’t. Clearly. I felt it had to be his job that had gotten both him and my mother killed that day so many weeks ago. There was no other explanation for it.
I knew for a fact my mother really had next to no one to call her friend. Like my father, she was highly selective over the people she would call friends in the first place, but the fact that she spent so much of her time drinking on the couch watching dramas on tv made it hard for anyone to get to know her.
She didn’t want to be close to anyone, even me. I loved her as my mother, but I spent as little time at home as I could. I didn’t want to be around her while she was drinking, and I had the feeling my father didn’t, either.
He worked long hours throughout the week, rarely taking a full day off. I spent more time with him than with my mom, but even then, I still kept my distance. He didn’t like to involve me in the work that he did, telling me it was too dangerous.
He was the reason I wanted to become part of the legal system myself, however, and I was sure one day I would make him proud. But he only added mystery to the fact that I was living with Susan when I found out he had a file on her. An active file at the time of his death, meaning he was investigating her for some reason.
But there was nothing to indicate what that reason could be. At first, I thought it might be Damon. The names of his real parents were on the file as well as Susan’s boyfriend, Dean, the man who might as well have been Damon’s father since the fourth grade.
He was the common thread among the four, but then, where did I fit into everything? The only connection I had was to Damon, and that was because we had gone to the same school when we were both much younger, and I had had such a crush on him when I was just a little girl.
The four adults who were on the file didn’t mean anything to me before I moved in with Susan and Damon, and I was still trying to fit the pieces together.
Damon was a sore spot in my life for many reasons. At least, he had been way back into the sixth grade. He was the one who started all the bullying toward me in grade school, and though he had been my crush for years, I thought he was the reason I almost killed myself.
Later, I found out it was, in fact, Molly, who had sent the message telling me to take my own life, and she wasn’t sorry that she’d sent it. In fact, she’d even told me in high school after the two of us had realized we were best friends in the sixth grade that she wished I had gone through with the act.
She was the one who turned out to be the two faced monster who all but ruined my life, causing me to fall into such a state of depression I truly did almost kill myself. The chain of events led my parents to pulling me out of school and moving to an entirely different town – a town that was fifteen miles from Secret Bay High where I now lived.
A town that was so different from this ritzy place it felt like an entirely different world. Sure, I was adjusting to live here, and I did know some of the kids who went to school from the old school we’d gone to when we were much younger, but it had been such a change for me to move to new schools all over again, it had been hard to make friends with the people I had.
Of course, Damon worked hard to earn my trust and forgiveness. He made it clear to me he was sorry about what he had done, and he would do anything to make it up to me. And, he had. He was one of the first people I could call a friend in Secret Bay, and he had stood up for me more than once.
Between him and Abby, I felt like I could manage the drama that Molly and her cronies would throw my way, and though they had pulled some really mean things pranks on me over the past few months, Abby and Damon were right there for me through it all.
It wasn’t like before. They were there to stand up for me and with me, and make sure no one would get away with the same sort of crap I had put up with in grade school.
And they were two of the only people I ever shared any of my secrets with. They were the two I knew I could trust with anything. Abby would keep a secret for me even from her own boyfriend, and I knew it didn’t matter who asked her anything about me, if she knew I didn’t want the news shared, then she wouldn’t share it.
Which is what baffled me about the note that was in my hand now. Who could possibly know that I was adopted and looking for my real mother? And if this person not only found out that information about me
, then how did they know my real mother’s identity?
The message was so menacing, so cryptic, it was hard to know if it was just another prank that was being pulled by someone who was keeping an eye on me and my drama, or if there really was someone else in school who wanted to scare me.
No one whom I told I was adopted would have shared the information with Molly, or anyone who was close enough to Molly for the gossip to be shared. The thought of her working with someone in my inner circle did cross my mind for a brief moment, but I was quick to dismiss it as completely false.
As untrusting and suspicious as I was of almost everyone in my life, I knew Abby and Damon were two people I could truly trust with anything.
They wouldn’t be working with Molly, which meant she couldn’t have been the one to write the note.
Chad, the guy who tried to rape me shortly after I started attending Secret Bay High also crept into my mind. He had been creeping me out for a while now, but he had apologized more than once for what he had done to me. Damon had come in and broken up the situation before he was able to hurt me, but that didn’t matter.
In my mind, since he had tried, he was out of my life. I didn’t care how much he apologized or what he tried to do to get my forgiveness. The fact of the matter was that I had no interest in being friends with him, and I wasn’t shy about letting that be known.
He was friends with Molly, and since Damon had severed a friendship with him, he had largely turned into one of her cronies as well. He would bully me from time to time, often going back and forth from being a bully to asking my forgiveness to being a bully again.
But, like Molly, he didn’t have any idea about my personal life. He couldn’t have possibly written the note, and how would he have gotten it in my locker if he had?
I didn’t want to write off either one of them as suspects, but logically thinking about the situation, I had to admit that it was unlikely either one of them. So, that launched me into a whole new level of suspicion toward the entire school.
Clearly, whoever this person was, they were in the school. At least, they were able to get into the school at some point and leave the message in my locker. But, considering the fact the school was really strict with security, I could only imagine that whoever wrote the note had to be in school already.
None of the teachers ever gave me any special notice, which made me suspect a student more than one of them, but still, I didn’t want to rule anyone would for sure. Only Damon and Abby I could trust weren’t responsible, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to tell them about it, either.
Damon was a fighter, and I knew he would be angry when he saw I was still being threatened. He had already faced off Chad in the ring for me, to think that someone was truly threatening my safety would only set him off more.
Abby, too, would be upset if she knew someone was threatening me. So, I figured for now it would be better to just lay low and keep my eye out on what was going on. I still didn’t know what happened to that file, and now the note only added more mystery to the situation.
But, exasperation and frustration were taking the place of the fear I felt when I read the threat, and I knew I could use that to my advantage. Whoever was out there, they clearly thought they could scare me off the case. But, I wasn’t going to let that happen.
My parents were murdered. Senselessly, needlessly murdered, and I wasn’t going to just let that go. They deserved justice, and I deserved to know the truth about myself. Who was I? Where did I come from? And what happened to my mom and dad?
They were questions that hounded me day and night, forever in the back of my mind as I tried to get through the simplest parts of my day. It was confusing, that was for sure, and I felt suffocated much of the time trying to find answers when I wasn’t sure if I even could.
But, one thing was for sure. I wasn’t going to let this note get in the way of my investigations, and I would find out who killed my parents, and I would bring them to justice. I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t going to rest until I knew they were behind bars.
And maybe, just maybe I would be lucky enough to learn who my real parents were and why they gave me up for adoption in the first place. I didn’t know if I really would like the truth, but I knew I wanted to know what it was.
And I wouldn’t stop until I did.
Chapter 1
Sutton
A week had passed since I’d gotten the note, and though I had my good days and my bad days about it, I had to admit, the bad days were starting to win out more than I cared to let them.
I had started to feel like I belonged in school, but now, I felt like I was back to square one. I didn’t trust anyone, and every time I passed a kid who gave me a strange look in the hall, I couldn’t help but analyze every possible reason why they would do that and wonder if they knew something about what was going on.
It was crazy, I knew that it was. Shoot, I felt like I might be going crazy over it. But, I knew I also had to be smart. Maybe my father had known that he was being stalked before everything went down. Maybe he had been trying his best to get the man or men off his back before they were killed.
Maybe he wondered if he had been going crazy himself dealing with the stress of my mother and her ever drunk lifestyle and the fact that I was constantly being watched after my suicide attempt in middle school.
I saw what happened to him, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he had let his guard down for just a second at the wrong time, and it cost him his life.
Abby, my best friend, was doing everything she could to make me feel better, and I wasn’t surprised when she plopped herself down on the bench next to me in the cafeteria at lunch.
“That was enlightening,” she said, referring to the science class we’d just finished. “I would rather not have to cut open a frog right before lunch. That was disgusting, and I really don’t see how it’s going to aid in my life after graduation.”
She laughed at her own joke, and I smiled. I knew I had been rather off since getting the note, and she was quick to pick up on any variation in my mood. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “Just tired. But, are you okay? I’ve been meaning to ask you if something’s going on.”
“What do you mean?” she asked innocently.
I gave her a look, and she dropped her gaze. “Come on, Abby, you know what I mean. You’ve been coming in late to school more days than not, and you’ve been going right home after. I mean, you don’t even text me like you used to, and we haven’t hung out in way too long.”
“I know, it’s just been busy is all,” she said sweetly. “Really, everything’s just fine.”
She gave me a fake smile, and I knew it would be pointless to try to get more information out of her. Abby had her own set of problems, just like the rest of the world, but unlike me, she didn’t share them as openly as I had. I turned to her and Damon when I was in need of a hand, Abby tended to keep most of her drama to herself.
She was there for me when I needed it, but when it came to her needing help, she had to get pretty lost before she would come out and ask me to give her advice. Just a few weeks ago, I had stepped in when she and Peter, her boyfriend, had split up.
She was so distraught over the breakup, and I hated to see her in that state of mind. So, I confronted her about it, and I even went so far as to talk to Peter about it face to face. I wasn’t going to let him just walk out on her for no good reason, and the two of them soon got back together.
I’d felt accomplished when they did, though I was rather sad to lose the exclusive attention Abby had been giving me during the separation. Perhaps she was dealing with more drama out of that boy. I knew she loved him, and there was no denying they were good together, but the fact that they were so hot and cold made me wonder if they might be having more tough times.
It was no secret to anyone who knew about the situation that Peter still held some animosity toward her father. Of course, her father w
as the reason Peter’s family lost everything, and though that wasn’t Abby’s fault, it had to be hard for him to really be with her as fully as they once were knowing that it was her family that ruined his.
Though I didn’t think it was fair for him to do that, I knew where he was coming from. The thought that Damon’s father might be the one who was responsible for my parents’ murder made me feel uneasy, even if I did love Damon.
It was a sensitive topic, and I had only brought it up one time. Damon hadn’t been happy to hear the idea, but he couldn’t argue that it was possible, and he had promised me he was going to look into it. But, I didn’t know how long that would take.
I didn’t want to push him. Richard was an abusive father to Damon when he was young, and the entire reason he had ended up in the foster care system in the first place. Sure, his mother’s drug addiction hadn’t helped, but it his father had been there for him through her treatment and recovery, things might have turned out far better for him in his life.
Not that Susan was bad, but I knew any child would rather be with their real parents in the right circumstances than with anyone else.
“Do you want to hang out after school?” I asked, trying to get more information out of Abby. I figured if she didn’t want to, she would have to at least give me a reason. Turns out, I was wrong.
“I can’t today, I’ve got to do a few things after class,” she said. “But I’ll text you as soon as I have some free time. I miss hanging out, you’re right. We are long past due for another girls’ day!”
“Okay,” I said, trying to let my tone show her I didn’t believe she was really doing anything. But, she just changed the subject to some other drama that was happening around the school, and I was forced to let her personal life drop. If she didn’t want me to know something, there was no dragging it out of her.
Abby clearly had practice hiding things she didn’t want to share with anyone else, and no matter what, she wasn’t going to open up. I, on the other hand, had been subjected to a lot of therapy when I was younger, and I was used to sharing how I felt about things and what I had gone through.
