Heir to Secret Memories

by Mallory Kane

  “Get out of here, Paige.”

  “No!”

  Another memory stirred in his brain. An old house on stilts; puppies; a place where he was just Johnny and not the heir to the Yarbrough fortune. “Go out the door at the end of the building and run north. You’ll come to an old house on stilts. Some friends of mine lived there. If they’re still alive, they’ll still be there and they’ll help you. Miss Aileen and Mr. Woodrow. Tell them you’re Johnny’s friend and you want to see the puppies.”

  “Puppies?”

  He nodded. “If you say that they’ll know I sent you.”

  Paige straightened defiantly. “I’m not leaving you,” she whispered, just as she heard someone bang on the stairwell door.

  Whoever had shot Johnny had followed them down the stairs.

  She gripped the bat with both hands, ready to swing, ready to do anything she possibly could to help Johnny protect them.

  A scraping noise behind her startled her. She turned and saw a khaki-clad leg sticking through one of the low windows.

  She opened her mouth to alert Johnny, but another blow on the stairwell door splintered wood. Johnny raised his gun and fired at the top of the door, a warning shot.

  He had his hands full.

  Paige watched the man at the window. He had one leg in, and in a very few seconds, he’d be inside. If he had a gun, they were dead.

  She moved to the wall and crept along it, as quickly as she could, baseball bat raised. What she was thinking of doing nauseated her, but she was fighting for her life, for Johnny’s, and most importantly, for Katie’s.

  Standing next to the window, she waited until the man’s foot touched the floor, then she reared back and swung the bat with all her strength at his knee.

  She felt and heard cartilage and bone crush, then an instant later she heard an ear-splitting yowl.

  Feeling sick, she reared back again, doing her best not to let his screams shred her raw nerves. But her first blow had been enough. He fell backward out of the window.

  “Paige?” Johnny half turned, checking on her.

  “I’m okay. I got rid of him.”

  He shot her a surprised glance then turned back around to the weakening door. He aimed carefully at the middle of the door and fired. A surprised grunt sounded through the solid slab of wood.

  Johnny turned around. “Let’s get out of here while we can,” he said.

  They ran to the far end of the room where he found the outside door padlocked. Cursing under his breath, Johnny gestured to Paige to stand back. He shot the lock off. Then he pushed open the door and slipped through first, motioning to Paige to follow him after he’d made sure no one was waiting for them outside.

  They had handicapped their pursuers for the moment. Paige spared a brief hope that the little guy in the khaki pants wasn’t crippled for life, but she really couldn’t work up much concern about him. He had shot at them!

  Johnny stopped and pointed. “Why don’t you go through there to Miss Aileen’s and wait for me?”

  “Wait for you?” Paige couldn’t believe her ears. “You seriously think I’m going to let you out of my sight?”

  He gave her a small, ironic smile. “No, but I thought I’d try.” Then he became serious. “We could be headed into more danger, and you need to stay safe for Katie.”

  She touched the ring she had never taken off her finger. “I trust you,” she said simply.

  He narrowed his gaze, then led them around the servant’s quarters to the driveway, where their rental car was parked. The white van was behind it. Paige ran for the driver’s side of the car, reaching for her keys.

  But Johnny headed for the van.

  “What are you doing?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the house. “I’m going to see if they left anything we can use.”

  Paige followed him cautiously. Before he did anything else though, he pulled Katie’s picture out of the pocket of his shirt. For an instant he just looked at it, then he tucked it carefully into his jeans. He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it, leaving him in just a T-shirt.

  “Tear off the sleeve.”

  “Your arm’s still bleeding,” she gasped, staring at the deep furrow the bullet had plowed into his skin. “It looks terrible.”

  “Use the shirtsleeve for a bandage. Hurry.”

  She tugged on the shirt, but the cotton was too tough. It wouldn’t tear. Without a word, Johnny pulled a pocketknife out, flipped it open, and handed it to her. She sliced the unbloodied sleeve off the shirt, then quickly wrapped it around his right forearm and stripped another length of cloth from the shirt to tie around it to hold it in place.

  “Tighter,” he grunted.

  She obeyed. “Johnny, this isn’t good. You need to wash it. We need some antibiotic ointment and real bandages.”

  He ignored her and tried the van’s driver’s side door. It was unlocked. He climbed in and looked around.

  Paige went around to the other side and opened the door. “What are you looking for?” she whispered.

  “I was hoping maybe they were tracking us from the van, using a laptop or a handheld. But apparently the GPS tracking system is housed elsewhere and these guys really are just goons, doing what they’re told.”

  He felt around under the seat and in the console. “Check the glove box,” he instructed her. “See if there’s any identification.”

  Paige opened the glove box and reached inside for papers. Instead, her hand encountered two plastic objects. She pulled them out. One was a flashlight. The other…

  “Johnny, it’s a cell phone.”

  His head snapped up. “Let me see it.”

  Paige handed him the phone and started rifling through the papers in the box. She turned up an insurance card.

  She looked at the insurance card. “Yarbrough Industries,” she read. “This van’s insurance is charged to Yarbrough.”

  Johnny nodded, his jaw bulging with tension. “That’s what I figured,” he said, his words faintly slurred. “Hang on to that, we’ll need it.” He was holding the phone in his left hand and punching buttons with his thumb. His right hand was clenched into a fist, and blood was quickly soaking the crude bandage.

  “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. You’re losing too much blood.”

  He shook his head. “This phone isn’t GPS enabled. That’s good. We can hang on to it and they won’t be able to track our every movement.”

  Paige looked at the phone. On the other end of it was the woman who had kidnapped her daughter. “Can you see the last incoming call?”

  He looked at her, a small smile of triumph softening the grim, pain-etched line of his mouth. “Yep. This should go a long way toward proving that my stepmother is behind this.”

  “Can the phone tell us where Katie is?”

  Johnny shook his head, his lips compressed. “I doubt it. The most we could hope for is to have a digital phone company tell us which tower was used for the last call. That would put us within a several mile radius.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “Not without going to the police.”

  Paige sighed in frustration. “Why can’t we just call Serena and demand to meet her?”

  “We can’t afford to give her that much of an advantage. We’ve got to stay one step ahead of her, and count on the element of surprise.”

  Paige told herself not to be too disappointed. She ached for her child, but she had to stay focused. She had told Johnny she trusted him. Did she? She searched for the truth inside herself. She had to. He was Katie’s father. No matter how he felt about her, he would do what was best for his daughter.

  “So what now?”

  “Serena expects me to show up at the place where I was held. And I will, but not in the way she expects.”

  “What do you mean not in the way she expects?”

  He moved his arm, sucking in a swift breath. A shadow of pain crossed his face. “Let’s drive up the coast a little farther. See if I can s
pot the bayou where the warehouse is located.”

  “First we need to take you to the hospital and get that arm looked at before you bleed to death.”

  Johnny closed his eyes and licked his lips. “We can’t go to a hospital.

  “Hospitals are obligated to report all gunshot wounds.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Oh.” Paige looked at Johnny’s blood-blackened shirtsleeve and his red-stained hand, and it occurred to her that he’d been through this before…alone. He’d know.

  “Then we have to find a drugstore, because if we don’t stop that bleeding, you’re going to faint.”

  “Men don’t faint,” he muttered without opening his eyes. He tried to move his arm and grimaced. “Check under the seat and in the back. See what else you find.”

  Paige reached under the passenger seat, feeling around. She found nothing but some sticky coins and a couple of greasy wrappers that had probably held hamburgers. Then her hand encountered a folded piece of paper. She pulled it out. It was a map of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, open and folded to a particular section.

  “A map,” she said. “It looks like they were looking at the Bay St. Louis area.”

  “Bay St. Louis.” He repeated the name as if testing its familiarity.

  “That’s fairly close to here, I think.” Paige’s heart ached for her child. “Oh, Johnny. Katie could be near here.”

  “Let me see the map,” he said.

  She handed it to him.

  He studied it for a few seconds, then lifted his head. “Listen. Do you hear sirens?”

  She listened. “The police?”

  “Yeah. Probably some good neighbor reported hearing gunshots. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  He got out of the van. “Start the car, and get it turned around,” he commanded her.

  By the time she’d turned the car around, he’d shot two tires of the van and was loading the last clip into his gun. He shot the other two tires and pumped two swift bullets into the radiator.

  He ran around to the passenger side of the car. “Drive,” he said.

  She did.

  As they pulled out onto Highway 90, she saw the blue lights of the police cars in the distance.

  “Don’t speed. Just drive normally.”

  She nodded, her hands clenched on the steering wheel. “What will we do if they stop us?” she asked. “You’re obviously wounded.”

  “They won’t,” he said confidently.

  Sure enough, the police cars zoomed right past them, probably headed for the house. They’d see the damage done by the gunfire and would find the two men.

  “What will they do with the men?” Paige asked.

  Johnny smiled grimly. “Those guys will probably spend the rest of the day answering questions. The police will find out they’re connected with Yarbrough when they trace the van.”

  “Couldn’t they say it’s the Yarbrough house, so it wouldn’t be unusual to find a Yarbrough van parked there?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Bullets from their guns are all over the house and both of them are wounded. It means somebody at Yarbrough will have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Johnny and Paige both relaxed as soon as the flashing blue lights and sirens were behind them.

  After driving in silence for a while, Paige looked over at Johnny. His face was pale and drawn as he studied the map.

  He looked wrung out. Her heart squeezed in compassion. He’d been through so much in such a short time. And now he was hurt and bleeding.

  He glanced up at her, and she saw the anger she’d seen earlier reflected in his dark eyes.

  “I’m sorry you and Katie got dragged into this,” he said.

  She turned her eyes back to the road. “I know. Me too. But at least I found out you didn’t die. Even though—” She stopped. Even though you didn’t love me. Even though you left me alone.

  “Paige, I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you why I never came back for you.”

  “I wish you could too,” she said flatly. This man, this strong defender she’d known for only three days had remained at her side, but what about the boy who had loved her so long ago?

  Had he even confronted his father? Or had he thought better of his rash marriage proposal once he returned to his big, expensive house and his privileged life?

  She shook her head. “I think your father was very strong, very domineering. That last morning, you told me you needed to prepare him before you took me to meet him. You were just going to run home and talk with him and then come back the next day.”

  She looked at him again, but he was staring out the car window, and she had the feeling he was no longer with her. He’d retreated into that part of his brain where his fractured memories lay like broken glass. She wondered if he were finding more pieces that fit together.

  Johnny’s brain was awhirl. Images and memories were coming too fast for him to sort out. He massaged his temple and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to control his thoughts.

  The message his father had written to his dead son explained a lot, but it didn’t answer the question of why he’d abandoned Paige.

  Johnny hated the sadness in her voice. He wanted to reach over and caress her hair and promise her he’d never leave her again. But right now, he wasn’t sure she’d believe him.

  He realized she had said something. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “When you left, you said you were going to get your car and drive up the coast to your family home.”

  “My car,” he whispered.

  “I didn’t even know you had a car. You said it was a Mustang. A Cobra.”

  He closed his eyes as a stab of pain pierced his temple and the fractured visions tortured him again.

  Wet streets; pouring rain; a truck out of control. Something silver rushing at him like an oncoming train. Time without meaning as he wove in and out of consciousness.

  What was he remembering? Had he been in a car wreck? Maybe injured? Could that be where the scar on his hip had come from?

  He wanted to squeeze his head, to capture the memories, but they flowed through his brain like a slide show out of control, making him doubt that he’d ever be able to slow them down enough to sort them out.

  “Johnny?”

  Paige’s tentative voice stopped the slide show.

  “Yeah?” He spoke harshly, impatiently. He hadn’t meant to.

  “Your arm’s bleeding again. I’m going to stop and get some real bandages and some antibiotic ointment.”

  Johnny looked around. He recognized the outskirts of Bay St. Louis. And suddenly like a door opening inside his brain, he knew where the abandoned warehouse was. It was on the back side of Bayou Lesgensfou.

  “Stop here!” He reached for the map as, with a startled glance at him, Paige pulled into the next gas station they came to.

  A plan was beginning to form. A plan built off his returning memories. A plan to save Katie and keep Paige safe at the same time. But in order to accomplish both, he was going to have to leave Paige behind, because he’d already found out she would never agree to wait in safety as long as her daughter was in danger.

  She had said she trusted him. But did she really? He thought about her mother, pregnant and abandoned by a married man. How could Paige ever learn to trust him enough to love him again, or to believe that he would never leave her?

  He knew the only reason she had found him was to save her daughter. He knew, too, that no matter what excuses he might offer to explain why he never came back, the only thing that mattered was that he must not have looked hard enough, because if he had, he should have found her.

  “Do you know this gas station? Are we close?” Paige’s hopeful voice tore at him, ripping holes in his conviction that he was doing the right thing.

  He shook his head, trying to concentrate on his returning memories as he studied the map. He found the bayou road. He was right. The entrance to Bayou Lesgensfou was only a couple of miles farther east t
oward Gulfport.

  The way the bayou wound back around to the west, he’d had no trouble sneaking out of his house and riding his bicycle through the back roads to the old warehouse where he used to play. Where he now knew Serena had held him hostage.

  All those weeks he’d been less than a mile from his father’s house. It had added to his torture, knowing he was so close to home. And now, his stepmother was holding his daughter in the same place, taunting him. He was certain of it.

  He knew what he had to do. He just hoped he had the courage to do it.

  “Johnny? Why are we stopping here? Do you recognize something on the map?”

  He met her gaze and lied to her. “Take a bathroom break, Paige. We’ve got a long way to go.”

  “I want to get some bandages and antibiotic ointment and fix your arm,” she retorted.

  He nodded, avoiding her eyes. Her concern for him ate into his newfound resolve. “Okay. Just hurry. I’m going to put some gas in the car. Have you got a pen or a pencil?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I picked up a pen at the library. What are you doing?”

  “I want to trace our route on the map.”

  She gave him a sharp look, but nodded.

  “I’ll need the keys. For the gas tank.”

  As she handed them to him he caught her hand, wishing he could explain what he was about to do, praying she would understand.

  She smiled tremulously. That smile almost undid him. She’d had so little to smile about, and so much of it was his fault. He touched the corner of her mouth and leaned forward and kissed her gently. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Inside and out.”

  “Have I thanked you?” she said softly, her expression full of trust and caring.

  He frowned and resisted the urge to pull away from her. He couldn’t bear to look at her, knowing what he was about to do. Knowing that if he didn’t survive, she might never know he’d done it for her and for their child. “You don’t owe me any thanks.”

  “Oh, yes I do. You’ve given me hope. You’ve protected me. You helped me even though you had no idea who I was or whether I was telling the truth about our daughter.”