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Whatever the two sickos had up their sleeves, it wasn't good; she was certain of that. Somehow, she and “Lucky” had to find a way to escape.

Soon.

While it was still an option.

W
hen Sarah hesitated, Clint had to tamp down his growing anger. “You had no right to leave me in the dark,” he ground out, still struggling to process. He knew what it meant to raise a child, to have your life turned inside out for this little person, to love unconditionally. And then to lose the very object of your love and adoration.

His words seemed to snap her out of her frozen state. “I never told you because I didn't want to tie you down, to force you into doing something you didn't want out of some ridiculous sense of duty.” She held up one hand, almost in surrender. Almost. “I should have told you and Jade long ago. I should have. I'm sorry I didn't. She just found out half an hour ago.”

His gaze traveled to the seventeen-year-old huddled by the fire. Jade looked scared to death, and his heart twisted. “I didn't know,” he told her, even though it was patently obvious.

She nodded jerkily, fighting emotion.

“I have no excuse,” Sarah said in a nearly inaudible voice. “I thought it was the right decision at the time.”

“You were selfish,” Jade said.

Sarah nodded. “Afraid I'd lose you. And you,” she said to Clint, her voice unsteady. “You were already with Andrea when you came home and . . . and we got together.”

Jade squinched her eyes closed. “I don't want to hear this.”

“I can't do any more than explain and say I'm sorry,” Sarah said, ignoring Jade's attempt to derail her. “If that's not good enough, okay, I even understand.” She fastened Clint with that gaze that had singularly always made his breath catch in his throat. Then she began to tell her story in fits and starts. It took all his power of self-restraint to remain silent when emotions were waging a war inside him, but he managed . . . just . . . as Sarah rambled on about how she'd ended up pregnant after the one night they'd gotten back together, a rogue weekend after he and Andrea had split up for the third—or was it fourth?—time. Sarah assured him that she hadn't planned on getting pregnant. It had just happened, but when she found out she was with child, she'd been scared but excited for the baby growing inside her. Not having Jade or giving her up had been out of the question. Having Jade and being responsible for another human being had been a turning point in her life. Sarah, herself, had grown up quickly as she'd become a mother and understood unconditional love.

Clint listened over the thump of his heart and his crazily circling thoughts. The realization that he was a father, that he'd been a father for seventeen years and that he'd been denied the same responsibilities, joys, and heartaches that Sarah was extolling made him half crazy. Dear God, he'd been a father long before Brandon was even conceived.

“Why?” he asked when she wound down. “Why?”

She gazed at him helplessly. “Fear. Maybe because it seemed like the easier way out?” A moment later she shook her head and inched her chin up a fraction, almost daring him to set in on her, to tell her how angry he was. He nearly jumped at the chance. How could she have kept his daughter from him? What right did she have to lie with her silence? What if something had happened to this girl, the daughter he hadn't had the chance to know? A lock of hair fell over her face, and she pushed it away as if it were a bothersome insect, unaware how the brown strands showed red in the fire's glow, not knowing the battle that waged deep within him. Was he angry? Absolutely! Did he want to shake some sense into her? No doubt. And did he have the urge to pull her to him, kiss her, and make love to her until they were both breathless. Hell, yes.

Then he saw the girl,
his
daughter, Jade, staring at him.

“Don't you want to do some kind of paternity test?” she asked, a little attitude lacing the misery in her gaze.

“No,” he said clearly. “Do you?”

She was startled, but almost smiled, showing off the hint of a dimple that was just like his mother's. He didn't doubt this girl was his for a second. He wondered now why he'd missed those dimples, or the shape of her eyes, or the barest hint of a bump in her nose, so like his, when he'd first seen her. How was it that he hadn't put two and two together before? How many times had he remembered that last night with Sarah, the magic of it, the guilt it involved? Warm, enticing sex that was somehow taboo as he'd been dating Andrea off and on for more than a year. It hadn't really mattered that they were “off” when he'd hooked up with Sarah again, because he'd suspected even then that they would get back together. “If you're not sure I'm your father, then I suppose I could get one,” he said to Jade.

“That's not the way it works,” she answered, staring at him. Before he could ask what she meant, she said, “You're supposed to rant and rage and yell at Mom, calling her a bitch and . . .”

“Jade,” Sarah cut in.

He ignored her. “And?” he urged Jade as Sarah folded her arms across her chest.

“. . . accusing her of being a gold digger and passing off someone else's kid as theirs . . . or . . . something?”

“Wow,” Sarah whispered, clearly stung.

Clint said, “I think Sarah's telling the truth.”

“And you're mad at her,” Jade realized.

Clint didn't respond, but he knew his feelings were obvious. He didn't want to meet Sarah's eyes, knowing she would get to him without even trying, so he held Jade's gaze . . . his daughter's gaze . . .

“You never guessed?” Jade asked.

“Everyone thought you were Noel's,” Sarah answered for him.

“Dad
adopted
me,” Jade pointed out. “Everyone in the family knew that. Why would he adopt his own child?”

“Did he know?” Clint cut in, his gaze centered on Sarah. “Your husband, did he know that Jade was mine?”

Sarah shook her head. “No one knew but me. My mom guessed, of course, but she didn't tell anyone else about it, or at least not that I know of, and I'm sure Dee Linn would have confronted me if she'd found out.”

“Your ex didn't ask?” Clint questioned.

“We, uh, we had an arrangement.”

“God, what does that mean?” Jade asked under her breath.

“Whatever happened before we got together was just the past. Noel and I didn't keep secrets that would harm each other, but we let all the other stuff go.”

“Very civilized,” Clint stated flatly.

“At least Dad, er, Noel—God, what do I call him now? At least
he
was around,” Jade declared. “Or he was until . . .” She looked to her mother.

“Until I started talking about returning here,” Sarah continued. “He wasn't interested. We'd . . . oh, it sounds so trite, but we really had grown apart. We split, and the irony of it was that I didn't return here right away. I had to work things out with my siblings, and so I stuck it out in Vancouver.”

“But he left the girls?” He tried to keep the censure out of his voice, but it came through anyway.

“That was the hard part,” Sarah said. “For both of us. He was—is—a good father.”

“Do you see him much?” Clint turned to Jade.

“He's in Savannah,” Jade responded. “Clear across the country.”

“Distance shouldn't matter,” Clint swept that aside. He would have traveled the earth and back to see Brandon again, and now, he knew, he would do the same for Jade, and if given the chance, for the little girl, Gracie, as well. That's just the way it was.

Sarah said to Jade, “Maybe you two should talk while I go to the kitchen with Grace.”

“No, Mom!” Jade was stricken.

“You don't have to go,” Clint said to Sarah.

“I won't be far. Just around the corner.” She visibly softened as she looked at her daughter. “You've been begging for this for years, right?” One side of her mouth lifted a bit, and he was reminded of the innocent girl she'd once been. Then, with a last, lingering look—a warning to be kind to her daughter—she walked out of the room, her jeans hugging her butt as she left him with his daughter.

For the love of Mike, he was a fool. Even with everything he now knew, she stirred his senses.

Turning to Jade, he opened his mouth to say something . . . what, he was not really sure. But she stopped him cold by staring at him in horror.

“Oh, my God,” she said in disbelief. “You're still in love with her.”

 

“Hey!” Rosalie shouted. She figured they were finally alone, the kidnappers having left a good five minutes earlier, the purr of the engine growing fainter and fainter before finally dying altogether. From the other side of the barn she heard the quiet sobs of the other girl. “Can you hear me?”

The sobs stopped suddenly. Then there was nothing, no noise over the sound of her own heartbeat.

“They brought me here a while ago. Last Friday night. My name is Rosalie Jamison.” She was yelling at the top of her lungs, wondering if the other girl were scared spitless, or if she was deaf.

“The missing girl?” a faint voice asked.

“Well, yes. These cretins captured me and brought me here. I've been alone ever since. Until tonight. Until they brought you here.”

“Oh. My. God.” And then the girl began to cry again, sobbing and blubbering.

“Hey!” Rosalie yelled. “Stop it! We have to figure a way out of here.”

Still the weeping continued.

Oh, this was going nowhere. “Who are you?”

“Wha—?”

Good Lord, the girl was a moron! “What's your name. I'm thinking it's not Star.”

“Oh.” Sniffle, sniffle. “C-Candy.”

Rosalie inwardly groaned. That was just as bad.

“C-Can. Candice Fowler.” Did the girl stutter, or was she just scared out of her mind? “You're . . . you're the girl on all the posters. I've seen 'em around town, and there was a safety assembly at school, but I . . . I didn't think . . . Oh, noooo.” She was sobbing again, wailing and crying.

“Stop it!” Rosalie yelled. “Pull yourself together. We've got to find a way out of here. Tell me what happened. How you got taken. What they said. How they did it. If you heard their plans. We have to work together, you got it?” She was shouting at the top of her lungs over the partial walls of the stalls and Candice's crying jags.

Hesitantly, her voice sometimes fading, Candice finally explained that she'd been walking home from a friend's, taking a shortcut, not really paying attention to anything but her phone, when she'd been “squeezed” by the two men—one the driver of a Prius, she thought, some kind of hybrid car that was so quiet she hadn't heard it overtake her, and the other guy, smaller and wiry, who had subdued her. She'd freaked out and had no idea where she was, just wanted to go home.

Now she was crying again, bawling for her mother, swearing she was a “good” girl and this kind of thing shouldn't happen to her.

“I, uh, I uh, I can't have this happen. I want my mom!” she yelled and then squealed like a stuck pig. “Eeeeooow! Oh, God, I saw a rat. Swear to God. I've got to get out of here. Help!
Help!
” She pounded on the door and then started crying again.

“Calm down! This isn't going to work. You have to quit crying.”

“But I saw a rat and I peed myself!”

Give me strength,

“Seriously, Candice, shut up and listen. We have to work together, and we might not have much time.”

More wailing, including a horrible ear-piercing shriek that would certainly ensure all the rats in the area would run for cover, but that, unfortunately, no savior would hear. Wherever this barn was situated, Rosalie feared, it was too far from any kind of civilization for even a shriek like that to catch someone's attention.

Candice kept at it, screaming so loudly that Rosalie thought the remaining panes in the windows overhead would shatter and the dead in three counties would wake.

Too bad no live people would hear.

Flopping back on her cot, Rosalie decided to wait for Candice to give up or go hoarse. Because she was useless. That much was obvious. The new girl hadn't been in the barn for half an hour and already Rosalie realized Candy or Lucky or whatever Rosalie decided to call her was a pain in the backside. No doubt she'd turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help.

 

It was all Sarah could do to keep her legs steady. The confrontation she'd been dreading for seventeen years wasn't over, of course, but the worst part, the owning up to her secret, was out, and that was a relief.

Where would they all go from here?

Sarah had no idea, but she was determined to take one step at a time. Reaching the kitchen, she expected to find Gracie hovering near the archway, on one foot and the other, wanting to be a part of the action.

Instead she found her daughter seated on a stool at the kitchen counter. Her legs were swinging, and she was engrossed in what at first appeared to be homework. However, when Xena, the not-so-great watchdog, finally noticed Sarah's arrival and began thumping her tail on the floor, Gracie visibly jumped, and Sarah saw that the workbook was actually a leather missive that looked worn and about to fall apart.

“What's that?” Sarah asked.

Gracie looked up guiltily. “Nothing.” Attempting to stuff the book into her backpack, she nearly fell off the stool. The book tumbled to the floor, where Sarah scooped it up.

She was still distracted by what was happening in the living room, but she forced herself to focus on her youngest. Turning the book over in her hands, she finally zeroed in on it. “What do you mean, ‘nothing'?” She flipped through the yellowed pages of a smooth, faded script. “This looks like someone's diary.”

“A journal,” Gracie said.

“Whose?” she asked, but she felt the flesh on her arms raise. She knew even before Grace said, “Angelique Le Duc's. See the date.” Grace pointed out a barely legible entry, but it didn't make sense.