Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (14 page)

She was skimming the emails she’d backed up when a message popped up on her computer.

Darcy …

Shay ignored it. Maybe she just didn’t understand friendship that well, but shouldn’t Darcy be … well … supportive? She sure as hell
used
to be supportive.

Another message popped up almost immediately.

Shay frowned. And that paranoia monster started to growl and lumber about. Once more, her mind started to spin. Started to churn. It couldn’t … 
Nah
. No. It just wasn’t possible.

Still … nibbling on her lip, she did a quick search on the IP she’d copied from Gmail. Darcy lived in Michigan. When the IP address turned out to be located somewhere in Texas, she felt a little better. A little. But not much. What was going on?

Shay didn’t know. But it was too damn weird.

And Darcy kept firing off messages—the more she sent, the worse Shay felt. She read each one. She didn’t respond to any.

Shay leaned back in her seat, arms folded across her chest, nails tapping out a rapid beat.

A brief pause, followed by another message.

“Riiigggghhhhtt.…” Shay snagged the rest of her sandwich and took a bite, washing it down with a drink of Monster.

Shay lifted a brow.
If it wasn’t … what?

Seconds ticked by while that paranoia monster shrieked and danced through her skull, having a fine old time as it smashed down the secure walls she thought she’d built around her life.

You never really know anybody
 … That was what Darcy had told her.

“Is it you?” she asked quietly, staring at the screen, at the now silent IM box. “Are you the one, Darcy?”

Although the very idea turned her stomach, it wasn’t an idea she could brush off. Not just yet.

But, shit. It couldn’t be Darcy. She was one of Shay’s
real
friends. Somebody she’d known for years—and they really
knew
each other. They’d gone to college together, for crying out loud. Darcy was somebody Shay loved dearly, somebody she had trusted for years. Her inescapable humor and enthusiasm had pulled Shay through so many dark years.

God, please don’t let it be her …

SEVEN

“T
HIS IS … WEIRD
.”

Glancing over at his sister as he pushed the car into park, Elliot smirked. “You’re just figuring that out? And ‘weird’ isn’t what I’d use to describe it. ‘Weird’ doesn’t touch it.”

Lorna glanced at him, a frown darkening her face. “That’s not what I meant.” She turned her phone around. It held a mobile website. “Read this.”

He glanced down, and the name at the top of it immediately caught his attention. “What the …”

“I think it’s a trick.”

He took the phone from her and started to read.

Lorna continued to talk. “I mean, the woman is whacked out. And here’s just another sign of it. She comes into our store, signs the damn books, she accuses you of rape, and now she’s denying any of that ever happened—trying to act like somebody
else
did all of it. Maybe she figured out she could get her ass in major trouble with libel or something—hey, I got it right, by the way. Maybe she realized how much trouble she could get in and she’s backtracking. Hell, is she going to come up with a one-armed man scenario next?”

“Lorna …” He waited for her to pause. Then he said,
“Be quiet for five seconds, please? And I’m pretty sure there’s no one-armed man in the future.”

She made a face at him but relaxed against the seat, staring outside as he read the post on Shane Neil’s website.

Eyes narrowed, Elliot read it through a second, then a third time before he gave Lorna her phone back. “When did that show up, do you know?” he asked softly.

“Today.” She tapped something on the phone. “It’s time-stamped, see? A friend of mine on Facebook saw it and she tagged me about it. I just got it a few minutes ago and I had to read it about five times before I figured out it wasn’t a gag thing. But it has to be bullshit.”

You kept saying that you just wanted me to open up … to trust you. You just said it’s okay to need a hand. That’s why I’m here, Elliot … I need help. I’m trying to trust you. But you—

How long had it been since she’d stood in front of him, saying those very words? A day? Why did it seem like it had been longer? It was the moment he’d hoped for, waited for … and when it had come, he hadn’t even seen it. He’d been too caught off guard by what she’d been saying. He was a total fuck-up.

Lorna was oblivious. “I mean, it’s got to be bullshit. Right?”

“Wrong. It’s not,” he said grimly, shaking his head.
I need help … I’m trying to trust you
. She’d reached out to him. And he’d just stood there, like a fool.
Fuck
. Nodding toward the store, he said, “Head on inside, would you? I gotta go. I’ve got to do something.”

“What do you mean it’s not bullshit?” she demanded, twisting around in the seat to glare at him. “That’s
gotta be the biggest bunch of crap ever. Who in the hell could believe that?”

Cocking his head, he met her eyes. “I do.”

Lorna gaped at him. “How? How can you believe this?”

“I just do. Now … do you mind? I need to go. I have somewhere to be.”
I need to go see if I can fix the mess I made. And it’s kind of important, so can you just let me do it?

“Look, El, I know you have this weird obsession with Shane Neil and this was like a sucker punch, but come on. How in the hell can you believe that just because you saw it posted on the Internet? I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw hard proof. With my eyes.” She swung her hand, gesturing to the dark, quiet town. “The real Shane Neil would have to be here with a written affidavit or whatever they are, proving to me that the woman who was here a few weeks ago wasn’t the real deal.”

“I don’t know if they give out written affidavits to authors like candy,” he murmured, staring out at the store. He had to admit, if it had come from anyone other than Shay, he wouldn’t have believed it. Shit, it had taken seeing that note on the website to make him fully
believe
her, and he owed her one major apology for that. He should have believed her. Before anybody, and anything else, he should have believed
her
.

He hadn’t, and now on top of everything else, he had to fix this. And
this
was more important than everything else, too. Maybe that wasn’t how anybody else would see it, but Shay was … shit. Even after all of this, she was too important to him and he had to fix what he had done.

Damn it, this was a mess.

There was more going on than just this crazy bitch who’d come into his store, more than her telling bullshit stories about him, more than her trying to take over bits
and pieces of Shay’s life. There had to be. His gut was screaming, and he always listened to his gut.

“Are you even listening to me?” Lorna asked quietly.

Slanting a look at her, he sighed. “Not much more than you’re listening to me. Lorna … I have to go, I told you that. I have to go talk to somebody. It’s urgent.”

“And this … this lunatic isn’t important? She’s trying to ruin your life.”

No. Elliot was starting to realize he was just collateral damage. The fear he’d seen in Shay’s eyes, the anger … this was personal. He guessed any writer would be pissed if somebody was trying to steal their work from them, but somehow, he knew it went deeper than that for Shay.

And that’s what this was.

It was
all
about Shay.

Whoever this woman was, she was trying to get to Shay. That was why she’d come after him. It had nothing to do with him … and everything to do with Shay.

Elliot couldn’t help but wonder just how far she’d go to get what she wanted.

“Lorna, look, I’ve got answers to some of your questions, but it’s not my place to tell you … not yet. I will tell you what I can … when I can. But you have to trust me for now. Okay?”

For a long, quiet moment, she watched him. “Son of a bitch,” she finally muttered, reaching up to cover her eyes with her hands. “Is
this
why you kept rambling on to Johnson about that Neil chick maybe not being the real deal? Is it?”

“Lorna …” He stared at her.

She glared at him. “Damn it, this bitch is screwing with both of us. You get that, right?”

“Yes. And I’m going to do what I can to fix it. But
we
aren’t the only ones involved, either. So can I go? I need to talk to somebody.”

The fury continued to glint in her eyes. “You’re a bastard sometimes, El.” She jerked open the door and climbed out. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do.”

A few minutes later, as his sister disappeared into the store, he muttered. “I hope I know what I’m doing, too.” Then he put the car into reverse and pulled away from the store.

He was going to Shay’s place. This time, he was going to listen to what she had to say, and nothing was going to interrupt them.

Michigan.

Michigan.

Michigan.

Shay went through letter after letter she’d gotten from Darcy. All were postmarked from Michigan—the address had been the same for two years now. Shay was something of a pack rat; she kept everything. She hit her email next. Not all of the messages had been erased by whoever had gotten into her account—the person had gone through the folders alphabetically. It was just a nasty little bitch that things like AGENT, BIZ, and EDITS happened to come before PROMO and PERSONAL. But that meant she still had plenty of emails from Darcy. Including all the messages where Darcy had sent her phone number changes. For the first few years of their correspondence, Darcy had seemed to change her phone number about as often as Shay had changed her hairstyle … and that had been pretty damn often for a while.

The earlier emails had been more tentative—Darcy had been content to just follow Shay’s lead. She’d been excited … so thrilled for Shay, and so happy to be helping her do this. Reading them made Shay smile a little.

It had been cool, finding a way to keep that connection with the one real friend she’d made in college. To have somebody else she could trust to share that news. Darcy had never let her down and she’d made things so much easier for Shay—she was her go-between, somebody who could handle some of the interaction that was so hard on Shay.

And Shay could
trust
Darcy.

At least, she’d always thought she could.

Darcy helped Shay keep details straight, helped her remember things like contests and deadlines. She handled keeping stuff together for the website updates so Shay didn’t miss getting the info to Angie, sent out all the material for the various group promo sites, everything. Shay couldn’t even keep track of all the stuff Darcy handled for her now.

But the longer she read, the more Shay wondered if Darcy hadn’t been managing her. It wasn’t there … at first. But later on? Things had just changed.

She couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, but there were little things. Sites that Shay used to use … had liked, even. She’d never had any problems with them, but then a few years after Darcy had come on board, things had started going wrong—Darcy would claim
this
had gone wrong, or they weren’t getting the promo they’d been promised, or
that
had been changed.

Little things, but still. She’d let Darcy switch things, shift things, because that was what she paid her to handle.

But had she
really
been managing Darcy? Or had it been Darcy managing her?

Sighing, Shay started making notes about everything. She had to go back and check things. Maybe some of this shit was legit, maybe it wasn’t, but she couldn’t ignore the crawling in her gut.

“Stop it,” she muttered the first time that thought circled through her mind. “Just stop.”

But when she got to the emails from last January, that warning in her brain really started to scream at her—hard, harsh, and strident—so urgent and piercing, Shay wouldn’t have been surprised if the glass in the windows had started to rattle.

It was a conversation between Shay and Anna—contract negotiations that had fallen apart. Shay had wanted to try something new, and things just hadn’t happened the way they’d hoped. The project hadn’t caught the interest of any publishers and they’d decided to table it for a while.