Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (33 page)

“Don’t,” she whispered feebly in between bouts of retching.

“Shut up,” he ordered, continuing to stroke her hair.

“Everything okay here, folks?”

He glanced up as the police officer approached; Shay moaned and doubled over, another bout of nausea grabbing her.

The officer stood a good ten feet away and watched as she once more started to puke.

Elliot cocked a brow. “Well, I guess it depends on where you’re standing, Officer.”

“You going to tell me what set that off?” Elliot asked after Shay finished swishing some water around in her mouth.

She spit it out and then shut the car door. The cop was still behind them.

“Later,” she said quietly. The image … 
fuck, what was that?

“Shay …”

“No. Not while we still have a fucking cop behind us. Come on, we need to go.”

And she needed to see it again. She still wasn’t completely
sure what she’d seen—some part of her brain
knew
, but the rest of her just didn’t.

“Look, just drive,” she said quietly. She glanced at the rearview mirror one more time and then over at Elliot. “I have to get moving. Or I’m going to lose my mind.”

He stared at her, that gaze searing deep into her soul. “That won’t put me off for long,” he warned her.

“I don’t need forever,” she promised him.

No, she didn’t need forever. But she needed a few minutes. Elliot was wonderful enough to give her those few minutes and more. As the minutes stretched out into an hour, he still hadn’t pushed, and she was eternally grateful.

It gave her time to settle, time to think, time to focus.

As they cut through the early morning traffic, Shay focused on the cars around them, on the sun beating down from the sky overhead, on anything but Elliot.

“Have you ever been to Ann Arbor before?” Elliot asked.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, a faint smile on her lips. “Elliot … I’ve never been
anywhere
before. Arizona. Alaska. That’s it.”

“Hey, it’s an ‘A’ place.” He squeezed her thigh. “I thought maybe you’d decided to try it out. You’ve got a thing for ‘A’ places.”

She snorted and fiddled with the red and white paper bag on the seat next to her. He’d bought it earlier and she’d eaten half of the sausage biscuit before digging into her email. Now, there was no way she could possibly eat, not with the way her belly was pitching and rolling. Not considering that every time she closed her eyes, she saw that image—

“Why don’t you nap?” he asked. “We’ve still got some driving to do.”

Shay snorted. “There’s no way I can sleep,” she muttered, sighing. The smell coming from the bag was making the nausea worse, too. Crumpling it up, she tossed it in the back and slumped low in her seat. No. She couldn’t sleep, but she could keep messing with the nightmare of email and she could maybe try to work her way through the nightmare that was her life—

Or she could answer her phone. Which had started ringing again.
Damn it
.

Dread gripped her and she looked down. “If that’s Darcy …”

Elliot picked up the phone, glancing at the display. Then he pushed it into her hand. “It says Anna Kent.”

“Anna …” Clutching the phone in a hand that had suddenly gone sweaty and damp, she closed her eyes. Nerves swamped her, desperate and raw, dancing in her already uneasy belly.

Trepidation was a nasty, ugly beast. It wasn’t a beast she normally had to deal with when talking to her agent, at least not in recent years. But it was there now, clawing at her and turning her brain to a stone.

The phone continued to ring. Praying her voice wouldn’t shake, she finally answered, sounding cautious and reserved. “Hello?”

“Shay. Hello.” There was some reserve in Anna’s voice as well.

That actually made Shay feel a little bit better. Closing her eyes, she blocked out everything. Elliot, Darcy, the lingering nausea, the awful email. Nothing existed right now except the woman on the other end of the phone.

“So did Trish explain to you what was going on?”

“Yes.” There was a brief pause. Then Anna sighed. “I have to be honest, Shay, I’m confused, I’m worried, I’m angry … can we just take it from the top? This just seems so … well, bizarre.”

Bizarre. Yeah. That about covered it. Shay had spent the past fifteen years of her life living in paranoia, certain something would happen, go wrong. She’d been right, damn it.

She just hadn’t expected
this
sort of thing to go wrong.

“From the top,” she whispered. “I can do that.”

“And you think it’s Darcy,” Anna said about ten minutes later, after Shay had explained everything that had happened.

“Does anything else make sense?” Shay hadn’t even tried to explain the convoluted problems surrounding Darcy. Darcy’s disappearance, her imposter … how the imposter seemed to know so much about her. She’d told Anna just enough … and still, it was too much.

“Well,
none
of this makes sense … but she’s the only person who’d have the kind of access needed to do what was being done with your email. Not to mention the times when she tried to cause problems with us.” Anna muttered, “I need a drink.”

Shay scowled. “I want one, too. But I’m on the road and it’s too damn early for a drink.”

“You should have one, too. Considering this mess, it’s definitely
not
too early for a drink. Okay, first things first … so you didn’t send the letter to my office. Is that correct?”

“Damn straight.”

“Okay.” Anna blew out a breath. “I have to admit, I’m so glad to hear that, even as I’m … well. Never mind. And I’m so sorry this happened. I should have tried harder, something …”

“We can talk about all of that later,” Shay said quietly, still staring at the trunk of the car in front of her. They’d covered it with bumper stickers. Everything from election campaign slogans to MADD stickers to
SAVE A HORSE—RIDE A COWBOY
. “I need to know what to do, Anna. I’ve done what I can about the crazy pages and most of them are down, but there’s still a blog, and she started another Facebook page …”

“Does this mean I’m still your agent?”

Shay closed her eyes. “Would you rather not be?”

“Of course, I still want to be your agent. But …”

“Anna, you’re the only agent I’ve ever worked with. The only one I want to work with. Unless you’d rather not come back into the middle of this mess, I don’t plan on going elsewhere.”

“Well, then.” Even over the phone line, Shay could hear the woman’s smile. “Considering some of the mess happened because of a lapse on our part, my office is definitely going to help get this straightened out. I’ll get with the people here and see what they suggest. I’ll also contact your publisher, see if there’s anything they can do.”

A knot settled in Shay’s chest. “Thanks.” Closing her eyes, she told herself she didn’t need to ask. There was no reason, right?

But she had to … “Anna?”

“Yes?”

“You believe me, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Anna’s voice was firm. “Look, this is some crazy shit, I’ll give you that, but we’ll get it straightened out. I want you to be careful, though. This lady—if she’s that obsessed with you, there’s no telling what she might do.”

Shay grimaced. “Hasn’t she done enough? She tried to take over my life. She accused the guy I’m involved with of trying to rape her.”
And a friend of mine is missing …
She didn’t say that, though. Not yet. First she needed to see just what was going on with Darcy. The
real
Darcy. Then … then she’d figure out what to do next.

“No. She pretended to be you. And although it’s bizarre, she may have thought she was helping you … and when you didn’t get it, she was pissed, wasn’t she? Now her house of cards is really toppling down. We don’t know how she’s going to react, do we? She could try to do a lot of damage.”

Those words made Shay shiver.

Because she already suspected that this woman had done quite a bit of damage.

Part of her wanted to ask … 
Just how much more can she do?

As the echo of a child’s scream danced through her mind, as the memory of horrendous pain rippled through her body, she knew the answer to that unvoiced question.

Worse. Much, much worse.

“This is the place.”

Elliot’s hand rested on the back of her neck.

“You’re sure?”

Shay nodded. “I had her mom’s info buried in my laptop from ages ago. Darcy used to move around a lot, and her mom was how I could reconnect if I lost her phone number or something.”

She blew out a breath and muttered, “This is going to suck, Elliot. I mean … if I go up there and say,
I need to talk to you about your daughter …
What’s that going to do to her? If she really is missing?”

“If she really is missing, and somebody is pretending to be her, you realize the imposter, whoever it is, may know something, right?” He brushed a kiss against her brow. “And you can’t just ignore that fact. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.”

“I’ve thought of it,” she said, anger and resolve settling inside her. That was why she was here. If nothing
else, she had to do this … for Darcy. For the friend she remembered.

She swallowed and made herself take a deep breath. She needed to do this. No matter how much it sucked, no matter how much it hurt, the woman in there needed to know that somebody might well be masquerading as her daughter, and Shay needed to know what had happened to her friend.

If there were any answers,
anywhere
, they needed to find them.

There was no mistaking the woman at the door for anybody other than Darcy’s mom, Shay thought.

Even the eyes were the same.

Though older, sadder, faded.

They were the same gentle brown. From the lines that fanned out at the sides, she looked like she laughed a lot. And the smile on her face was one that made Shay think of Darcy.

“Mrs. Montgomery?”

“Yes … can I help you?”

Shay swallowed. “I … I’m here about Darcy.”

The older woman lifted a hand. “Oh, dear Lord. Please tell me you know where she is.”

“No. I’m sorry.” She licked her lips. “I’m a friend of hers … we were in school together in Anchorage.” Shooting a look at Elliot, she glanced back at Ella Montgomery. “Ma’am, this is terribly complicated. Would it be okay if we came in?”

Ella nodded. “Darcy was terribly proud of what she did with you, you know. She …” The woman paused and looked away. “Don’t be mad at her. I know you didn’t want her discussing her job with others, but I’m her mother.”

“It’s okay.” Shay smiled awkwardly. She twisted her
hands in her lap, uncertain where to go from there. Ella looked like she was ready to cry at any given moment and Shay knew that if the woman did start to cry, she wasn’t going to be far behind.

“Can you tell me what happened with Darcy?” Elliot asked quietly, drawing Ella’s attention toward him.

Shay could have hugged him. Taking the chance to suck in a breath and settle, she swallowed and looked up to see Ella’s face take on a far-off look. “Lord, if only we knew. One day, she was just … gone. Just like that. She’d been living with me again for a while. You were sending the books here, do you remember?”

Nodding, Shay murmured, “Yes. For a year or so.”

“About two and a half years ago,” Ella whispered. “Six months before she disappeared.”

Two years … It was two years ago when Darcy gave me a new address. That fake one. That was when she started acting different
. Shay’s gut turned to ice.

“Was there anything going on?” she asked softly. “New friends? Anybody she mentioned?”

As Ella lowered her head, Shay wished she’d just kept her mouth shut. Awkwardly, she searched for the words, but before she could find the right ones, Ella lifted her head and gave a sad sigh. “You have no idea how many times we’ve wondered that very thing,” she said, her voice hitching a little before steadying. “I’ve gone over things with the police so often I could quote those last few weeks in my sleep. I can’t recall any new friends, but while we were close, Darcy didn’t share every detail of her life with me. There were some things that she just … wouldn’t. You know?”

“Boyfriends?” Elliot asked.

“Darcy didn’t date much.” Ella absently smoothed her hair back and leaned forward, picking up a framed picture from the coffee table and studying it. It was
Darcy—Shay recognized that bright, open smile so easily. “There was a guy she’d been seeing off and on a few months before she moved, but it was more of a friendly sort of thing, I think.”

“Maybe we could talk with him?”

Ella closed her eyes. “No. I’m afraid you couldn’t. He was in the Marines—died overseas a few months after Darcy disappeared.” She opened her eyes and looked back at Shay, that sadness still there. “But Ty didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance, sweetheart. I know he didn’t. He wasn’t even in the country when she disappeared. They’d go out when he was back home, but that was it.”

Gently, she touched her fingers to the pale, golden wood of the frame and then set it back on the table with that same gentle, loving care. “If there was anything I thought might help, Shay, I’d tell you. I would have told the police. But there’s nothing. Dear God, after two years …” She tipped her head back, staring up at the ceiling. “My daughter just disappears one night and nobody sees anything. It’s like she vanishes into thin air, taken by a ghost or something.”

Taken by a ghost …
A shiver raced down Shay’s spine and an icy sweat broke out over her body. Deep inside her heart, she knew; just as she suspected Ella knew. Darcy was dead. What had happened remained unknown. But Darcy was dead.

Which only left more unanswered questions.

Who in the hell was calling her? Pretending to be her? Pretending to be Darcy …?

And she did such a wonderful fucking job taking care of you … didn’t she … Michelline …?

Michelline.

“Shay?”

Swallowing, she jerked her attention back to Ella.

“I’m sorry. I’m just … my head is a mess. I don’t know what to think. Darcy …”

The grief reached up and grabbed her, choking her.