Winter's Destiny (9 page)

While he made calls, Amy found the small lunchroom and poured something black and caustic looking into a paper cup. With that in hand, she paced back and forth in front of the microwave, wired with worry for Jamie. She would never forgive herself if anything happened to him. Why hadn’t she gone to Nita’s and picked him up first thing this morning? If she had, he’d be with her now. She berated herself for about ten minutes then tossed the coffee down the sink and returned to Dallas’s office.

When the last call ended, he looked up at her. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got so far. First, the moving van you saw on Lighthouse Road belongs to Coast Moving. Your furniture is at the company’s storage facility. You can do what you like with that information. You might want to approach them regarding the damage their moving truck did to your Jeep. The driver collected his pay and then quit. Next, I paged your husband. His service says he’s out of town for an indefinite period. The message is the same at his clinic, and the hospital confirms this. No one seems to know where he is. I tried your sister-in-law’s home and cell as well as her husband, Brandon’s cell. They each have a similar message on their phones.” He paused and looked across at Amy. “What’s the matter?”

Amy’s mouth had dropped. “I called each of them not long ago. I didn’t hear anything like that.” Her concern for Jamie grew.

“Like you said. Things change every hour.” He rested his elbows on the arms of his worn chair and rubbed his chin in thought. “We’re in a bit of a bind. Dan is Jamie’s father, so legally I can’t stop him for having his son in the car. What I can do is bring him in for questioning related to the investigation that we have underway. Your husband’s tags as well as those of Nita and Brandon Williams have gone out statewide. If they’re driving, they’ll be spotted, sooner or later. We’re checking the Portland airport and we’ve notified Child Protection Services. If Nita or Brandon are found with Jamie, the boy will be apprehended.” Dallas stood. “A patrol car will keep an eye on your sister-in-laws place. By the way, what does Brandon do for a living?”

“He’s a rep for Heavy Lift Equipment, meaning he’s out of town a lot.”

Dallas grabbed his jacket off the wall hook behind his desk. He took her arm, “Come on. After everything that’s happened it’d be ludicrous for you to go back home, and you’ve got no way of getting there. I sent one of my deputies to your house to lock up and check around. Do you have somewhere to stay, here in town?”

“I don’t want to impose on my friends, nor do I want to drag them into this, so I called my grandfather earlier and arranged for Jamie and I to stay with him. It would’ve been too risky to take Jamie home after the break in and the threat on his life.”

“You’re not worried about dragging your grandfather into this?”

Amy combed her hair with her fingers. “I have a feeling Gramps was involved long before I was. There’s something he isn’t telling me. The thing is, if that’s the case, I’m sure there’s a good reason for him to hold back.”

Dallas opened the door to the parking lot and held it while she walked out. “His house is on my way home, so I’ll give you a lift.”

Amy cocked her head. “You know where my grandfather and my sister-in-law live. You have all their contact numbers. You’ve got their license plates and vehicle registrations. Did you do background checks too?”

Dallas guided her toward a newer pickup truck. He opened the passenger door. “Part of the job.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Maybe.”

Amy jumped in the truck. When Dallas got in, she asked, “How about me? Did you check me out too?”

Dallas appeared amused. “Maybe.”

“Hm.”

Dallas’s cell rang. He listened quietly. “Okay. Check on it every hour or so.” He glanced over at Amy. “There’s no one home at your sister-in-law’s, but we’ll drive by every hour or so.”

“I wonder where Dan would take Jamie,” Amy said as much to herself as to Dallas.

He replied, “Could be wrong, but I’d say that he and his sister, Nita are taking Jamie to a place where you can’t find him, but I don’t think they’re too far away. Just a hunch.” Ten minutes later Dallas pulled up to the Hadden’s house. “Porch light’s on. Looks like he’s expecting you.”

Amy nodded. “He is.” Amy twisted her hair around her index finger. “How’s the investigation going, Sheriff?”

“We’ve made some progress. As I said earlier, we got IDs on the prints found inside the Taurus. Fortunately, the car hit the rocks down below the lighthouse so it didn’t get submerged and the prints were pretty good. One set ID’d to a meat cutter who’s wanted on a string of crimes in the south. Murder charges are pending against him. The second set of prints belong to an accomplice who is wanted for conspiracy to commit murder. These guys have a long history of brutality and violence. I haven’t been able to make the connection between them and the woman you saw Friday night, but you can bet it’s not good. You need to understand that these men are about as dangerous and as deadly as they come.”

Amy shuddered. “Do you think it was one of them who broke into my house last night?”

Dallas rubbed the steering wheel thoughtfully. “Possible.”

“And the third set of prints?”

“They match the ones we took from your study window.” Dallas shifted sideways in his seat. “And they turned out to be almost identical to yours.”

Amy stared at Dallas, speechless. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Dallas said, “By the way, we also got some lab results back.”

“And?”

“The blood samples taken from outside your study window were O Negative. Pretty rare blood type. Do you know yours, Mrs. Johnson?”

Amy became very still. “O Negative.”

Gramps Hadden looked across the table at Amy. She had purple shadows under her eyes. However, it wasn’t her appearance that worried him the most. It was her silence.

He pushed his donut around on the plate and asked, “When do you plan on telling me where Jamie is?” He took a bite of the donut and chewed thoughtfully. “And Lord knows, you look a sight with all those cuts and scratches,” he hollered.

Amy reached across the table and rubbed his arm. “I can hear you, Gramps.”

The motion was lethargic. Her eyes had lost their sparkle; her face was taut with worry. “Tell me what’s going on, Amy. Where’s Jamie. You said you were bringing him with you.”

Amy tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Eventually she said, “Dan took him. Picked Jamie up before I got to Nita’s. Then Dan moved most everything out of the house, including all Jamie’s things.” Amy dropped her head into her hands. When she looked back at her grandfather, her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “It was a huge shock. No warning.” Amy whispered angrily, “The bastard!”

The old man slammed his fist down on the table so hard, it sent his plate dancing. “That son of a bitch! I’ll be damned if he’s going to get away with this. Call Wayburne.”

“There’s not much the sheriff can do. After all, Jamie is Dan’s son too.” Amy pushed her uneaten donut away. “My life’s hell, Gramps. It’s hard to think straight. I can’t sleep. I’m constantly groping for answers.” Amy wiped her eyes with her fingers. “Friday night I saw a woman who looks exactly like me. I don’t know if she’s still alive. I don’t know who’s after her. I don’t know who broke into our house. I don’t know why Dan picked right now to leave me. I don’t know why he took Jamie.
I don’t know a friggin’ thing anymore!”

Amy jumped up, sending her chair flying. “What I do know is, Mom had twins and not a single one of you bothered to tell me! And why the hell not? How could you, every single one of you, keep that from me all these years!”
Amy righted the chair and leaned over the back of it. “It’s time you told me the truth about the past, Gramps. Your silence has to end now. I don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to go wrong next. What I do know is, it’s going to come out of nowhere, and it’s going to be painful.” She twisted around to look at him. “I can’t sit still and do nothing. Jamie’s life is at stake!” She faced her grandfather. “For godsake! Tell me what I need to know so that I can make the right decisions and do the right things. This is far too dangerous for me to be stumbling around in the dark any longer!”

Hadden studied her. His hands opened and closed into fists and when he spoke his voice was strangely subdued. “You’re right, Girl. It’s time you knew. Your grandmother and I were trying to protect you. We never wanted you to know what we found out. We figured the less you knew the better off you’d be. Grams and I hoped this thing would die its own death, but it seems like it’s going to haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

He pushed his wheelchair back from the table. “The woman you saw Friday night probably looks like you. Can’t say for sure.” He closed his eyes. When he looked up, they were bloodshot.

Amy stood frozen. “Go on.”

He reached for his cane and stood unsteadily before limping over to a wall photo of Sharalynn. He stared at it and then said: “There’s no way to break this to you gently, Amy, so I’m just going to come right out and tell you. Your mother gave birth to twin girls—you and another. We were told the first-born died. None of us ever saw her, not even Sharalynn.” Gramps shook his head, “Poor Sharalynn. She was so devastated over losing that twin, she couldn’t even talk about it.”

He was quiet for a long time. Finally, he continued, “Then, one day out of the blue, when you were sixteen, Sharalynn got a phone call from a girl whose voice sounded just like yours. Sharalynn thought you were fooling with her, but it was the urgency in the girl’s voice that made Sharalynn stop and listen. The girl cried and told Sharalynn that her name was Alesha and that she was Sharalynn’s daughter, the firstborn twin who was supposed to have died. The girl knew the name of the doctors, the hospital, the time of birth. Everything. She wanted to meet her real parents. It took Sharalynn a while to accept what the girl was saying, but the clincher came back to the girl’s voice. So, it was arranged that your parents would meet her in Portland after your dad got home from work.” His voice broke, “but as you know, they never made it to Portland.”

Amy’s voice was hoarse. “The accident.”

Hadden lifted the photograph of Sharalynn off the wall and stared at it. Then, he whispered, “It was no accident.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was no accident, Amy. Your mom and dad were murdered.”

Amy paled and collapsed onto the chair.

Gramps continued, “An eighteen wheeler crossed the center line and hit their car head-on. The driver fled the scene. At the time, they figured the guy was drunk. The police investigated the accident, but they never did find him.”

Amy sat stunned. She could still see her parents before they left on that last night: Mom in her blue dress and Dad with his crazy, nervous grin. Mom had such exciting news. She was going to tell Amy all about it when they got back home. For years Amy wondered what it was her mom was going to tell her. Now, at last, she knew. Amy has a sister. A twin. And her name is Alesha.

The old man hung the photo back on the wall and limped back over to Amy and gave her a hug and stroked her hair. His voice cracked. “Never wanted to tell you that, Girl. The whole thing is so damned heartbreaking…” He sidestepped to the wheelchair and sat down heavily. Amy reached over and touched his leg. “There’s more, isn’t there, Gramps? It didn’t end there, did it?”

“Nope, it didn’t end there. That’s how we found out the truth about the accident.”

“Tell me what happened at the cabin,” Amy said.

His voice was husky. “I went to the cabin a lot after the accident, as you know. Wanted to be alone. I’d go up there and work from sunrise to sunset trying to rid the demons I was living with. A couple of weeks after the funeral a black sedan pulls up. Two big guys get out. They tell me to keep my mouth shut about the phone call Sharalynn got from the girl.” The old man rubbed his legs.

Amy touched his hand. “What did they do to you, Gramps?”

The old man shook his head. “What’s done is done.”

“Tell me, Gramps. No more holding back.”

He exhaled slowly. “One guy punched me. Almost knocked me cold. The other guy got in the sedan and drove the front wheel over my legs. Crushed my left leg and broke my right. The doc fixed up both legs best he could, but even with the prosthetic, I can’t be on my left leg long.”

Amy swallowed hard. The room tilted and she grabbed the arm of the wheelchair. Something hot burned in Amy’s stomach. “Jeez.” She reached for his hand. “Gramps, I’m so sorry.” They sat like that a while, Amy gripping the old man’s hand, each deep in their own emotions. Finally Amy asked, “And Grams? What did they do to her?”

Hadden cleared his throat. “Told your grandmother they’d kill
you
if she so much as uttered a word.”

Amy could feel darkness closing around her.
Too much too fast.
She gripped the arm of the wheelchair.
Get control! If you don’t, you’ll lose Jamie. Think of Jamie!
Amy took deep breaths in and out, until the darkness faded.

She walked out of the room. His words burned in her mind:
Your parents were murdered
. They threatened Gramps and crippled him for life. They threatened her grandmother into a sickening vow of silence. And now they were threatening to hurt Jamie.

Jamie.
She had to find him fast, before they did. But how? She needed to know everything. The wheels of the wheelchair rolled up behind her. Without turning around she said, “What about the fire at the hospital, the one that killed our doctor?”

Hadden nodded. “Real convenient. Got rid of Doc Lamont and the birth records too.”

“Was Dr. Lamont involved? Did he know about the other twin?”

Hadden shook his head. “Doc Lamont was a good man. If he knew, he would’ve blown the whistle on them. Maybe he was going to do that. Maybe that’s why they roasted him. Or, maybe he was a loose end. They’re killers, Amy. That’s why I’m so worried. That’s why it’s so important for you and little Jamie to go away someplace safe for a while, before they turn on you.”