Read Blood Stains Online

Authors: Sharon Sala

Tags: #Suspense

Blood Stains (2 page)

BOOK: Blood Stains
13.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Andrew Slade’s face appeared on the screen at the same time the door closed.

Breaths caught in unison, then they all exhaled softly as they braced themselves for whatever he had to say.

“Hello, my daughters. Obviously, if you’re seeing this, I have passed on. Know that, while I am sorry to be leaving you behind, my faith in God and the knowledge that I will be with my beloved Hannah again is, for me, a cause to rejoice. However, what I have to say to you is something I’ve dreaded your entire lives, and I’m ashamed to say I chose the easy way out and left it for you to hear after my passing.”

Unconsciously, the sisters leaned into each other. Maria noticed as Bud almost unconsciously slid an arm behind Holly’s chair, as if bracing her against what was clearly going to be bad news. There was a muscle jerking at the side of Andrew’s jaw as he faced the camera, which told her that her father had been under stress when he recorded his message. But she could not have imagined, in her wildest dreams, the words that came out of his mouth.

“My darling daughters…you need to know that I am not really your father. Hannah was not really your mother, nor were any of you ever legally adopted.”

Shock spread across all three women’s faces.

“What the hell?” Bud muttered, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“There is more,” Andrew added. “You are not sisters.”

Maria gasped. Holly moaned. Savannah began to weep.

Bud’s arm tightened around Holly’s shoulders.

The sisters looked at each other in mute disbelief, then Maria gently squeezed one of Savannah’s hands as Holly did the same to the other.

“We
are
sisters—in every way that counts,” Maria said sharply.

Andrew’s voice drew their focus back to the screen.

“By now, I suspect your grief at my passing has turned to shock…even anger. I understand. But what you three need to understand is…I believed with every fiber of my being that, as I was following my calling as an evangelical preacher, God led me to each of you at a time when you needed me most. There are journals that I’ve left with Coleman, one for each of you. Everything I know about your past is in there, along with why your mothers put you in my care.

“Maria, you were the first one. You were born Mary Blake, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Your mother had a hard life. She was, for lack of a better word, an escort at the time of her death. You were four years old when you witnessed her murder. As she lay dying, she begged me to take you and hide you. The details as to how it all happened are in your journal. To my knowledge, her murder was never solved.

“Savannah, you are actually Sarah Stewart from Miami, Florida, and the second child to be given to me. Your mother was dying of cancer and had come to my tent meetings to pray for healing. By then, Maria had been with me for nearly six months. You were barely two. You and Maria hit it off immediately when your mother came to hear me preach, and she saw the bond between you two. On the last night of the revival, she came to me in a panic. She and your father were not married, but he had never denied you, and he played an important role in your life. According to her, he was also a member of a very rich, powerful local family. When she learned she had inoperable cancer, he had stepped up and promised he would take you into the family, and he had informed them of his plans. The night she came to me, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Your father had been killed in a car accident early that morning, and already she had received a threat on your life. Aware that she had only weeks to live and no one else to whom she could turn, she begged me to take you and raise you with Maria. So I did. It was then that I began to understand I was being led down this path by a power greater than my own.

“Holly, you are my oldest, but you came to me last. You were born Harriet Mackey and were five when you and your mother showed up at a revival I was holding in St. Louis, Missouri. She seemed troubled, but I thought nothing of it. At one time or another, we are all troubled by something or someone. On the fourth and last night of the revival, I thought everyone was gone from the church. Maria and Savannah had gone to sleep in the pastor’s office, and I was going to get them when your mother showed up at the door with you and a suitcase.

“Her story was staggering, but at that point, I didn’t question God’s plan. What you need to know is that she did not give you away. She was convinced that her husband, your father, was a serial killer the Missouri police had been hunting for nearly a year. She feared what the notoriety would do to your life when all was revealed, and that you would be branded as a killer’s daughter. She was going to turn him in, and then come and get you and start over in a new place. Only she never came after you, and no one was ever arrested for the murders. I fear she paid for her bravery with her life.

“As I said before, Coleman has journals for each of you. I’ve written down everything I know. As to whether you go back to find your roots or not, that is your choice, but I caution each of you to remember, your lives were in danger then. They could be again.”

The screen went dark.

It was only then that Maria realized she’d been holding her breath. She inhaled deeply as the room began to spin. Without thinking, she bent over and put her head between her knees.

Bud was out of his chair and at her side within seconds. “Maria…are you all right?”

“Breathe, Maria…keep breathing,” Holly said, as she dropped on her knees in front of Maria’s chair.

The office door opened as Coleman Rice hurried in. He’d heard the commotion and feared something like this might happen.

“What happened? Do I need to call an ambulance?” he asked.

“No,” Bud said. “She’s not sick. She’s in shock. It will pass.”

Maria’s mind was in chaos. She’d been proud of being a Slade, but that had been a lie. She was the child of a prostitute. God only knew what kind of blood ran through her veins. She took a deep breath and stared at her sisters.

Savannah was in shock, probably unable to focus on anything except the fact that someone had wanted her dead.

Holly was shaking. Her father might be a serial killer who’d murdered her mother? What kind of a family had
she
been born into?

Bud stood. “Look at me,” he said, his voice deep and demanding. “A name is nothing but a means of identification. You all still bleed red. You were raised by a good man—a man of God. You need to consider yourselves blessed that God spared each of you from what sounds like certain death.”

Savannah nodded, gulping back tears. Holly was weeping quietly as she held tightly to Savannah’s hand. But Maria’s reaction was different. She was shocked and angry.

“My mother was a hooker! Who was my father? One of her…her tricks?”

Holly shuddered as she met Maria’s gaze. “Trade you backgrounds. At least yours probably wasn’t a serial killer.”

Maria shuddered, then threw her arms around Holly’s neck. “Sorry, sis. I wasn’t thinking.”

Savannah hugged the both of them. “We still have each other.”

“And me,” Bud added, and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Yes, Bud…and you,” they echoed, drawing him into their circle.

Coleman had expected something like this. He’d argued for days with Andrew when he’d first heard their stories, saying how they would have questions that only he could answer and that he should tell them now, not after his death. But Andrew had been set on doing it his way. He’d handed Coleman the journals, explaining that everything he knew about each of them was written down. The rest they would have to learn for themselves.

“Hold on. All of you,” Coleman said, as he approached the group. “Pointing fingers and attaching blame will not change anything.” He picked up three envelopes from the corner of his desk. “These are the journals.” He sorted through the names on the envelopes, then handed them out. “Andrew was diligent about putting down everything he knew. There are names and addresses in each, along with informational bits and pieces of your lives. Yes, things could have been handled differently, but there’s no telling where you would have wound up if he’d turned those three women down. The best you could have hoped for was growing up in the state welfare system. The likelier possibility exists that none of you would have lived past the time it would have taken your mothers’ enemies to find and kill you. Do you understand?”

It was the sharpness of his voice and the way in which he thrust the envelopes into their hands that brought them all back to their senses.

Savannah stared at her name, started to open the envelope, then changed her mind and slid it into her purse.

Holly shivered as she clutched hers to her stomach, as if it were a living, breathing entity that was going to change her life.

But it was Maria who, once again, was the first to regain control. She yanked the journal out of the envelope and opened it to the first page.

Your name is Mary Blake.

The skin on the back of her neck crawled as she remembered that she’d been a witness to her mother’s murder. Her eyes narrowed.

“I’m going back,” she said.

Coleman frowned. “I don’t recommend any of you charging off without careful planning. Read your journals. Contact the proper authorities. Do not put yourselves in danger. It’s the last thing Andrew would have wanted.”

“No,” Maria said. “You’re wrong. This is exactly what he did want…and it’s the reason he didn’t tell us when we were kids. He knew we would be curious. He knew we would want to explore our pasts. He knew
us,
Mr. Rice.”

“Do you two feel the same way?” Coleman asked, turning to the other women.

Savannah nodded. “I feel like I have to.”

“Absolutely,” Holly said.

“Then I’m going with you,” Bud said.

Maria shook her head. “No. You’re staying here and keeping the Triple S in one piece. I need to know that there’s something here for me to come home to.”

“Me, too,” Savannah said. “I won’t do anything to put myself in danger, but I want to meet my father’s family.”

“I did some checking. They’re very wealthy,” Coleman warned. “At the least, they’ll look upon you as an upstart looking to lay claim to the Stewart estate.”

Holly reached for Bud’s arm. “Please…stay for us. The Triple S is home. We can’t do what we have to do unless we have a safe place to come home to. We’ll be okay. I promise I’ll let the police handle my case.”

“Fine,” Bud agreed grudgingly. “But you have to keep me updated when you can. If you need me, I’ll be on the first plane out.”

Two

“L
adies and gentlemen, please stow your tray tables and return your seats to an upright position. We will be landing in Tulsa in about ten minutes.”

The flight attendant’s words barely registered as Maria glanced out the window of the airplane to the land below. It was green—so green, even though it was only April. Back in Montana, they still had the occasional chance of snowfall from a late spring storm. Below, the landscape looked like a blue-and-green crazy quilt, squares defined by a river and farmlands that ran right up to the outskirts of the large, sprawling city. All she knew about Tulsa, Oklahoma, was something she remembered from school, that at one time it had been considered the oil capital of the world.

It was strange to realize that she’d been born there—had lived the first four years of her life there—and yet had no memory of it at all.

The flight attendant was moving through the plane now, gathering up the last remnants of the snack they’d served. Maria wished her life could be collected in the same orderly manner. All the bad stuff discarded into the sack and gone, never to be seen again.

According to the journal her father had left her, the first four years of her life could not have been easy, but when she and Holly and Savannah had compared notes before they all departed to their own destinations, none of them had any memories of what their father had written.

In a way, it made sense that they would have forgotten. Witnessing a murder could be traumatic enough to cause hysterical amnesia. And Savannah had barely been two, so it was logical that she would have had no prior memories. But Holly had been five. School age. Didn’t everyone remember their first day of school? Yet there was nothing of the story between the pages of her journal that had seemed remotely familiar to Holly.

Maria was still pondering the expanse of unanswered questions when she heard the landing gear going down. She glanced back out the window. The land was coming up at her at a rapid rate. For a few seconds she imagined she was being swallowed whole; then she shook off the fancy and began gathering her things.

Moments later, the wheels touched down, bumping slightly before leveling out into an uneventful landing.

Maria’s grip on the armrests tightened as the plane taxied toward the gate. Her heart was hammering against her rib cage, and there was a panicked rhythm in her breathing. She had to calm down. It wasn’t as if she were about to meet her unknown family at the gate. She was walking into her past alone. In the journal, the only name Andrew mentioned other than hers and her mother’s was Becky Thurman, the woman who’d helped him hide her—the woman who used to babysit her.

She shuddered.

What in hell was she getting herself into? She took a deep breath, remembering one of her father’s favorite phrases.
With God, anything is possible.
A good reminder that she wasn’t really alone—and that she had right on her side. It was time to stop the pity party.

Okay, Sally Blake…your daughter has come home to right a wrong. And if you have any pull with God, she’s going to need all the help she can get.

After that, her focus shifted to recovering her bags and claiming her rental car. She’d booked a room online at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Tulsa and had a map of the city in her purse. Even though she was anxious to get started, it was late in the day. Her best bet was to get settled in her room, get some food and rest and start early the next morning.

A brief conversation with the car rental agent to confirm her route revealed that she was only nine miles from her hotel. Pleased that at least one thing was turning out to be easier than she’d thought, she got her keys and made her way across the parking lot to the car, a white Chevrolet TrailBlazer.

BOOK: Blood Stains
13.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Salt by Colin F. Barnes
9 Letters by Austin, Blake
Texas Hunt by Barb Han
ARC: Sunstone by Freya Robertson
Recipe for Treason by Andrea Penrose
Fat Chance by Brandi Kennedy
Deception by John Altman