Glow (5 page)

Or
that she was “fine.”

He
should
believe her. Alice only had a few ephemeral snatches of memory that seemed to relate to Dylan's story about Addie Durand. Those snippets didn't really feel like personal memories at all. It was more like she'd undergone some science-fiction surgical technique for having another person's memories stitched into her brain. That handful of tiny, jagged bits of memory created a jarring contrast to the billions of other Alice recollections she'd accumulated through the past two decades of her life.

Sometimes, she felt like a computer that had downloaded a virus. What would happen if those fragments of another's person's
mind—of another person's world—began multiplying and expanding inside her?

Would Alice Reed disappear altogether?

The thought terrified her in the most primitive way, a way she couldn't convey to Dylan. It was hard to put it into words.

And there was an elusive
feeling
that kept mounting in her. A suspicion rose in her that if she tried to communicate to Dylan what that amorphous feeling was, it might take shape and solidify even further.

Maybe the feeling would become tangible memory?

Leave it in the dark.

Addie Durand and Alice may have been joined once, but the rift was complete. They were two separate people now. Alice was a mathematician, after all. Numbers cleaved, they carved out clear-cut, rational, predictable realities.
That
was how Alice Reed saw the world. She was overreacting in regard to her fear.

Of course you can discover a few interesting facts about Addie Durand without losing Alice. Don't be so nutballs about this.

Feeling relieved by her self-scolding, she allowed her heavy eyelids to drop. She sent up a silent prayer for dreamless sleep.

*   *   *

UNFORTUNATELY,
a sound night's sleep was just not in the cards for Alice or Dylan that night.

She startled awake at the jarring sound of a loud, high-pitched alarm. Before she could utter a single stunned syllable, she felt Dylan leap out of bed.

“Dylan, what the hell—”

“Stay right there. I
mean
it, Alice, do as I say for once,” he growled tensely. She gasped in disbelief. Did the man have night vision? How else had he known that she was untangling her legs from the sheet in order to jump up and follow him? She thought
she heard him moving in the room in the fractions of the seconds between the swelling shrieks of the alarm.

She blinked when the bedside light switched on. She squinted at the vision of Dylan standing next to the bed. He'd pulled on a pair of dark gray pajama bottoms with stunning speed. His face and torso looked tense and hard as he handed her the phone.

“I want you to get up and lock the door after I leave.”

“But—”

“There's someone in the house, Alice. If you don't do exactly what I say, I swear I'll—”

“All right, all right,” she said in a beleaguered fashion, convinced by his snarling intensity. She threw back the sheet.

He started toward the wood-paneled door. “Call nine-one-one as soon as you lock the door after me,” he said over his shoulder. “The police should be on their way since the alarm was triggered, but see if you can have them inform the officers that I'm downstairs in the house. I don't want to be accidentally mistaken for the intruder by the police.”

The reality behind his words penetrated. What if the police shot Dylan? What if the burglar did?

“Dylan, wait,
no
—”

“I can take care of myself,” he said, pausing briefly with his hand on the doorknob. “Now
lock
this door and stay in this room
until I come to get you.
I'll be distracted if you don't do exactly what I asked you to do.
Alice
.” He said her name like an ominous warning. She realized he saw her defiance stamped on her face. The heavy crease of worry on his brow and his fierce glare nudged at her.

She nodded in agreement. He disappeared.

She knew what he said was true, even if it didn't calm her any. Dylan had grown up on the streets. He was no stranger to confrontation or violence. He was no fool. She didn't want to be responsible for him worrying about her safety, distracting him, while he investigated the potential break-in.

She hurried to the heavy carved door and locked it. A few minutes after she'd called nine-one-one and yanked on her robe, she heard approaching sirens mixing with the screeching alarm. She jogged to the window and pulled back the curtains, her nerves crackling in anxiety. Over the top of the long, steep road leading to the castle, she saw the pulsing reflection of red lights against the opaque night sky. Not three seconds later, two police cars topped the rise and zoomed onto the circular turnabout in front of the entrance, their sirens wailing. Alice saw one cop get out and run around the house while the other—a big man—approached the front door. Straining her ears, she thought she heard the sound of banging, and then distant male voices.

The teeth-grinding wail of the security alarm abruptly ceased. A heavy, suffocating silence followed. Remembering her promise to Dylan and feeling like a trapped animal, Alice hurried to the locked door, pressing her ear to the wood, desperate for signs of what was happening below.

After a tense minute of hearing only her own pounding heartbeat, her few remaining threads of control snapped. She jogged to Dylan's walk-in closet. Flinging open the door, she found the light. The room was illuminated fully to her eyes for the first time—and it was a room
not
a closet, at least in Alice's limited experience with luxury. She sought among immaculately organized cedar shelves and what seemed like hundreds of hung suits and tuxedos. Her gaze latched on a potential target.

Several seconds later, she padded silently on bare feet down the enormous, curving grand staircase, a golf club gripped in both hands.

D
ylan conferred quietly with Jim Sheridan, the sheriff of Morgantown, in his den. Alex Peterson, one of Jim's deputies, was still doing a cursory check of the house and grounds. Jim was convinced it'd been a false alarm, however. Every point of entry was intact, and everything appeared to be in order.

Jim was an old friend, despite the disparity of their ages. He was in his late fifties while Dylan was thirty-four. Jim had been the sheriff back when Addie Durand had been taken. Under those stressful and nightmarish weeks and months that followed, Dylan had gotten to know Jim quicker and more completely than most people become familiar in years.

Jim Sheridan had been an all-state linebacker back in his high school days and still had the heft of one—more so, now that the years and his love of the food at the local diner had put sixty pounds on a once lean frame. Jim wore both the experience and the extra weight well. He possessed a friendly, craggy face and a down-to-earth warmth that might initially fool some into thinking he was just a good-old-boy small-town pushover with a badge. Others might be tricked into thinking it was his physical stature that earned Jim so much respect around Morgantown, but Dylan and those closest to the sheriff knew differently. The fact of the matter was, hidden beneath that amiable quick grin and the fading glory of a high school football star, Jim Sheridan was a shrewd observer and a damn good cop.

To this day, Dylan thought Jim had a better understanding and more keen insights into the details and nuances of the Adelaide Durand kidnapping case than any of the FBI agents sent to investigate the crime. Those FBI agents had failed completely, while Jim had been the one to encourage Dylan to never give up. He'd supported Dylan's trips to regularly visit Avery Cunningham, one of Adelaide's kidnappers, every year in prison until Cunningham had finally confessed to the crime just before his death. That refusal to give up had been what eventually gave Dylan clues to Addie's whereabouts twenty long years after she'd first been taken from the Durand Estate.

Of course, Jim didn't know about Cunningham's confession yet, and Dylan wanted to keep it that way for a while.

“Odd that the alarm would malfunction tonight. It's never gone off once—with or without cause—since I moved in here six years ago. I have it regularly serviced,” Dylan was saying to Jim.

“The storm caused some power outages down south,” Jim said from where he leaned against the edge of Dylan's desk, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Maybe it was some kind of electrical anomaly.” He noticed Dylan's skeptical look and shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Trust me. After thirty-seven years on the force, I can't tell you the number of false alarms I've raced to in the middle of the night caused by faulty security systems. You know better than anyone how many Durand execs live in Morgantown. Lots of big houses. Lots of fancy security systems. Lots of malfunctions,” Jim said with a small smile.

“I still don't like it.”

“Have someone come and take a look at the system—”

Jim paused and blinked. His stare at the door widened. Dylan spun around. Had Jim been mistaken in thinking it was a false alarm?

Alice stood warily several feet back from the open door, her short hair wild and mussed, her robe tied haphazardly and
bunching awkwardly around her slender frame. Her face was set and pale, like she was ready for battle. She had a death grip on his five iron.

“
Alice
. Damn it,” he mumbled under his breath. He crossed the distance to the door rapidly. “I thought I asked you to stay put until I came back.” He grasped her forearm and pulled her into the den after him.

“You might have come up and told me what was happening sooner, instead of leaving me up there to worry all alone while you sit down here having a friendly chat,” she hissed under her breath. She jerked her arm out of his hold and cast a half-apologetic, half-resentful glance at Jim before returning her burning stare to Dylan.

“We
just
determined there wasn't an actual break-in a few seconds ago.” He resisted a strong urge to lift her over his shoulder and lock her behind a closed door somewhere. Jim was studying her with avid interest, only adding to Dylan's sense of growing unease.

Damn Alice for her impulsivity. He didn't want Jim to suspect the truth. He wasn't dead set against Jim knowing about his finding Addie in general—the sheriff had been one of the few who had known about Dylan's continued search all these years, after all. Jim deserved to celebrate the amazing truth with him at some future date. It was just that as soon as Jim knew about Addie, the sheriff would be obligated to inform the FBI. The kidnapping wasn't Jim's case. It was a federal one.

Alice wasn't ready yet to have police and agents swarming around her and asking her a slew of questions. She claimed that she was fine, but Dylan was much less confident about her emotional and mental well-being. It was only two days ago that she'd been told she'd been born a completely different person than the one she'd believed herself to be.

She certainly wouldn't be prepared if her “mother,” Sissy Reed, and some or all of her many uncles were implicated in colluding
with Avery Cunningham, one of Addie Durand's kidnappers. She hadn't asked him about the Reeds' involvement in the past few days and Dylan hoped to spare Alice that reality until some future date. In Sidney Gates's professional opinion, Alice suspected the Reeds' collusion and was repressing it. Her silence on the matter was an indication to him that she wasn't ready to tackle that painful territory yet.

Don't ask. Don't tell.
That was the course of action Sidney was recommending for now.

To have the Reed clan thrown into prison right this second might give Dylan a rush of sweet vengeance, but it would only leave Alice feeling more torn, confused, and alone. She despised the Reeds, but they were family, too. Dylan knew better than most that feelings toward family members could be a tangled, confusing mess.

He unclenched his jaw and exhaled his frustration. “Jim Sheridan, I'd like you to meet Alice Reed.”

“Do you have a license to carry that five iron, ma'am?” Jim asked, stepping forward with his hand extended in greeting. Alice glanced dazedly at the golf club she gripped like she'd forgotten it was there. She grimaced and unpried her hand, shaking with Jim.

“It was the first likely candidate I saw in Dylan's closet.”

“I've always preferred a seven iron for a fight myself, but I can see how the five might give you a little more maneuverability in a pinch,” Jim joked.

“You wouldn't have needed either if you'd done what I'd asked you to do and stayed put,” Dylan reminded quietly, leaning against his desk with forced casualness.

That wild, cornered-animal look leapt back into her eyes. “What if you needed help? I couldn't just wait up there without knowing what was going on!”

“I told you I could handle it myself, Alice,” he said, his pointed stare meant to remind her of what else he'd asked her to do. She looked a little abashed, but clearly was not subdued.

“So what
is
going on?” she asked, shifting on her bare feet and glancing at Jim.

“Nothing much. And unless you can fight the aftereffects of an electrical storm with that golf club, there's nothing here to do,” Jim said.

“The storm set off the alarm?” Alice asked, lowering Dylan's club slowly. “But the storm has been over for hours.”

“Maybe it was some kind of residual electrical burst,” said Jim. “Hard to tell.”

“The point is, everything is fine,” Dylan said. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her, as if she had just become aware of her disheveled appearance. Dylan didn't care for the way Jim stared at her face fixedly, a slightly bemused expression on his face. Again, Dylan experienced that sharp urge to hide her. “The house was never breached. Why don't you go back upstairs? I'll be up in a minute,” he added when she furtively met his stare from behind the partial shield of her spiky bangs.

“Yeah, okay,” she agreed huskily after a moment. “I guess that alarm clock is going to go off soon.”

“Have to work early in the morning?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” Alice replied.

“There was some pretty serious flooding a few miles south of town in the vicinity of Chandler Creek. I hope you don't have to drive far to work,” Jim said concernedly.

“Oh no. I'm just down at the camp.”

Dylan resisted an urge to roll his eyes at her giving Jim exactly what he'd angled for with his fishing. She gave Dylan one last fleeting glance and walked out of the room.

*   *   *

THE
next morning her kids were still riding high from being the top team in accumulated points after the first week at Camp Durand. It was a good time to have everybody so cheerful, because
the morning mandatory activity was the zip line challenge—the activity Alice had struggled with most during her training. Alice was terrified of heights. Worse yet, she'd been paired up for the zip line during training with Brooke Seifert, who had been Alice's nemesis since the first day she'd arrived at camp.

Today Alice was more fortunate.

“At least I don't have to do the zip line myself this time around.
And
, I'm with you instead of Brooke,” Alice said quietly to Kuvi Sarin as they walked side by side through a meadow toward the woods, the twenty kids from both of their teams spread out around them. Kuvi was her cabin mate and friend. She was warm, genuine, funny, and smart. Except for the smart part, she was pretty much the exact opposite of Brooke Seifert.

“Brooke's team got paired up with Thad's for this challenge,” Kuvi said wryly. “She'll be in heaven.”

“From what I saw yesterday, so will Thad,” Alice replied under her breath. Kuvi gave her a sharp, knowing glance. Yesterday, Alice had spied Thad and Brooke kissing in the woods. She'd immediately told Kuvi what she'd seen. The accidental sighting had shocked her, because in the past Thad had only publically demonstrated a platonic interest in Brooke. In fact, Thad had previously not even attempted to hide that he was very interested romantically in her—
Alice.
She considered Thad a great guy and a friend, so what she'd seen between him and Brooke had left her feeling confused and disturbed. She'd been subtly avoiding Thad all day. Why was he purposefully misleading his friends when it came to Brooke? Was it because he knew how much Alice disliked her?

“Hey,” Kuvi whispered. “You promised yesterday that you were going to tell me where
you
have been disappearing to at night.”

Alice glanced around warily, assuring herself that their conversation wasn't being overheard. Until yesterday, Kuvi had
assumed she was sneaking away from their cabin at night for trysts with Thad. Alice had never admitted to that, but Kuvi and Dave Epstein—their other friend—had just assumed a relationship between them, given Thad's obvious attraction to Alice.

“I'll tell you tonight, after the night supervisors take over,” Alice said quietly. “I promise,” she added when she saw the question and concern in Kuvi's eyes. Kuvi nodded.

Alice wasn't exactly looking forward to confessing for the first time that she was having an affair with Durand Enterprises' CEO. Kuvi was sure to tell her that she was out of her mind. If they were discovered, the ramifications for both Alice and Dylan could be serious. But part of her was relieved at the prospect of telling the truth as well. She respected and liked Kuvi too much to keep lying to her.

Alice spotted Sebastian Kehoe, the Durand vice president of human resources, a minute after they entered the woods. Kehoe stood at the bottom of a wooden flight of stairs that led to a forty-five-foot-tall zip line platform. He looked at them, pointedly checked his watch, and continued to write on a clipboard that Alice suspected was surgically attached to his hand.

Uh-oh
. Were they late? Alice couldn't really afford to get on Kehoe's bad side, although she constantly felt like she was scrambling not to land there with a resounding thud. Kehoe was a longtime Durand executive. He was the top boss here—at least he was when Dylan wasn't around. It was generally acknowledged, even grudgingly by Dylan himself, that Camp Durand was Kehoe's baby and had been for as long as most people's memories went. Camp Durand was held up as a model example of Durand Enterprises' strong community and philanthropic ideals as well as being an innovative, fresh practice for finding the best of the best young executives in the world. Kehoe certainly held court at Camp Durand like some kind of village potentate. Which was unfortunate, because Alice couldn't rid herself of the uneasy feeling that
Kehoe didn't like her at all. She thought it might have something to do with the fact that Dylan hired her, when Kehoe usually did all the hiring for the elite group of counselors and future Durand executives. On a more worrisome note, she dreaded that Kehoe suspected something was going on between Dylan and her, and didn't like that fact at all.

She and Kuvi approached Kehoe while the other kids spread out in the clearing, talking among themselves.

“Hello, ladies. May I have your assignments for your zip line pair-ups?” Kehoe asked Alice and Kuvi briskly. Alice's stomach dropped. Kuvi reached into her backpack and retrieved several pieces of paper. She handed them to Kehoe.

“Alice?” Kehoe asked unsmilingly, glancing up and peering at her through a pair of preppy black-rimmed glasses. Everything about Kehoe was neat, his appearance as exacting as his manner. Even in his camp sportswear, Kehoe was meticulously groomed. He was trim and sinewy, his athletic build making him look much younger than a man in his fifties. “Your assignments, please?”

“I, uh . . . I forgot to type them out,” she said in a rush. “But I know all of my pair-ups by heart. I put a lot of effort into it.”