Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (6 page)

Writing things out by hand in journals hadn’t seemed to work for her. The online diary, though,
that
worked. She could think things through, and something about putting those thoughts out there, sending them out into the world … it made it easier. She felt less isolated. It was totally anonymous and she had no clue if anybody read the entries; she didn’t
want
to know. But he hadn’t silenced her. This was proof of that.

This had always been a diary for the nightmares, for the trauma … not for real-life shit.

Yet now she had some heavy, heavy shit going on. And it was choking her, just thinking about it.

By the time she finished the entry, there was a headache brewing at the base of her skull and her eyelids were heavy.

But no rest for the weary. Not yet.

Shay let herself break long enough for some coffee and half a sandwich. Her gut didn’t even want that much, but she knew better than to totally skip eating. While she munched on her sandwich, she checked her email.

Nothing from Anna. A couple of automated replies from some of the sites she’d sent complaints to, and a whole shitload of emails in her inbox.

Three hundred
of them.

Three hundred
emails in the span of a day. Shit. And most of them were recent. Shay checked email every day, but it was usually after Darcy had winnowed it down. There were messages Darcy couldn’t answer and Shay handled all of those, but she didn’t usually log in until the evening when Darcy had cleared out a lot of the extraneous stuff.

Was this
normal
?

Of course, she hadn’t been doing much of
anything
in the way of email since her accident. Nothing much in the way of email, work, eating, sleeping … no. Scratch that—she’d slept. But beyond that? She hadn’t accomplished much of anything.

Plus, things had been a little crazy in those weeks before the wreck. She’d been finishing a book, trying to put together a proposal … maybe she hadn’t been as good about paying attention for a few days.

But still. This just didn’t seem right.

With her gut churning, Shay stared at the emails, scrolling through them. The subjects ranged from things like
Viagra … make your lady friend happy
to
I loved your latest book!
to
Blog party invite …

It was those last ones that really had her gut clenching in dread. Blog parties.

Interacting.

With people.

That was Shay’s biggest fear. Hell, she’d barely been able to interact with Elliot. And she’d fallen hard for him. But if she couldn’t interact with
him
, interacting with total strangers would never work.

She’d managed to get through college, although it had been hard. Once she’d graduated, she’d worked for a
while at a bank—a nice, safe, secure job. It had sucked. She’d been around too many people and it drove her crazy. So she’d tried a library. Books had been her refuge, and she’d been working on selling hers, so why not a library?

Because, again, libraries had people.

Selling her books had been her salvation. Virna had left her enough money that as long as she was careful, she’d be okay for a while, but the book sales had been her godsend. It wasn’t
huge
money, but she’d be able to work at home indefinitely.

Away from
people
. No interaction. Unless she wanted it. Years passed, she’d moved to Earth’s End, and as time ticked by, it got to the point that her only interaction with people was via email, the occasional phone call, or the rare trip into town.

Interacting with people
terrified
her, especially if it was on their terms. Working a job outside the house, it had always been on somebody else’s terms and it had almost driven her mad. Why she’d been able to get through college but hadn’t been able to cope well working with others, she didn’t know. Maybe it was because she hadn’t
had
to do the college thing. That had been in her control. Sooner or later, though, she’d known she would have to get a job. Virna’s gift to her wouldn’t last forever.

She could handle email. She could handle her diary posts—she was in control there. She could handle her trips to town—again, she was in control.

As long as she was in control, she was okay. But this situation had spiraled out of control some time ago and she’d been too busy being all comatose and shit to realize it.

“Hell.” The longer she read, the more tangled her gut became.

It seemed as though she could vaguely recall seeing some of these emails during those last few weeks before the wreck, but those memories were hazy. The doctors had told her it wasn’t unusual. They also told her they didn’t know whether her memory would get any better with time.

Not that it mattered right now.

All that mattered was fixing this mess.

A massive wave of self-pity tried to rise inside her but she pushed it away. She could feel sorry for herself later.

Grimly, she started to tackle the problem. She wouldn’t get any damn work done, considering how upset she was, so she might as well start tackling some of the emails and letting people know, upfront, she didn’t
do
blog parties, chats, and all that stuff.

At least
then
, she’d be in control.

On the bed, Shay muttered into her pillow. But her sleeping form didn’t move. It was a lesson learned early, and a lesson learned well. She hid like a rabbit, cowering still and silent for fear the predators would see or hear her if she moved. Even now, she couldn’t break that conditioning.

And as the dream changed, going from terrifying to merely heartbreaking, silent tears slid from under her lids as she dreamt of a little girl in a room surrounded by people who watched her with sad, serious eyes.

One woman had been called Virna, and she’d often visited the little girl back at the house where she’d lived. Sometimes, she’d even sneak her doughnuts.

Shay woke to silence.

Sweet, blissful silence … and the sad, wistful memories of Virna lingering in her mind. Shay was pretty certain the social worker hadn’t planned on taking in a kid when she’d come in to work that day. But in the end, Shay had gone home with Virna Lassiter.

And in the end, Virna had been the one to adopt Shay.

Of course, she hadn’t been called Shay, then.

But Shay was who she’d become.

And Virna had made the girl she’d been a promise. Several promises, actually. She’d be safe, she’d always have a home with Virna. And she’d always have chocolate doughnuts.

It wasn’t Virna’s fault that she’d died and that the safe home had disappeared. But Virna had kept her promise … in a way. She’d left Shay with the means to provide her
own
home. Her own chocolate doughnuts. Her own means of safety.

Virna hadn’t been safe, though.

All because of
him
. Shay’s bastard of a stepfather and his twisted, warped view of the world.

Him …

Bile roiled through her belly, rushing up her gut, and she swallowed, forcing it back down.

This was why she had such a hard time putting on weight—waking up with the nightmares made her less likely to eat and the more stressed she was, the less she wanted to eat. It was a nasty, ugly cycle, one that wore her out, but she didn’t know how to break it.

Weary already, she sat up, braced for the pain it would cause, but to her disappointment, it wasn’t so bad this time. Pain would be a welcome distraction on a morning
like this. Covering her eyes with her hands, she took a deep breath, then another.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Gone.”

Not completely gone, of course. Not like Virna. But out-of-her-life gone—because he didn’t know where she was. Or even
who
she was. She’d seen to that. She’d been almost eighteen by the time the trial had ended, and the first thing she’d done once she had turned eighteen was have her name legally changed. Since there was very clear proof that her safety was at risk, it had been a closed proceeding and her new name had been kept hidden. It would take a court order to have the new identity revealed.

And there wasn’t a big likelihood of that happening.

With a new name and the money Virna had left her, Shay had disappeared.

Disappeared … and moved to Alaska. Connecting Shay Morgan to the young woman who’d testified against Jethro Abernathy, who’d helped lock him away, wouldn’t be as easy as doing a name search online, or trying to follow the social security numbers.

She was safe here. Safe, as long as she didn’t draw attention to herself. She was as far away from the deserts of Phoenix as she could get.

And she tried to forget. Why
shouldn’t
she forget? She’d forgotten so much of her life. The early years of her life, right up until the night she’d met Virna, were nothing but a black void. Virna was the first clear memory she had. If she could forget whatever had happened before then, why not forget about
him
?

Working her way through college, writing her nightmares down on paper, she’d tried to forget. Forgetting wasn’t happening … but she’d managed to purge the nightmares enough so that she could sleep. Most days, the diary was enough, and she’d found escape, relief, and an odd form of therapy through her fiction writing.

As long as she was able to get those dragons out, put them down on paper or on the computer, she didn’t lie awake at night, choking on screams.

It was a fucking weird twist of fate that she actually had people paying her to write those books—the therapy she needed to stay sane. Those books, many of them at least, stemmed from her nightmares, created by her inner dragons, and she used them to haunt the dreams of others.

It was a bizarre trade-off, she figured.

Lowering her hands, Shay stared out the window into the darkness of the early morning. It was almost seven, but the blackness of the sky made it look like midnight.

Lost in the silence of the room, she thought back to the way she’d spent the past day. Somebody was trying to steal her life. All of the hard work. All of the anguish. Her dragons.

A faint sneer curled her lip.

If somebody wanted to take that past, maybe it wouldn’t bother her so much. But if whoever was doing this realized just what it had cost Shay to create those stories, maybe that person wouldn’t be so eager to try and claim credit.

“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was a harsh slap in the quiet of the room.

Her heart started to thud against her rib cage in slow, heavy beats as she realized the truth of those words. It
didn’t
matter. Her past, brutal as it was, ugly as it was, had made her.
She
had survived it. Another child might not have and if that was the sacrifice it required … so fucking be it.

She’d earned this life—this uneasy peace that really wasn’t so very peaceful. But it was what she had, and it was hers, damn it. Shane Neil was hers, this place was
hers, this
life
was hers, and whoever was trying to masquerade as her was in for a rude fucking awakening if he or she thought Shay would just
take
it.

Mentally bracing herself, she eased herself out of bed.

First things first—get the dream in her diary. Then she’d see if any progress had been made getting that Facebook page down.

And if not, she was going to bring down unholy hell.

After that … she was going back to Earth’s End, and back to Winter’s End. She’d talk to Elliot and find out what in the world was going on with those damn books.

Grimacing, she realized she was going to do what he’d wanted her to do from the very beginning. She was going to open up to him. Because there was no other way he’d understand just why it was so important for her to know everything he could possibly tell her about the person who’d claimed to be the author of
her
damn books.

One hour, one chocolate doughnut, and two cups of coffee later, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me!” Darcy’s bright, cheerful voice was almost like a nail in her ear. Two cups of coffee still wasn’t enough to face a perky person.

Hell,
ten
cups couldn’t make perky manageable.

Still, this was Darcy. Forcing herself to smile, she said, “Hey, it’s you.”

“So what are you up to today?”

“Right now, I’m topping off my coffee.” Shay studied the bottom of her cup and rose to her feet.

“You’ve probably had more than you need already.” Darcy sighed. “Think you’ll get any work done today? You’ve been having trouble with your book since the wreck.”

Shay rolled her eyes as she shuffled into the kitchen. Yes, she was aware that she hadn’t written much in a while. Shit, she hadn’t been out of the hospital
that
long. “I dunno. I’m having these issues …” Sighing, she poured her coffee.