Sixes & Sevens (Seven Hearts Book 1) (2 page)

At least returning to school would mean he could ask his friends for help. Marc had made friends easily at school, but he spent most of his time with five other boys of various ages. Lee Hahn, Jonathan Kavanagh, Alec Dalton, Garrett Andres, and Sean Kavanagh—Jonathan’s adopted brother—were the reason he didn’t have issues with his mother’s abandonment. Marc had already created his own substitute family at school. The boys met when they joined up to form a martial arts club at Saint Benedicts. Some of them had formal training, and others had simply wanted to learn. Each of them had their own issues at home. Their tough situations led to their mutual interest in self-defense, and having an outlet for their less desirable emotions.

Knowing if they put their heads together they could solve any problem, Marc looked forward to sharing the problem with the guys. After all, Jonathan was an actual genius, and Sean wasn’t far behind. They all had individual interests that just might help him figure out how to find Jaycee. He’d need to put his faith in them. It would take time, but he swore he’d find a way to see her again. Somehow he’d find a safe place for Jaycee, where no one would ever hurt her again.

January 1, 2016

Jaycee took several deep breaths in through her nose, and exhaled through her mouth. She counted each breath. She could do this. Eighteen-year-olds were legally able to make their own decisions. She couldn’t repress her mental wince, sure the government wouldn’t stop her, but it didn’t mean her foster family wouldn’t try. Fighting to adopt her had been an ongoing crusade of theirs. She’d held out hope that when she turned eighteen in May, they would drop the subject. As a legal adult she no longer needed a guardian. It hadn’t made one iota of difference. The Smythes were determined to keep her. When they took her in, after she’d escaped her last foster home, she hadn’t had high hopes. While no one had beat her, or starved her, they hadn’t exactly treated her well either. Her first home had been a glorified work camp.

Her last home, if it could be called that, had nine foster kids. There wasn’t room to breathe in their house, which constantly reeked of smoke, and often not of the tobacco variety. Throwing out most of her clothing had been her only option, nothing could remove the stench. Maggie Smythe, her new foster mother, didn’t smoke, and neither did her husband Ted; their son Roger, however…well, he’d been sneaking out to smoke cigarettes for years. Roger could do no wrong. He was the apple of his parents’ eye.

“So why, with such a perfect little family, do they need me?” Jaycee had wondered. They hadn’t been able to have more children. Dreaming of raising a little girl had taken over Maggie’s life. While thirteen at the time, Jaycee was far from the little child they had hoped to take in, they’d been thrilled regardless.

Have you ever looked at someone who didn’t have any obvious flaw, but you still felt that shiver of apprehension down your spine? That was Jaycee’s first clue this home wouldn’t be much better than the last. Roger paid her far too much attention, especially as her body started to develop, and became less childlike. Being his “sister” hadn’t deterred Roger from trying to barge in on her while she was changing, or from appearing somewhere below her, if she ever was stupid enough to wear a skirt. Now she only wore jeans; it was safer that way.

Jaycee locked her door every chance she got, though it aggravated Maggie to no end. One of the woman’s favorite pastimes had been barging in on Jaycee, and attempting to dress her exactly like herself for some function. Maggie had treated Jaycee like a dress-up doll, or maybe more accurately a pet. Being shy, it had been hard for Jaycee to speak up for herself. Which meant she had spent a lot of time hiding. It was just easier if she couldn’t be found. In school, she had taken the hardest classes she could find, just so she would have more homework than the other kids. Summer school had been just another way to hide out. Ted had been a harder nut to crack. At first he just watched her, never saying much. Eventually, she had come to realize he was a control freak, except it wasn’t his will he wanted to enforce but his wife’s. As long as she conformed, he didn’t bother her much. The moment she stepped out of line…he could be extremely harsh. Ted’s favorite punishment was taken from the Asian neighbors he’d had as a child. He’d force Jaycee to kneel, with her arms in the air, for extreme amounts of time. It was made a harsher punishment by where you were required to kneel. You were lucky if you were taken to a room with a soft floor.

Her father’s incarceration had always been used against her, no matter which home she’d been at. Three different families had housed her since her father was taken away. Jaycee had always maintained her father’s innocence, but no one believed her. In fact, her first family had gone as far as banning her from talking about him, or the incident—as they called it—altogether. They had taken away anything that reminded her of him, including her photographs. It hadn’t done Jaycee any good to resist. The harder she tried, the more she struggled, the tighter her confines had gotten. It was like she lived in a Chinese finger trap. Or quicksand. Any movement toward returning home, or helping her father, had only taken her farther away from him, tightening her restraints. Without a sympathetic ear, she’d had no news of him since her placement into the Smythes’ home. It been so long she she’d seen his face. Would his hair have turned grey? Would he be lean from not eating properly? The biggest question, the one she hated to even dwell on, was if he was safe. How could he be??

She’d found out from a social worker, Paul been locked up in a maximum-security correctional center on the outskirts of her hometown, Maple Grove. His innocence hadn’t stopped them from throwing him to the wolves, wolves with too much aggression…and possibly shanks. Jaycee shivered at the thought, and made the sign of the cross. (She wasn’t a Catholic, but as a Christian, she figured it couldn’t hurt.) Jaycee reminded herself not to think about it.

When overmorrow arrived, Jaycee would sneak out. Somehow, she would save her father, regardless of the risk to herself. It had taken her a long time to get up the courage, gather her resources, but she’d made a plan. May 22, her eighteenth birthday, Jaycee began seeding the threads of her machination. Her foster parents had forced her to go to a college near their home. Independence, Missouri, was near a lot of colleges, but she’d wound up at MCC-Blue River working toward her associate in arts. The time would come for her to enroll in a four-year college for her bachelor’s, and Jaycee had Maggie convinced to allow her to go farther from home. Meaning she would finally be allowed to move into a dorm.

Roger had unwittingly helped her by moving several hours away to get his bachelor’s degree first. It left Maggie very little ground to stand on, though she tried the “it’s different; he’s a man defense.” Jaycee had finally worn her down by agreeing to go to a few mother daughter luncheons. The deal did, of course, include being dressed as twins. Not that they looked remotely alike. Jaycee barely stood five three, while Maggie was a willowy five eight. With tan skin and blond locks, Maggie was the exact opposite of Jaycee’s pale skin and dark hair. The lunch dates had been painfully awkward, but it was worth it in the long run.

“Whatever it takes.” It was Jaycee’s motto the last few months. To her, it meant she would do whatever she had to, whatever the situation was, she would force herself to comply. She would smile at strangers, and force herself to speak up in the company of Maggie’s friends. She would swallow her protests, stop hiding out, and go with the flow. What Maggie didn’t know, was that Jaycee had secretly applied to the University of Eastern Missouri, which was located one town over from Maple Grove. Jaycee had been accepted. Maggie would go ballistic if she knew. The colleges Jaycee had pretended to be interested in were still on the same side of the state. Definitely not back on her home turf. Jaycee had started collecting information on Kansas City colleges the moment Maggie had agreed to let her go farther away for her bachelor’s. It worked as a great cover story for all the forms and papers she had to fill out and submit to switch to UEM. She had even gone so far as to take campus tours of other schools, just to get far enough away from the Smythes to enact her plan. She had needed them to drop their guard temporarily, and let her out of their sight for extended periods of time. They tended to watch her too closely, whenever they were so inclined.

“Overmorrow…,” she repeated the word under her breath as she unknowingly clenched her jaw. “It finally begins.” Jaycee had been off school for Christmas break, but the new semester was set to start in about a week. She needed to be gone before then. Maggie had been told she was going to scout out another campus, over an hour away. It was just far enough, she had convinced them she would need to get a room for the night, so she wouldn’t be driving home alone in the dark. She had been forced to prey on their protectiveness as her guardians. Ted especially, treated her like an incompetent child. When in fact she was a straight-A student who had survived multiple bad living situations, without being drugged, raped, or beaten. “Whatever it takes,” she sighed. Having packed her large wheeled suitcase the night before, she couldn’t do any other packing until last minute without raising suspicion.

Roger was also home on break…to Jaycee’s utter dismay. She had already caught him in her room several times in the couple of weeks they had been home. Somewhere along the way she suspected he had learned to pick a lock. His appearance in her room only confirmed her fears. Not to be outsmarted, Jaycee had planned her escape—uh, campus tour—during the time Roger and his parents would be visiting his grandparents. Seeing as Ted’s parents weren’t too keen on Jaycee, not being born with their Smythe blood, she was asked not to come. It didn’t distress her at all, in fact it worked into her plan perfectly.

“Maybe too perfectly…” Jaycee thought, maybe she should have been more worried? Not even a foot out the door, and she had already started trembling like a leaf at the thought of what she was about to do. She had been over her plans in her mind thousands of times. Fear of discovery, was the only reason she hadn’t written out all the details in her journal, to further ferret out any and all loose ends. Her journal was precious to her. She couldn’t, no wouldn’t, risk losing it. That journal had been with her through every move, every day, every struggle. Writing down the moments she’d had with her mother and father was the only way she could keep her memories alive. Not wanting time to ravage the details, or skew her memory, Jaycee wrote down every detail she could remember.

Jaycee’s journal didn’t just hold her precious moments, it also held her heart and soul. She poured out her feelings into poems and short stories. She loved the written word, reading had always been a great escape from reality. Traveling to worlds that didn’t exist, getting to pretend she wasn’t always labeled as the daughter of a convicted murderer. Just a bad seed. That she wasn’t practically an orphan. Her eyes teared up at the thought. She hadn’t felt any true kindness since the day social services had come to collect her. The nice old couple and their grandson had spent the day with her. Annie and Ed Wallner had even asked the police if they could watch Jaycee, while the police conducted their investigation. They had taken her to their home, where she had met their grandson Marc. She couldn’t remember very much about that day, detail-wise. Her emotions had been so overwhelmed she wound up feeling numb and dazed, the only emotion registering had been pain. Jaycee just had a vague feeling of being loved and cared for, she knew the Wallners were on her father’s side. When she’d began thinking of how to help her father, they were the only supporters she could remember meeting.

The first step of her plan was to remove the Smythes’ heavy thumb from her person by running away. Unlike most runaways, she had secured a place to stay, and means to support herself. She could charge her dorm housing to her student loans. Due to her excellent academic standing, and horrible home situation, she had been able to secure several scholarships as well. Transferring schools had been easy enough after turning eighteen. She signed herself over without a hitch. Her ACT scores had been above average, and with her grades remaining high at MCC, UEM was thrilled to have her. Not even the thought of losing transfer credits could deter her…she didn’t care if a single one transferred, so long as she was able to stay on the UEM campus. That campus could provide everything she needed, including a job. She had already lined up a secretarial type job filing and copying papers at the admissions office.

UEM’s campus was located back home, near her father. Situated in the town next to Maple Grove. It broke her heart that she wouldn’t be able to visit him right away. She wasn’t sure if they even allowed visitors in maximum security facilities, but she couldn’t go, regardless. On account of the fact she would be required to sign in, and it would just be another clue to where she’d gone, if the Smythes’ went looking. Going to Kansas City college tours had been an elaborate attempt to send the foster parents in the wrong direction when they started their search. “Surely they wouldn’t expect her to head home, would they?” Jaycee thought. She’d done her best not to mention her father, the case, or anything about Maple Grove for the last eight months. Considering she hadn’t been in the habit of being able to talk about those subjects for years, it didn’t try her overly much. When she felt the need, she simply hid out in her room, and wrote in her journal.

While Jaycee’s foster family wouldn’t take long to look for her, she would be looking for the Wallners. The kind old couple knew her father well, and if anyone could help her prove his innocence, it would be them. After she got settled into school, that is. She would still need to attend classes and stay on track, so no meddling professor had any reason to go looking for her foster parents. Besides, Jaycee was invested in her future. Without her father to rely on, she would need to find an apartment after graduation, and a good solid job to support herself. Her education was crucial. She hadn’t decided exactly what job to pursue, but she was sure it would involve writing or maybe editing.

Taking a long look around her room, she tried to pick out which items she would take, and what she would leave behind. While she would like to take all her belongings, she realized the less she took, the longer her cover story would hold. When the Smythes returned home after their weeklong visit with Ted’s parents’, Jaycee would simply tell them she had gone to visit another campus, one in the opposite direction of where she was actually heading. They wouldn’t be happy she hadn’t received permission to leave, but they had no leg to stand on legally. With her already gone, there wasn’t much they could do unless they were willing to go fetch her…of course, they would have to find her first. Eventually they would realize she wasn’t coming home to start back at MCC, but hopefully, by then she would be well hidden at UEM.