Withholding Secrets (31 page)

It was the final step for my plan, and now, it was just waiting until the right time. And that right time would be coming fast. It would be the last time that I ever saw my family again.

To save a little girl who meant the world to me, I would give her my life. Nothing was going to stop me. My words to her were
over my dead body,
and I was going to see that she knew what she meant to me. It would be my dead body that brought those bastards to their end.

As I sat on the edge of the bed, I ran my fingers through my black hair, realizing just how long it had gotten. But nothing meant a damn thing anymore. Walking out on Keri was killing me more than I figured it would, but it was what she wanted and what she begged me to do. Walking out that door not only took my stomach away, but it gripped hold of my heart and mangled it until it couldn’t beat anymore.

I hated being at my parents’ place. I hated being there with them. Jordan and Sky were feeling it, too. I hadn’t told them anything. How could I tell them that Keri wanted to leave us? How could I look them in the eye and tell them that she wanted out of all of our lives?

“Kane?” Jordan’s soft voice drifted through the darkness as the floor creaked a little under his weight. The way that he played today, I couldn’t have been more proud. With all the crap, he still went out there and really gave it his all. And not having Andrew there was hard on him. Andrew and him were a team on the ice. Having those two together made them unstoppable. Tonight, though, his emotions were scattered all over inside of him, yet he stepped up to help me and his sister out with whatever he could. “Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah. Come in.” Sucking back my pain, I straightened up. If there was one thing that Keri taught me, it was how to be strong and when to be strong. She waited all that time with that gash in her leg and taking the chance for infection before she would allow herself to take a shower. Now, I had to try to be that strong for the two she left in my care.

“Keri’s not coming back, is she?” His voice cracked even though he tried his best to keep the pain inside. When I first met him, the chip was taking up both of his shoulders and he hated the world for their existence. Now, he learned how to laugh, how to allow himself to love the thrill of hockey, and how to open his heart to another adult. All because of the woman who ended up walking out of our lives. “Why did she walk out on us?”

“She didn’t—” Bitterness filled into my throat and dried my mouth.

“Don’t lie to me, Kane. She did, but why? Why would she when she loved us so much?” Taking a seat next to me, he sobbed a little as he cursed under his breath. That swear word … I would just let him get away with it. He was hurting, and it was to the point that he was actually crying. Him. A fifteen-year-old boy. My heart dropped onto the floor, leaving nothing more inside of me witnessing the devastation Jordan was facing at the moment. “She loved us, Kane. All of us. She said that we were the best things to ever come out of that marriage. Why would she walk out on us?”

“I don’t know.” How could this not hurt any more than it already did? I never would have imagined that I would be in this spot, this pain over a woman loving me and then leaving like Keri did. But, it was Keri. And she was my everything. Everything was gone, because she pulled the rug out from under me and there wasn’t a damn thing to grab hold of. “I really don’t know.”

“He was so mean to her after we arrived at her house. She doesn’t know that I know all the stuff that he did to her. She stood up to him once because of us, the way that he treated us, and he grabbed her around the throat. I thought he was going to kill her. I really thought he was going to break her neck. Kane, she stayed there dealing with him hitting her, choking her, degrading her. He beat her one night. I heard him. I heard him beating her, and she stayed. She stayed because of us. She loved us that much. Why? Why did she choose to leave us now when we all were so happy?” The tears rolled down his face as he choked out a cry. “God. I miss her. I miss her so much.”

Wrapping my arm around him, I just pulled him over to me and tried swallowing the thick lump that was sticking in my throat. I hoped that this was what she wanted. I told her that walking out on us would devastate the kids, and it was. Jordan wasn’t dumb. He knew that I fed him bullshit about her having to work and needing some time alone.

But, I had to give them something, and they both knew I was just blowing smoke at them. I was just trying to cover my own feelings by shrugging it off when the thought of her walking out on us was descending me into the depths of depression. I didn’t want to eat, sleep, do anything that just reminded me of her.

“That night that I snuck out and you found me before I went into the house, when she said what she did to me, I never even realized that she was worried about me. I never had anyone care about me, Kane. Not even close. I was so scared when she told me that I needed to go. All I thought was that she was sending me away, and I was so scared.”

“She wasn’t meaning that she was sending you away.” Reaching over, I patted his back, trying to cheer him up. My own heart was dragging down on the floor and my stomach was sinking even further into the pit of despair.

“I know. I just … I wanted her to hold me, to tell me that everything was okay. I figured out that my dad took our money and I wanted to confront him. I wanted to just give her something for everything that my dad took from her. I never meant to hurt her or scare her.”

“She knows that.” Forcing back the hot, searing pain in my eyes, I straightened up, allowing my stomach to move even further down in the hell she put me in.

“Does she? She left us, didn’t she?” His eyes shifted up to mine, cutting through me. What in the hell was I supposed to say to that? Nothing was adding up about her wanting to send us away. She wouldn’t just walk away from the kids. Not that woman. Not after everything that she had gone through just for them. “Do you think that there’s something else going on? Do you think that she’s just protecting us from something?”

My heart jumped a little. Keri was a strong woman. It had taken a lot of her to ask me for help, to accept my help, but seeing her with those two kids, I wanted to help her. I wanted to make sure that those three stayed together. And I would do it all over again. But, was it possible I didn’t see through the smoke of the bomb that she dropped on me?

“What do you mean?” My heart faltered its rhythm, and my breath hitched for a quick second.

“I mean, you saw how she went after me that night and then she just held me tightly. You see the way that she is with Sky. She told Sky that she would never let a monster touch her again. It would have to be over her dead body. I mean, someone who would just choose to walk away would never … She was being honest, Kane. She meant everything that she said to me and to Sky. She would never walk away from us. She would never hurt us like that if there wasn’t something making her.”

But what? What would make her walk away? If there was anything, she knew she could come to me about it. She could have told me. I let her lie on the report about the break-in by saying the three were together when they managed to get out of the house. I told her what to say. I told her how to lie about Jordan not being there. She knew that I would lie for her. She was … lying to protect them. She was…

How blind could I be? She was protecting them! She was protecting us! Jumping up, I went to the window and looked out. But why? What from? She was begging me to forgive her before I left. It wasn’t that she was asking me to take the kids and leave. She was begging with her voice. Inside of her. Her eyes. She was … scared of something she figured out.

Grabbing the phone off the dresser, I dialed her number. I
had
to talk to her. I had to find out what was going on. Damn it! She was setting something up! That was the whole reason why she asked me to take care of the kids if something would ever happen to her. She was planning this all along.

“Hello?” The sleepy voice answered softly, making my chest tighten.

“What in the hell do you think you are doing? You better talk to me right now, and I don’t give a shit where it is that we talk, but it will be right now and you will tell me exactly what you are doing.” I couldn’t let her back down. If she was into something that was illegal, I had to stop it and bring it around to the legal way. And my family’s lawyer would certainly help with it. There wasn’t a reason to be afraid.

“Coach Kane?” Her voice caught a little.

Looking at my phone, I swallowed hard at the number. It was Keri’s number. It was hers, but why in the hell was I getting Sky? Why was I talking to the little girl that was sound asleep in the other room? “Sky? Is that you?”

“Coach Kane, I was just sleeping.”

“Why do you have Keri’s phone?”

A little sob came from her as I could hear her rustling in her bed. “I don’t. I have my phone; the one you gave me.”

“Call me right back.” Hanging up, I gritted my teeth. She could have just changed the number in my phone … No. I dialed her number. Keri’s number. It was programmed…

The call came through, and it was Keri’s number. How in the hell … Sky said she had her phone the whole time. Hers and not Keri’s. She would know the difference. Sky would know if it wasn’t hers by the pictures she had of her and Alicia, basketball practice, and the one she showed me of her, Ben, and Alicia.

Going over to Sky’s room with Jordan on my heels, I took the phone and looked through it. That was one of the rules I had about the cell phones. I would be able to go through it any time that I wanted or thought there was something else going on. And everything was the same as last night when I checked through the phones. Even the new song that I let her download. The games, music, contacts, photos. And the one of her and Keri on the screen. The exact same picture.

“Fuck!” Balling my fist around the phone, I looked at the kids. The length that Keri was going to in order to keep those kids protected was more than I ever thought someone would go to. That woman copied everything from Sky’s phone to her own to cover her tracks, but for what? Why not Jordan’s…?

This had to be something with Alicia’s disappearance.

“Fuck!” Raking my fingers through my hair, I had to think. I needed to think. What would be so important that Keri would have to swap phones with Sky? Why would she
have
to push us away?

Looking up at the tears rolling down Sky’s face and Jordan just looking at me, scared to death, my chest compacted and my heart was trying its hardest to push the blood through my body. Whatever Keri was up to, it was because of Sky. What, though?

“Who’s been contacting you?” Swallowing hard, my brain began to pulsate with an irritating tick and the alarms were ready to activate and go off. Keri wasn’t walking away from us. She was doing what she could to protect us. Now, I just had to figure out what was going on so that I could get her before she got herself killed.

“No one. I haven’t had anyone…” Pulling the blankets tight to her chest, she cowered into the corner of the bed.

“Who was contacting you?!” I didn’t mean to yell at her, but damn it. Sky was the reason why Keri traded phones and gone to the extreme of copying everything so Sky wouldn’t have known. It wasn’t like she had to call any of us lately. We were all together since Keri decided to leave us. “You better tell me right now!”

“Kane, Sky hasn’t been talking with anyone.” Jordan sat on the bed as he looked back at his sister and her dark, hurt filled eyes. “She knows better than to talk to strangers or people that she’s not supposed to.”

“Keri left me! What is the point? She said that she would never leave me! She did!” Rolling into a ball, Sky cried as hard as she could. “She said that she would never let anything bad happen to me, but she walked away from me! She said that she would never hurt me, and she hurt me!”

“What is going on in here?” My mom walked in, pulling her robe tight to her body. Her eyes shifted over the kids as her own glassed over.

“Stay out of it, Mom.” Slamming my hands down on my hips, I studied Sky. I wanted to just pick her up and hold her, tell her that everything would be okay, but I wasn’t sure if it would be. There was a reason why Keri had swapped phones. There was a reason why, and it was something to do with what Sky wasn’t telling us.

“You have her so scared…” Sliding over the bed, my mom rubbed Sky’s back, trying to calm her down. “It’s okay, Sky. It’s okay.”

“Who have you been talking to? You have to tell me now.” My heart jumped into my throat. Sky hadn’t trusted any of us enough to tell us what was going on. Someone was contacting her, and Keri found out. Keri knew, and I was sure that night she came out of the basement pure white and asked me to take care of the kids if something happened to her was when it happened.

That was when Keri knew everything. That was when she started to push me away. She had been planning this since that Friday night. It was right there on her face, and I completely overlooked it. It was the reason why she was holding Sky like she had in the kitchen during their little freak out moment. It wasn’t because she felt bad for Sky. She knew what was going to happen. She knew, somehow, that Sky was supposed to be the next abduction.

“She knows better than to talk to someone who she doesn’t know. And you made it clear that if our dad contacted us…” Jordan’s eyes glassed over as he looked at his sister. The color drained from his face as he dropped his hands to his sides. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.” The loud cry came from her, causing my mom to wrap the girl in her arms. Her heart was broken, and I could understand that. So was mine, and so was Jordan’s, but not telling me could get Keri killed.

“Sky, you need to tell me who has been contacting you.” Rubbing my forehead, the air exploded from my chest. I had to figure this out before Keri tried anything. She didn’t have the means to do anything against those guys. How would she stop someone who was trying to abduct Sky?