Defining their destiny, p.15
Defining their Destiny, page 15
“We’re here,” her mother said almost half an hour later. “What are you going to do?”
“Get her inside.” He looked at Dusty. From eyes the same green as her own. “Do you think you can do stitches, young lady?”
“Yes.” Matt had taught her how to do basic sutures. Dixie had helped her practice. “But if you’ve been shot, you need to go to the hospital.”
Right there, with people she knew, who could help her.
“There isn’t time.” He opened the rear door, and climbed out of the van. “We need to hide tonight. And start again tomorrow.”
37
Dusty seriously fought panicking. Panicking wouldn’t help. She knew that. But…
“We’re not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I promise,” his wife said softly as he took over the driver’s seat and just drove away with her. “We just…need a little help. We’re trying to fix things. To make every thing right. For everyone.”
She reached for Dusty’s hand. Dusty jerked back. “Please don’t touch me. If you really are my mother, then you really don’t have that right. Please just don’t. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“No. I don’t suppose you do.” There were tears in the woman’s voice. The voice that sounded almost like Daisy’s. “I am so sorry. For then. And now. Maybe one day, you girls will be able to forgive us. All of you. We had to leave, baby. We just had to. I am so sorry.”
“I don’t care what you are doing here, what you are up to, or what you need. I want to go home to the people who love me and care what happens to me. Who won’t exactly leave me on a doorstep in the middle of a thunderstorm. In fact, just drive me right back to that cowboy on the tractor. He’s my best friend’s brother. His name is Fletcher. He’ll see I get home just fine. He’ll even walk me inside—won’t leave me on the doorstep or anything like that.”
“We can’t do that.”
He parked. Told her and her mother to stay there. No matter what. Five minutes later he was back.
Then her father was reaching into the van for her. He wrapped one hand around her wrist. Dusty had no choice but to go exactly where he wanted her to go.
He was strong. Very strong. No. Dusty wouldn’t ever be able to overpower him physically. She’d just have to outsmart him. Somehow.
He led her into an old camping trailer. It was cold, and musty, but it had power.
“We’re in luck. I found propane in the tank, ladies. There’s going to be heat. It might just take a while to build up. I don’t want to have to go buy more.” He guided Dusty toward the kitchen area. It was a really small travel trailer. With just a fold-down bed, and a two-seater dinette. A tiny kitchenette. A small bath. That was it. “I need you to just sew me up. That’s all.”
“I have the first aid kit,” her mother said. But she was almost ringing her hands right there. There was panic in the big blue eyes. Eyes shaped just like Daisy’s. Daisy looked the most like this woman. But Daisy looked more like their cousin Meyra, really. Just a little bit of resemblance to their mother. But there were bits and pieces of Dusty’s sisters in both of her parents. And of herself. That hurt. It really hurt.
“We’ll get to it,” her father said. He was definitely the one in charge. “I need…to think. Plan what to do next. Talk to…our contact here in town and...see what’s going on. Someone knew we were in the van and on that road. I want to know how they did.”
Dusty just got to work.
Dusty leaned over the man who had her uncle’s face, her hands steady over the blood. She’d never been squeamish. But this…
Her father stared back at her, his eyes combing over her face as if he was trying to figure out who she was.
Maybe he was.
It wasn’t like he’d seen her in almost twenty-three damned years or anything like that.
She’d been two-and-a-half years old when he’d left her, her two older sisters, and not quite fifteen-month-old Daisy on her grandmother’s front porch. Poor babies left on the doorstep, she’d heard far too many times to count.
By people looking at them with pity.
Didn’t people get it? They’d been better off with their grandmother than with this man and his wife. Dusty had always known that. Always.
“I don’t think it did any lasting damage. The bullet passed through the fatty tissue on the arm.” She leveled a look at him. Looking into eyes the same color as her own. “You’ll need to be on antibiotics for about ten days. Then, see your primary care physician, and have a nice life, you asshole.”
Probably not something she should say to a man holding her hostage, but surely the fact that her parents had abducted her meant something?
Like maybe they wouldn’t kill her right away?
Her father's eyes hardened. His hand on her elbow tightened. Okay, maybe he would. This could be a very dangerous man when crossed. Just like her uncle could.
It would probably be smart not to forget that.
Dusty tried not to wince. “Let me go, Daddy dearest. You’re hurting me.”
His hand eased up. He didn’t say another word as Dusty just sewed him up. Trying not to hurl from what she was doing. It was different, sewing up her father, than helping Matt sew up a laceration on a kitten. When she was finished and washing her hands with rubbing alcohol, that was when he spoke.
“I know you're angry with your mother and me.”
No kidding. “I'm good. I mean, I've had a long time to get over you. Not like I ever knew you to begin with. Not like I’d even know who I was missing, right?” She balled up the trash from the gauze and tossed it toward the trashcan in the corner. “Now, the fact that my parents kidnapped me and are keeping me hostage in a snowstorm—that might take a bit longer to get over. But, I've done my duty to the human race here, kept one of our kind from dying from blood loss...when can I go home? I have a life to get back to—one you aren’t a part of. One I’m really struggling to figure out right now, as it is. The last thing I needed in my life was you two coming back just to confuse me even more.”
His expression darkened, and he looked just like his identical twin brother when her uncle had gotten angry. But whereas Uncle Gerald was putty where his daughters and nieces were concerned, she had no clue how the stranger in front of her would react.
It was hard not to be afraid. Her father and mother were the unknown, after all.
She couldn't be an idiot here. If she was going to escape, she had to get them off their guard. Somehow.
She hadn't missed the gun her father carried. Or the tightness of his hold.
“Dixon.”
She snorted, a sudden rush of anger going through her. Well, he’d guessed wrong, hadn’t he? “You don't even know which one of your daughters you nabbed, do you?”
“Which one are you then?”
“Dusty. Well, you'd probably remember me as Destiny. If you remember me at all. I'm the vet assistant, not the nurse. Surprise. I deal with dogs on a daily basis. Maybe…it was appropriate you nabbed me, after all? And she doesn’t ever go by Dixon, either. I can’t believe you named a girl Dixon. Can you imagine what kind of crude comments the boys used to make to her, Daddy? Especially when Dixie got boobs in eighth grade. They teased her forever. Until Dixie got big enough to slug a guy right in the face, anyway. You know nothing about any of us. Don't even pretend you do. We are nothing to you. Tell me what you have planned for me. I don't want to know what happened to you, or who did it, or even what is going to happen to you next. All I care about is going home to the people who actually love me.”
“Dest—Dusty. You look very much like Jessica, don't you? That’s why I thought you were Dixo—Dixie. Dixie was Jessica all over again when she was younger. I bet that thrills her.” A look of something went over his face. “Jessi always did like how she looked.”
“Dixie looks the most like her. Aunt Jess did get a kick out of it.” A pang of grief so strong threatened to bring her to her knees. She didn't want to say the words, but... “Aunt Jessica passed away ten years ago. Aggressive ovarian cancer. It took her six weeks to…go.”
His face blanched. His hand tightened on her again. Then loosened. Grief—it was there. Maybe. How was she supposed to know? “Damn. I...I wish I had been here. How is my mom? Charlotte? How...hell, I guess I don't have a right to even ask, do I?”
“No. I can't say that you do. And I'm not going to just sit here and fill you in on all the family gossip. You relinquished your right to care the day you drove off into the sunset.”
“It wasn't like that.” He stood, towering over her. Looking like a dark-haired version of her uncle.
Her uncle. The man who had truly been the closest thing to a father for her and her sisters. This man was nothing like Uncle Gerald. “Sure it wasn't. Grandma kept the note. We've all seen it. When we needed to know what had happened. ‘We’re just tired of dealing with them. They are not our problem now.’ You just left us there. In a damned thunderstorm. And drove away. Probably never looked back even once. Daisy almost wandered out into the parking lot, Daddy. Darcey grabbed her at the last minute while Dixie was trying to get the door to the inn open.”
He stood up. Grabbed her by the arm and almost marched her out of the little trailer. Dusty fought panic. He could do anything to her out here. In the woods. In the dark.
In the snow.
No one would find her, either.
For one brief moment she imagined what that would do to her family, to Nikki…to Ben.
Ben. As soon as they realized she was missing, Ben would be looking for her. Dusty just knew it. And Ben? He’d never stop. Not until he found her. He just wouldn’t. She wanted Ben more than she’d wanted anything else in her life right then. “Why don’t you just let me go, and you can disappear again? In a snowstorm, this time?”
Then he was rushing her across the snow. To what looked like a garden shed. He pushed open the door. “You’ll stay in here tonight. It’s…warm. I plugged in a heater when I found the propane, too. You’ll be as safe as I can make it. The trailer…is just too small for all of us. And I can’t let your mother out of my sight right now. She’ll panic, and I don’t know what she’ll do. She’s not…very emotionally strong. What happened, leaving you girls, being hurt, it changed her.”
“I really don’t care. She left us, remember?” The anger—it was easier to focus on the anger. Instead of all the questions she’d had her entire life. She’d once believed they’d come back someday. That there would be a reason they had left. A real one, a good one. One that made it better for all of them.
Until she’d woken up in a hospital after having a heart attack at fourteen. And it had been her grandmother holding her hand. Not her mother. She hadn’t heard even a word from her mother then. All hopes of her parents coming back had vanished that day. Forever.
Just like eight months ago with Brad. It had been Dixie holding her hand when she woke then. Never her own mother.
“It broke your mother's heart to do that. But we had no choice. Remember that. She hasn't been the same since that day. It almost destroyed her. For a while there, I was almost certain it had. And it was all my fault. I’m the reason we had to leave. Please…don’t blame her. She adored you girls. And I would have killed for you. All of you. Any of you. I still will. All of you. She’s had a hard life—and it was my fault. All my fault. I’ll make it up to all of you one day.”
“Sure you will. Like we’ll ever believe that.”
He finally let go of her arm. Dusty moved to the opposite side of the shed or garage or whatever it was he was keeping her hostage in. She sank onto the army cot. He’d plugged an orange extension cord into a space heater.
That was apparently all she was going to get tonight.
“Excuse me if I don't believe you. Are you going to let me go anytime soon?” Only Marin and her uncle Gerald knew she had been out there. And Matt. Foaling happened on its own time. Would Marin’s freaky intuition be enough to sound the alarm? Would anyone even realize she was missing? Dusty bit back panic again. Were Marin’s so-called magic powers all she really had to believe in here? To rely on? Panic almost had her sick right where she stood.
“Nothing will hurt you. I definitely won’t, baby girl,” he said. It was the way he was watching her that freaked her out the most. He looked like her uncle, a man she knew loved her and always would. But this man hadn't wanted her or her sisters. And he'd just abandoned them. Just walked away like they had never mattered.
“I don't want you back in my life. Neither do my sisters.” But she remembered what Marin had said. After Marin had nearly been killed. By a man who had known Dusty’s parents very well.
Marin insisted Jasper Grady had said her mother was pregnant when she'd left. They deserved the truth about that, if nothing else. “We heard your wife was pregnant when you left us. Did you leave that baby on some random doorstep out there, too?”
He hesitated. She knew he was getting ready to lie to her. No surprise there. This wasn't exactly the most trustworthy man on the planet.
“We had no choice but to leave, Dest—Dusty. Remember that. We really had no choice. And we felt it was safest, best for you girls to stay in Masterson County. With…family. And...I'm sorry. For everything. For then, for now...for your sisters. For not being there for Jess, for my mother. My father. I wish…I wish I could just talk to him one more time. If I had been half the man he was or Gerald—none of this would have happened. I live with that every day. I’d give anything to go back and fix what happened. Fix the mistakes my pride caused. My arrogance. But...I'm not going to talk about your younger sisters with you. It just isn't safe. For them. Or for you.”
Sisters. She only had one younger sister that she knew. Well, apparently she had at least one more. “How many more of us are there? Just tell me that much.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“Where are they?”
“I honestly don’t know right now. They took off. They’re angry at your mother and me right now. I can’t say that I blame them. Some things have…happened. Dangerous things.”
“Father-of-the-year material, aren’t you?” She just kept needling him. Dusty knew she was. She just didn’t think she could stop. She was so angry right now. How could she not be? “Are there more than one?”
“Yes. There are. All girls, too.”
Did he love them, at least? She almost asked that. But she was afraid to hear the answer.
She hoped he did. Hoped these younger sisters had had a decent childhood. But Dusty wasn’t stupid. People didn’t just leave their kids and start over again. At least not in good ways. Those sisters had been innocent little kids once, too.
“They are good girls. And I am so sorry that you didn't get to know them. Sorrier than you can ever know. But they may be in trouble right now. I need to find them, first. Fast. The people who shot me, shot at your mother tonight, they won’t stop. They won’t care who is innocent, either. I’m not going to let them get to you, or your sisters. I need to find those girls, before they drive right into trouble. Then…then I will deal with you and your sisters here. Face the music. I’ll explain everything. Soon. You have my word on that.”
“And what will that go for on the open market, I wonder? Two wooden nickels, maybe?”
“You are a fast one, aren’t you?” He came right at her. Dusty did her best not to flinch away. She didn’t succeed. A look of pain went through his eyes. No doubt from the bullet wound in his arm. He kept coming.
Her father reached toward her.
Her arms came up to protect her face. She cried out, backed away as fast as she could.
Instinctively.
She'd never forget what had happened to her before when a dangerous man had come right for her on a cold, dark snowy night just like tonight. She would never forget.
Dusty stayed right where she was as she lost the battle with tears. She kept her arms up to protect herself as much as she could.
His hands went to her shoulders. He pulled her hands down. He held her there, turned her to look at him fully. Then her father pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I am so sorry I could not be the father you deserve, my beautiful Destiny Marie. I named you, you know. As I held you that very first time, on a snowy night much like tonight. I’ll always remember how beautiful you looked that night. Maybe someday you'll understand why we did what we did. It was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
“Never,” Dusty whispered, pulling away. This man had no right to ever look at her like he cared at all. “I just want to go home. To the people who really love me. And forget about you forever.”
Her family, her friends.
Ben.
She wanted to get back to Ben so much she ached from it. To figure out what could be there between them. To stop being so afraid.
“I know. And you will soon, baby girl. I promise.”
Like his word would ever be good enough.
Then he was leaving and she was stuck there. Dusty didn't know what else to do—she just sank to the plywood floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. Tried to huddle close to the small space heater that was her only source of heat, of light. Then she stood. She couldn’t just sit.
There was a way out of there. She would find it.
Somehow.
Wrong.
It took her at least an hour to realize there was no way out. He’d barricaded the door. She wasn’t getting out—until he let her. She just wasn’t. She sank on the cot, pulled the sleeping bag around herself.
She stayed right where she was until he returned, a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap and a sports drink in his hand. Dusty stood, not wanting him to have that advantage over her, even though at five eight, he had nine inches on her. “What is it?”
“Sunbutter on wheat, corn chips. You need to eat something.” He sat it on the overturned apple crate next to the pallet her mother had apparently made for her while Dusty was sewing up her father. “I'm sorry it's nothing fancy. Just what we had in the van. Eat, baby. Then get some sleep. We'll see you get home in the morning. It’s too late and too damned cold to drive that old van out there now. The roads are icing over pretty badly.”
