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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 guessedwrong,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 asDestiny. 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 girlDixon.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.Weare 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 wasnothinglike 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,Benwould be looking for her. Dusty just knew it. And Ben? He’d never stop. Not until he found her. He just wouldn’t. She wantedBenmore 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. Sheleft 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 areasonthey had left. A real one, agoodone. 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.”
Hefinallylet 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?”
