Kidnapping in Cameron Glen
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Beth Cornelison
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16.5K
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26
Harlequin🏙️ Contemporary
HarlequinChapter 1
Jake didn’t get home until 11:00 p.m. that night. He’d missed dinner entirely. Both of the girls were in bed, which was good. They didn’t need to hear their parents arguing. Again.
Four-year-old Lexi had drifted off at around 8:00 p.m. while waiting for her daddy to come read her a book, and fifteen-year-old Fenn had retired sometime around ten after Emma had turned off the Wi-Fi.
As much as she hated to get into it with Jake for the zillionth time, Emma was fed up. More and more often he was absent from family time. He’d come home late three of seven nights at first, then four, five. Weekends. This was the fourth straight night this week that he’d missed dinner and Lexi’s bedtime. The girls deserved better. She deserved better.
But beyond being absent from their home, Jake had been absent from their marriage for months, had turned off communication with her, shut her out, walled himself off. No matter how many times Emma tried to reach him, exhort him, break through, he moved farther away emotionally, physically. She was tired of the limbo. If she was going to be alone in the marriage, she might as well make it official. She needed closure.
Emma sat at the kitchen table, her heart aching, her jaw clenched and her gut in knots when he came through the back door. He paused at the threshold when he spotted her. Sighed. After dropping his keys on the counter, he closed the back door and raked fingers through his thick black hair. He needed a haircut, but he had neglected that in recent weeks as well.
“You’re still up,” he said, stating the obvious in a dark, defeated tone.
“Yep.” Emma fought to tamp down the emotion strangling her. “We need to talk.”
Concern swept over his face. “Why? Did something happen to one of the girls?”
Emma gave him credit for being worried about his daughters’ welfare. But then, he’d always been a caring father. Which made his missing the girls’ bedtime all the more disheartening. She shook her head. “We need to talk about us.”
He rolled his eyes. “No. We don’t. I’m tired, and I just want to go to bed.”
When he turned to head down the hall, to walk away from her, she gritted her teeth. God, she hated when he did that!
“Not here you won’t,” she said loud enough to stop him.
He hesitated at the kitchen threshold. Flexed and balled his hands. Turned with a glare. “What’s that mean?”
She shushed him. “Keep your voice down. The girls are asleep.” With a directional nod, she indicated the duffel bag she’d packed for him. “I want you out. I can’t do this anymore.”
Jake scowled. “Seriously? You’re kicking me out? For...what? Breaking my back all day to put a roof over our heads? Food on the table?”
“Don’t give me that! You’re not breaking your back until eleven o’clock at night. You’re avoiding us. You’re killing time until you think we’re in bed. Brody said he saw you picking up food at the diner for supper, even though I texted to tell you we were having tacos at Lexi’s request.” Jake loved tacos as much as their four-year-old did, and she’d hoped the dish would be enough to entice him home for a meal with his children. But no.
He drew a slow, deep breath, his nose flaring, his jaw stony. Finally, he shook his head and muttered, “The key words there are ‘picking up food.’ I took it back to the office to eat. If you remember, I’m doing the job of two people, since I haven’t found a satisfactory replacement for Peter yet.”
“So hire someone!”
“Don’t you think I’m trying to? I’ve worked my butt off repairing the damage to our reputation that the scandal with Peter caused, and, thanks to the slowdown in the economy, no one is building retail space right now. I’m sending out dozens of bids all over the state hoping to land anything I can. But along with that come long hours. I’ve worked too hard to build my company to let it slip away now. So yeah, I’m working late a lot, Em. Deal with it!”
“What I’m dealing with is my own job, plus raising our girls without you and running the house—”
“Geez, Em! Stop! You’ve done nothing but gripe at me for months. No one wants to be around that kind of negativity.”
His comment stung—because she knew she’d been grumpy and complaining more recently. But after suppressing as much of her frustration and unhappiness as she could all day, she tended to blow up at Jake, taking out her fatigue and anger on him. He’d always been her safe place to vent and find comfort before. When had her venting to him become venting at him, about him?
She drew a deep breath, mustering her composure. “You’re right. No one likes to live in a negative environment.” Emma paused, flattening her hands on the tabletop and giving him a level look. “That’s why I’ve filed for divorce.”
His face slammed into a deeper frown. “You what?”
“All we do is fight, Jake. I’m tired of it. I’ve talked to a lawyer and started the paperwork.”
He stared, clearly stunned. Good. She’d taken the drastic legal step as a last-ditch effort to grab his attention, to make him see she was serious—things had to change or she was gone.
She wished she could know what was going through his mind, but his face was frozen in a mask of shock and anger.
“So that’s it?” he rasped. “You’re quitting on us?”
She balled both hands, moving them to her lap, and swallowed hard. This was not her fault. “Didn’t you quit on us months ago?”
His eyes widened. His back stiffened. Spinning on his boot heel, he stalked down the hall.
“Jake, stop! Don’t walk away like that! We have to—” But he was gone. Down the hall. He slammed the bedroom door, and she cringed. Damn it, if he woke Lexi or Fenn...
Emma shoved her chair back and pursued him. This was why they needed time apart. They couldn’t even have one conversation without blowing up at each other. Why couldn’t he just accept the inevitable and do this peacefully? They’d both seen it coming for weeks, maybe months. Why did he have to make a scene, risk the kids hearing them? Lexi already came to her crying from nightmares at least once a week due to the tension in the house.
She opened the closed bedroom door and shut it again behind her. Quietly. “Jake, I hate it when you leave in the middle of a discussion like that.”
He was stripping off his work clothes and paused to cock his head as if puzzling over something. “And yet, you just told me you want me to leave the house. That you’re divorcing me. Which is it, Emma? I get so many mixed messages from you. How the hell am I supposed to know what you want?”
She gritted her teeth and crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you’d know what I want if you ever listened to me! Or, I don’t know, spent more than five minutes here per day.”
He barked a dark laugh. “See, there you go again.” Jake jabbed a finger in her direction. “Spend more than five minutes? How am I supposed to do that if you kick me out of my own damn house!”
She shushed him again when his voice rose.
“Do not tell me to shush!” He whipped his shirt off over his head and threw it aside as if pitching a fastball. “It’s my house, too, and I’ll shout if I want to!”
Emma hurried across the room and aimed a finger in his face, whispering harshly, “Stop it! You’ll scare Lexi and Fenn. Or don’t you care about your children’s feelings?”
“Of course I do. Do you?” Heat poured off him, his bare chest laboring with deep breaths of fury and frustration. “Is that why you’ve banished their father from their home?”
Emma lowered her gaze, unable to meet the burning accusation in her husband’s dark brown eyes. But encountering his naked torso and the small tattoo on his left pectoral—a heart with her name in the center—only deepened the ache and guilt in her own chest. Her hand trembled at her side, and a powerful yearning to touch that decorated spot on his skin swelled inside her.
Damn her traitorous self for still feeling the potent allure of Jake’s muscled chest and flat abs. But sexual attraction had never been their problem. They could fall in their bed now and have sex that was as passionate and fulfilling as the first months of their relationship, when discovering each other’s bodies and personal pleasures had been new. But hot sex didn’t fix the growing distance and dissonance between them.
Emma drew a careful breath, took a step back from Jake and raised a pleading gaze. “I am doing this because of Fenn and Lexi. You said it yourself. The atmosphere around here has become toxic. They need to be protected from the—”
“Doing this because of Fenn an—?” he roared, and she clapped a hand over his mouth. He pulled her hand away, and in a strained whisper, he said, “I’m working my butt off, trying to save my company and provide for my family. Yes, it’s more hours than I’d like! I’m exhausted when I get home, but it is worth it to me, because I’m doing it for my family. For you. For the girls. I’m trying to give them—” he pointed toward the bedroom door, beyond which their daughters slept “—the financial security I never had. My family lived paycheck to paycheck. You know that, Em!” He drew a slow breath, his nose flaring, and she saw moisture glint in his eyes. “I will not let my company fail and let my family down!”
Emma swallowed past the knot in her own throat, and in a small voice asked, “And what if by putting your company first, you are failing your family?”
Jake growled and raked fingers through his hair. “This is stupid. We’re going in circles.”
“Jake, Fenn and Lexi don’t need to hear us fighting anymore. It’s hurting them! We just need a little time apart to—”
“The girls are fine.”
“No. They’re not. And you’d see that yourself if you were ever here to—”
He cursed under his breath, snatched his shirt back off the floor and shoved past her, striding toward the bedroom door with long, stiff steps. “Fine. You want me gone? You want a divorce?” He jerked open the door and headed down the hall, once again leaving her to follow. “I’m sick of this crap. Sick of coming home to the same harping every night. Well, no more.”
“I’m sick of fighting with you, too! Sick of you not hearing me! The girls are the only reason I—”
He grabbed the handle of the bag she’d packed him and marched through the kitchen to retrieve his keys. “Save it, Em. I. Am. Out!”
And then with a slam of the back door, the only man she’d ever loved was gone.
Fenn roused from a shallow sleep when she heard the loud voices down the hall. Her parents. Fighting again.
Nausea sawed in her gut, and she clenched her teeth. She was so, so sick of them shouting and blowing every little thing out of proportion. She wanted to shout at both of them to grow up. She was tired of hearing them grumble about each other, then lie and say everything was fine. But worse was seeing the tears in Lexi’s eyes when Dad missed story time. Or the worried look Mom wore every evening as she watched the driveway, waiting for Dad’s truck to pull up—a look that shifted to anger and disappointment as the minutes passed. And she’d had enough of the tension in the house when there was no yelling. It was like waiting for a bomb to go off. She’d spent most of the last few months pretending, adding her own lies to her little sister that everything was fine, when the acid in her stomach said otherwise.
She rolled over to grab an extra pillow to hold over her ears to muffle the shouting when she heard Mom say her name.
Then Dad shouting, “Doing this because of Fenn!”
She froze. They were yelling about her? What was Dad doing because of her? Had she made him angry? Was she why Dad was so late tonight?
She crawled out of bed and tiptoed to the door of her bedroom, pressing her ear against the cool wood to listen. Her heart was pounding so hard, she could barely hear anything over the panicked thumps. The floor shook as her dad stomped down the hall.
Sick of coming home. No more.
Girls are the only reason...
I am out.
Out? The door slammed, and then the house was filled by a chilling silence. A moment later she heard her dad’s truck engine. She hurried to her window and peeked through the blinds in time to see the F-150’s taillights departing. Her dad left in a hurry, the gravel in the driveway spraying as he raced away. Angry. He’d sounded so angry.
Because of her?
She’d clearly heard “the girls are the reason,” and “because of Fenn.” Her dad had left, and it was her fault?
She thought about Lexi. Normally when their parents fought, Lexi would get scared and cry in her bed or come climb in bed with Fenn. Creeping to the door and cracking it open, Fenn listened for Lexi. Should she go check on her?
She heard a sob, stepped into the hall to go to Lexi. And froze. The sobs were coming from the kitchen. Her mom.
Heart in her throat, Fenn eased to the door of the kitchen and peeked in. Her mom was sitting on the floor, back to the cabinets, her face buried in her hands as her shoulders heaved.
Fenn’s heart rose to her throat. This was serious. Mom was usually so strong. She’d seen Mom cry at Great-grandpa Cameron’s funeral a few years ago, but that was the only time. Well, except for certain TV shows. And when Lexi was born.
She swallowed hard and rasped, “Mom?”
Her mom stiffened, jerked her head up and swiped her face with her hands to dry her tears and runny nose. “Fenn. Honey, I—”
Fenn moved closer to her mom and sat beside her quietly.
“I thought you were asleep,” Mom said, adding the worst attempt at a smile ever, as she wrapped an arm around Fenn.
“I was. Kinda. I heard you and Dad yelling.”
Her mom huffed a humorless laugh. “Of course you did.” Another pitiful smile as she stroked Fenn’s hair. “I’m sorry. I—” Her voice cracked, and she glanced away, dabbing her eyes again with her sleeve.
“Are you...okay?”
“Yeah.” Mom nodded. Not real convincingly, but... “I’m fine. Oh, Button, everything is fine. We’re going to be...fine.” She nodded again as if to reassure herself.
Fine? Fenn seethed inside. Did her mom think she was stupid?
“But Dad left,” Fenn said flatly. A statement. Stunned disbelief and confusion.
Her mom glanced at her with wet eyes. Hesitated. And nodded. Again. God, she wished her mom would stop that ridiculous nodding like a broken bobble head.
“For the night or...for good?”
Her mother’s shoulders lifted and fell as she took a deep breath. Shook her head. “I... I don’t know, Button. But...you don’t need to worry about...anything.” She paused. Sniffled. “Your dad and I just...need some time apart to—”
“No!” Need some time apart was adult code for divorce. For giving up. Pain slashing her chest, Fenn shoved out of her mother’s arms and jumped to her feet. “How do you expect to fix this if you split up?” Emotion clogged her throat, but she battled it down to squeak. “Lexi needs both of you here. She’s so little! She doesn’t understand! How can you do this to her?”
To me! was what she wanted to yell, but she already felt guilty about what she’d overheard. If her parents separating was in any way her fault, she had no right to ask them for anything.
...doing this because of Fenn!
“Fenn, I know you don’t understand, but...there are things your dad and I have to work out before he can move back in.”
Her stomach rolled. “So he’s really gone? He moved out? For good?”
Mom’s face crumpled, and she shifted to her knees to get off the floor. “Honey, I’m sorry. I know this is hard for—”
Fenn shouted a curse at her mother that would normally get her at least a week of restriction. Mom’s face went white. Hurt and shock seemed to physically knock her back.
“Fenn!”
Tears blurred Fenn’s view as she raced back to her room and closed the door behind her. She almost slammed it, but at the last second, she pulled up, remembering Lexi was asleep. Instead, she lashed out at her pillow, beating it so hard and so long she was surprised not to see stuffing fly out. Then when her arm got tired of thrashing the pillow, she hugged it close and cried silent tears into it.
Her fault. The girls are the reason. Because of Fenn.
But why? What had she done? Sure, she talked back to her mom and dad sometimes, sassing them when she got frustrated with their nagging. She had friends who talked way more smack than she did, and their parents didn’t split up over it.
Although...there was that time last summer she’d snuck out and drunk beer with Eric. And kept a big secret about witnessing a break-in at one of the family cabins. Of course, her parents had argued heatedly over how to punish her for that. And she’d cut class once right before Christmas with her friends to go see a movie in Asheville. Mom and Dad had yelled at each other about that, too, blaming each other for her “acting out.”
Her heart was a rock. Hard and heavy and dragging her down in a pool of guilt. Okay. She’d given them several reasons in the last year to be mad. Maybe she was the spark that set her parents’ marriage on fire. Maybe it was her fault. She knew they’d gotten married to begin with because her mom had gotten pregnant with her during Mom’s senior year of high school. They’d skipped college to start a family. Did they resent her for that? Maybe all of her parents’ troubles dated back to her birth, how she ruined their plans and forced them to marry too young.
Maybe the family would be better off without her.
Nausea swam in her gut, and she thought her heart might crack. If her parents were fighting, breaking up the family because of her, she had no choice but to find a way to make things right. But how?
The light on Brody’s front porch flicked on in response to Jake’s late-night knock. When his brother-in-law opened the door, blinking at him sleepily, Jake grimaced. Brody went to bed crazy early because he got up crazy early to start his landscaping work before the hottest part of the day.
“Jake? What’s wrong?” Brody croaked, rubbing his tousled hair.
“Sorry to wake you, man.” Jake shoved his hands in his back pockets and sighed. “Can I crash here tonight?”
“Here? Why?” Brody shook his head as if realizing the question sounded inhospitable and quickly amended, “I mean, yeah.” He pushed open his screened door, inviting Jake in. “But also, why?”
“Em kicked me out.” Jake heard the despondency and defeat in his tone, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to dump his troubles on Brody, putting his brother-in-law in the middle of his marriage issues with Emma. He and Brody might be as close as blood brothers, but he knew Cameron blood was thicker than any in-law bond. Brody’s first loyalty would be to his sister.
As he edged past his brother-in-law and moved into Brody’s den, he choked down the bitterness that rose in his throat. How had his marriage come to this? Where had he gone wrong? How did he course correct?
Did he even want to? Maybe he and Emma were better off divorcing. That notion sent a chill through him, shook him to his core.
“So...wanna tell me what’s going on?” Brody asked from behind him.
“Not really. Just...an argument. We both needed time to cool off.” He waved a hand to the sofa. “I’ll just sleep out here. I don’t need anything fancy.”
“Good. ’Cause I don’t do fancy. I can get you a blanket, though.” Brody disappeared down the hall and returned a moment later with a thin quilt. After handing the quilt to Jake, Brody frowned. “You two have been going at it a lot lately. The family has noticed, and we’re worried.”
Jake blew out a long breath that made his lips buzz. “Yeah. I’m worried, too.”
Brody stared at him silently for a long time, his hands on his hips, his brow furrowed.
Jake knew Brody was waiting for some explanation, but Jake was too tired, too distraught, too confused by the turn his life had taken to try to unpack it all. How could he when he understood so little of what was happening himself?
“Have y’all talked to a counselor?” Brody finally asked.
Jake snorted. “Seriously?”
Brody’s expression hardened. “Yeah, seriously. I’d say it’s time. Past time if you’re showing up here in the middle of the night to sleep on my couch.”
A counselor? Jake winced internally. Seeing a shrink was tantamount to admitting he and Emma had real problems that they couldn’t solve by themselves. That he’d failed. That he had lost control of his life. He hated the idea of airing their dirty laundry to a stranger. Or worse, someone they knew. Which was pretty much everyone in their small hometown of Valley Haven, North Carolina. “Em suggested it a few weeks ago, but I don’t know. I can’t see it.”
Brody sighed. “Don’t be a stubborn blockhead about this, Jake. Isn’t your marriage worth it? Isn’t Emma worth it? Do it for her. For your kids!”
Jake toed off his shoes and sank down on the couch.
Emma. Fenn. Lexi. His girls. He’d walk through fire for his family. Face a firing squad.
So go see a counselor, nimrod.
His lungs seized so hard he couldn’t breathe. He squeezed the quilt in his fists and struggled to draw oxygen. Why did getting help feel like defeat? Like failure?
“Well, think about it.” Brody exhaled a frustrated sounding huff before he strolled out of the den and turned off the overhead light. “I’ll be up at four, but I’ll try to be quiet. Night.”
Think about it.
He did. All night.
When his brother-in-law stumbled down the hall to the kitchen at 4:00 a.m., Jake was still awake. And still had no answers.
Four o’clock arrived, and Fenn still hadn’t slept. All night, one thought had repeated in her brain again and again. She just wanted it all to be over. She wanted to get away from the yelling. She wanted an end to the anger and fighting. For her parents’ sake, for Lexi’s sake. For herself.
If not for her, maybe her parents would have a chance.
Because of Fenn.
Dread and sadness dragged at her as she rolled out of bed and did what she knew she had to. For her family’s sake. Because she couldn’t stand another night of listening to her parents battle and her sister cry and doors slam. She stuffed a few clothes in her backpack, added her purse and all the money from her secret stash. Fifty-two dollars wouldn’t go very far, but she’d figure something out. She put her phone and charging cords in an outer pocket then stopped. Sarah Beth said her folks had tracked her location using her phone even without the spy app. She hated to be without it, but she didn’t want to be found either. Taking it back out, she dug in a drawer for her mom’s old iPod and jammed it down a front pocket of the backpack. At least, she could still have tunes.
In case Mom peeked in her room when she got up, Fenn dumped a pile of her dirty clothes on her bed, like they did in the movies, and pulled the cover up to make a lump that looked like she was in bed. Finally, she took a picture from her bulletin board of the whole Cameron-Turner-Harkney family at Aunt Cait’s wedding last month. A pang twisted in her chest looking at the smiles of her aunts and uncles and grandparents and great-grandma Nanna. And her mom and dad. For one day, her parents had at least acted happy, even if the smiles were fake. She loved her big, loud, crazy family. She’d miss them. She’d come back and visit once things had settled down for her parents. But until then...
She sniffled and wiped her eyes. If she was going to do this, she had to get going. Before Mom heard her, stopped her.
She zipped up the backpack, slung it over one shoulder, jammed her feet in her sneakers and tiptoed out of her room. She stepped over the squeaky board in the hall, squeezed through the partially closed kitchen partition so it didn’t screech on its runners. As she made her way to the back door, she spotted her mom’s purse on the counter and hesitated. Debated. Mom would want her to have enough money to eat, to survive. Right?
Quelling the kick of ill ease, Fenn opened her mom’s purse, found the wallet and removed the debit card. Replacing everything the way she found it, Fenn pocketed the debit card and hurried to the back door.
The spring morning was cool, and she thought for a moment about going back in for a jacket. But the sun would be out soon enough and riding her bike would warm her up. Their feral cat, Magic, roused from her sleep and appeared out of the bushes with a stretch and a yawn.
“Sorry, Magic. Not breakfast time yet,” she whispered.
The black cat sat down, her tail curling around her feet, then lifted a paw that she licked.
After securing the backpack on her shoulders, Fenn pushed her bicycle down the gravel driveway. Her chin trembling as she remembered Dad speeding down the same path last night, and she had to blink to clear the moisture from her eyes. At the end of the drive, she glanced back at the house, still and quiet in the predawn darkness, and whispered, “Goodbye.”
Climbing on her bike, she set out. She could be all the way into Valley Haven before anyone knew she was gone. And she knew buses left the Valley Haven bus depot for Asheville and Charlotte early in the morning, for business commuters. She planned to be on one of them.
