Stranded with My Stepbrother Chapter 126

Caleb

I sat on the deck of the cabin we’d bought secretly years ago under our false identities. We’d hoped never to have to use it, but the caretaker we’d hired to look after it left it in perfect condition.

My laptop balanced on my knees—yet another item purchased under another man’s name. Chris Palmer. I am now Chris Palmer.

Jacey—or, rather, Janice—almost scared me right out of my Adirondack chair when she appeared next to me with two cups of coffee. But then, I’d already been scared by what I was reading online.

“What?” she asked, sitting down next to me in the other chair and setting the coffees on the small wooden table between us. “What’s wrong?”

“McKenzie’s not at school,” I began, trying to formulate how to say this to my wife. Jacey had a good head on her shoulders, but she was also a mother, just like I was a father. And I was already panicking.

She froze. “She what now?”

I guessed there was nothing for it. I turned the laptop in my lap so Jacey could see. “McKenzie’s wanted for murder.”

“What?!!!” She snatched the laptop out of my hands and skimmed the article that had our smiling daughter’s face at the top next to the thirty-year-old man who’d come to our home and sent us running.

The thirty-year-old Will Masterson the Third.

I should have recognized him the moment I saw him. He looked so much like his father, God rest his soul.

“Cops?! Our daughter murdered cops?!” Jacey cried incredulously.

“Keep reading,” I murmured. I didn’t think I’d be able to tell her the rest past the unexpected lump in my throat.

My wife kept reading. I knew the moment she saw it when she turned absolutely white. “S-Sam?”

“It looks like Hank, Mom, and Sam are dead, sweetheart,” I croaked. I tried to clear my throat, but it didn’t work.

“Oh God.” The laptop slid from her fingers, and I just barely managed to catch it before it hit the decking. “What does that make now?”

“Well, with what happened at the farm, and Jake, the cops, our f-family, and then there’s a mention in there about a wanted assassin they were traveling with named Hoot. The body count is rising,” I said softly.

Jacey squared her shoulders. “It’s our body count. Not hers. Damn Masterson anyway!”

“Love, it’s his body count, not anyone else’s. Masterson did this, I’m sure of it. I’ll bet Will came to us for help, and we took off on him. I suppose it was only natural he’d latch onto McKenzie,” I thought things through aloud.

“Well, pardon me for saying so, but I sort of wish this Will was a little more helpless and had left McKenzie out of it,” my wife sighed.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’d rather he’d killed himself instead?”

Her shoulders drooped. “No. No, of course not. I… I really just wish we’d gotten custody of him.”

“Me, too. But I don’t think we could have disappeared well enough to evade Masterson all these years if we had,” I pointed out.

Jacey raised her tearful gaze to mine. “Caleb, do you really think we managed to evade Masterson all these years if Will was able to just walk right up to our door? If he was able to find our parents and S-Sam?”

In my mind, it all clicked into place, and I groaned loudly. “He knew. He always knew.”

She nodded. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “S-Sorry, I didn’t think it would affect me this way if they died….”

“They’re still our family,” I said glumly. I reached around the steaming coffee and took her hand. “They’re still our family, love. Of course we’re going to be sad about it.”

Jacey hiccupped then got out of her chair.

I put the laptop gently down beside me so she could scramble into my lap. I wrapped my arms around her and cuddled her close. “It’s okay to not be okay,” I assured her, a tear rolling down my cheek.

“I never thought we’d reconcile with them, or even see them again, but part of me hoped, I think,” she choked, her tears wet against my shoulder. “And now we don’t even know where McKenzie is, and she’s in trouble, and there’s nothing we can do!”

“What we know is that they haven’t found her, and that’s something,” I said. I kissed her hair and rocked her a little. It was soothing to me, too.

She nodded again. “That’s something,” she echoed.

We stayed that way for a long time, the cool morning air swirling around us and rustling through the trees. It made our tears cold, but we cried anyway.

The coffee was long cold before she started wriggling out of my lap. “We need to figure out what to do,” she said.

“Do?” I frowned slightly. “What do you mean ‘do’?”

“We can’t just sit here in this cabin while our daughter is on the run,” she decided. “We need to find her and get her to safety. Will, too.”

I could think of a million problems with that line of thinking. She picked up the coffees and headed purposefully inside. I scooped up the laptop and closed the sliding door behind us. “Jacey,” I started patiently.

“Don’t try to tell me why we can’t do anything. This is our daughter we’re talking about, and clearly she is in a lot of danger,” she grunted, dumping the cold coffee into the sink.

“Jacey, baby, we don’t know where she is. And Masterson has killed every resource we had,” I said slowly, trying to make her see sense. “If we come out of hiding, we’re going to be used against her. It’s not safe for us. It’s not safe for her. It’s not safe for Will.”

She slapped her hands down on the edge of the sink. “Caleb, we can’t just stay here and do nothing!”

“Right now, that’s all we can do, love,” I replied. “I’m not happy about it, but we don’t have a choice.”

“So, according to you, we’re just going to sit here,” she snapped at me.

I folded my arms over my chest. “No. According to me, we’re going to keep watching and waiting and looking for our opportunity to act.”

Jacey began scrubbing the cups angrily. She didn’t want to hear reason, but she wasn’t immune to it, either. “She’s just nineteen years old.”

“And he’s thirty, clearly with a better head on his shoulders than his father, God rest him, and a bigger heart than his grandfather. Will has money. I’m sure he’ll figure something out,” I responded, and hoped I wasn’t lying. In truth, I wanted to leave the cabin and start searching for my daughter, but there were a couple of problems with that, the first and most important being we didn’t know where to begin looking. The second, well, we’d be putting her in more danger and not less just by being with her.

She eyed me askance. “You really think Will, after his fancy upbringing, is going to know anything about being on the run?”

“Well… no…” I blew out a long breath. “But that still leaves the money part. He has money. We didn’t.”

Jacey laughed bitterly. “You think there are any funds he might have that aren’t controlled somehow by Masterson?”

I tried not to let that break my spirit, but she had a point. “A man smart enough to come looking for us is probably smart enough to keep some of his own accounts.”

“So he thinks. I’ll bet Masterson has them all tagged by now, just waiting for him to pull out funds.” She shook her head. “Face it, Caleb. They’re not any better off than we were.”

I opened my mouth to try to poke holes in her fears when there was a knock at our door. We both stiffened reflexively, but then I saw it was just the caretaker holding our groceries.

“Quincy,” I said, pulling open the door with a wide, fake smile on my face. “Thanks for bringing groceries today.”

“That’s my job,” Quincy grinned, carrying the bags to the kitchen.

Instead of staying in the kitchen to put things away, however, Jacey all but sprinted over to me.

“What?” I asked quietly when she gripped my arm.

“I didn’t ask Quincy to bring groceries, Caleb,” she whispered to me.

My head snapped up to look at Quincy just as he drew a gun out of one of the bags and pointed it at us. “Sorry, folks,” he said as I pushed Jacey behind me. “But I’ve got five hundred million reasons to keep you here until your ride arrives.”

“Our ride?” I squeezed her wrist, encouraging her to run.

He fired at the floor next to us, and she squeaked. “Don’t think I didn’t see that. I’m getting all five hundred million. Every last cent.”

“How did you find out about us?” I asked.

“I’ve got a friend who’s a cop. He’s coming to get you.” He grinned at us and let out a low whistle. “Five hundred million bucks. We’re gonna be rich.”

“You mean I’m gonna be rich,” a deep voice said from the doorway.

We turned just in time to see a strange man in a police uniform raise his gun and shoot Quincy in the head.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, grabbing Jacey against me and holding her in my arms.

“You can just call me Booth. Now, let’s go get in the squad,” he said, gesturing with his gun.

I kept an arm around Jacey as we walked out of the cabin. I gave thought to tackling the policeman so she could run, but then I noted a second squad outside the cabin.

Actually, there were no less than four squad cars lined up in my driveway.

“What the…?” Booth muttered when he walked out behind us.

“Booth, next time you tie your partner up and throw her in your trunk, your idiot brain might tell you to take her cell phone,” a portly officer said, leaning against one of the squad cars with a frazzled woman with a blanket around her standing next to him.

“Fuck.” Booth grabbed Jacey and ripped her away from me. “I’m leaving with this one.” He put a gun to her head.

I saw red, equal parts terrified and enraged. “Let her go.”

“Piss off, Killeen.” Booth started backing up along the wraparound deck.

The portly officer sighed and spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Nick,” was the only thing he said.

Booth’s eyes widened just in time for him to suddenly lose his hand. It, and the gun in it, went flying away.

Jacey got splattered with Booth’s blood and screamed, running back to me while Booth held the stump of his wrist, howling.

I locked my arms around Jacey and buried her face in my shoulder, not wanting her to see the grisly scene. “What the hell?!” I shouted.

“Booth,” the portly officer said, ignoring me. “Unless you want to lose more than your hand, you’re going to surrender right now.”

With a growl of frustration, Booth whirled on the other officers. Eight guns, plus Nick’s, wherever he was, pointed right at him. “Fuck, Val. It’s five hundred million dollars!”

“And you took an oath. Seems you forgot it. Again.” The portly officer inclined his head. “You coming quietly? I might not throw you in the trunk of my squad.”

Booth’s shoulders sagged, and he plodded down the front steps of our cabin, letting someone treat his wrist while another officer patted him down.

“You two can come here, too. Obviously, this place isn’t safe for you anymore,” Val said.

I scooped Jacey up in my arms and walked down the steps, eyeing every one of the officers. Who would be tempted? Would they all start shooting each other, trying to get the ransom for themselves?

Val opened the back of his squad car, and my stomach dropped when I saw the standard bars between us and the driver and passenger. There would be no getting out of there once we got in. “We need to take you in to clear up a few things. Then the Attorney General is asking about you.”

“It’s not still her, is it?” I groaned, hoping a good twenty plus years had made a difference.

“Not the same lady as when you testified before, no. But still just as keen, I guess,” Val said. “Seems you were supposed to go with Interpol after that Masterson trial. Pretty sure she’s sending you overseas to complete that deal, but that’s way above my paygrade.”

My throat went dry. “Look, our daughter’s in trouble….”

“Oh, you bet your sweet ass she is. That’s why you’re coming to the station. We need to know where she is,” Val replied.

“We’d like to know that, too,” Jacey said softly, her voice muffled by my shoulder.