Forever and Always Read online

  “Wonder where she is now?” I asked aloud as I sipped my bourbon.

  The last page nearly made my heart stop. It was a newspaper clipping. There was a photo of a car that had smashed into a tree and a picture of my son’s mother. She was pretty in a bland way, with long, straight blonde hair and big blue eyes.

  Picking the clipping up, I looked at the photo and thought she should have had better lighting.

  I knew I was putting off reading the article. I took a deep drink of the bourbon, then read. Weeks ago, Lisa Henderson’s car had run into a tree, and she’d been killed instantly.

  Stapled to the article was a second clipping, this one about funeral services, so I read it, too.

  Between the two articles, there was quite a bit about Lisa Henderson—at least about her life at the time of her death. I was surprised to see that she’d been an active member of a church and had served on several committees. Since she left no money behind, her funeral had been paid for by the church and her coworkers. “She will be missed,” was to be carved on her tombstone.

  Okay, so what about my son? What was to happen to him? And why had I missed the mention of him? I reread both articles. The obituary said Lisa had left behind “no known relatives.”

  I read the clippings another time, then I went back and read every word on every page. Nowhere in any of it was a mention of my son. Puzzled, I went to the safe in my bedroom to remove the file my agent had sent me years ago.

  Nearly eight years ago, Lisa Henderson had been working in a cryo clinic in Los Angeles. I’d been a starving actor and, well, I’d earned some money by “donating,” well, sperm. My name was anonymous to the people who used it, but those of us who gave had to agree that if a kid resulted, at eighteen he/she could have our names.

  I loved this idea; it appealed to my sense of drama. By the time the kid was eighteen I planned to be a bigger star than Mel Gibson. I loved to imagine the thrill the kid would get when he was told who his father was.

  When my name was becoming known, one day, laughing, I’d told my agent Barney that someday some kid was going to get the surprise of his life, then I’d explained why. Barney hadn’t laughed; he’d gone ballistic. He started calling people who called people. The result was that all my frozen semen was destroyed and number 28176 was taken off the books.

  However, Barney told me that one of the women who worked at the clinic had seen me in a bit part in a movie and recognized my name. “She had your kid!” Barney bellowed at me.

  I was kind of pleased and wondered what the child looked like, but Barney ranted on and on about lawsuits and what she could someday demand and how this could someday hurt me bad. “Real bad.” He said some unpleasant things about why couldn’t I have taken up sheep rather than paper cups, but I didn’t listen to him.

  A month later Barney sent me a file about Lisa Henderson and every year since then he’d added a page or two. I’d put every paper in the safe I’d built into each house I’d owned in the last six years.

  But now, when I reached for the file, it wasn’t there. I knew I hadn’t removed that file. The last time Barney’d sent me new pages I’d barely glanced at them before shoving them inside the leather folder I kept all those papers in. The folder even had a lock on it.

  I emptied everything out of the safe. There were some deeds, last year’s tax returns, the engagement ring I’d planned to give Alanna in Scotland, but no file on Lisa Henderson and my son.

  I sat down on the bed, trying to figure this out. Did someone break into my safe and take the papers? No, of course not. What kind of thief would take papers and leave a $25,000 ring?

  Wait a minute, I thought. Barney probably had copies. The man was terrified someone was going to cheat him out of a penny so he made sure he had a copy of everything.

  As I picked up the phone by my bed, my cell rang. It was Alanna.

  “Change your mind about Scotland?” I said. I didn’t want her knowing I was still upset about the canceled trip. Plus, she had no idea about my having a child and I didn’t want her to know.

  “You haven’t heard,” she said flatly.

  Neither have you, I wanted to say, but I played it cool.

  “About what?”

  “Barney’s dead. His office caught fire and he went up with it. Sorry. I’ll call you later.”

  I was left with a dead phone in my hand. As I said, sympathy was not one of Alanna’s strong points. After she read the book about Darci Montgomery, when she’d said, “That poor kid,” she’d meant it was a shame that Darci had been caught.

  I didn’t think about what I was doing when I pushed the button to call Jerlene. She answered on the second ring. I was respectful. I didn’t ask how a scatterbrained, maybe-killer like her daughter could help find someone. I just said, “How do I go about getting your daughter’s help?”

  After I put down the phone, I went to the gym. Maybe a long, hard workout would calm the jitters I felt. I knew, as well as I’d ever known anything in my life, that Barney had been murdered and all his files burned because of me and my illegitimate son. And I knew that Lisa Henderson had been killed for the same reason.

  Three hours later I felt better. I checked the messages on my cell. Jerlene’s lovely voice gave me an address in Virginia and said I was to go there tomorrow at three, that her daughter would meet me. Again she said that her daughter would find my son.

  I didn’t want to think anymore. I just called my personal assistant, told her to look after things until I got back, then I booked a flight to Virginia. I did it myself because I didn’t want anyone to know where I was going. I tossed some clothes into a bag, then I went to a hotel. My own home didn’t feel safe anymore.

  The next day I was ushered into a very pretty living room and I met Darci Montgomery for the first time. I still wasn’t sure why I was there or what I wanted from her, but I did know I needed to be cautious. I planned to tell her as little as possible and to gloss over the bad parts.

  After all, what could the woman do? Read minds?

  Darci

  Chapter Three

  LINCOLN AIMES’S MIND WAS HARDER TO PERSUADE THAN most people’s were, but then since that book came out, people put up barriers against me. They’d made up their minds about me and I knew that nothing I could say—or do—would sway them.

  Few people knew the truth of what had happened in that tunnel full of witches in Camwell, Connecticut, and I knew it was better that they thought what they did. It was better for people to think that my husband and his cousins had been the ones to kill the witch and her cohorts. People thinking my mother had rescued me certainly hadn’t hurt her career any.

  Yes, it was better for people to think what they did than to know the truth of my involvement in those deaths. If they knew the truth, I wouldn’t just be laughed at or spit on as happened to me the last time I left the grounds, they’d probably light torches and drag me out of the house and—I didn’t want to think about that.

  However horrible destroying the witches had been, the best part of my life had come out of it. I’d found my father and he’d married Boadicea, the sister of the man who was to become my husband. Bo and I’d had babies at nearly the same time.

  For a while my life had been wonderful because we were a family. Perhaps we were a little strange, since my father was a world-renowned expert on psychics, my sister-in-law had been raised in captivity, my husband had gone through unspeakable horror as a child, my daughter and niece had the power to make things fly around, and I—I was the strangest of them all.

  We weren’t unusual to each other, though, and we had great love among us. They had protected me from the outside world, loved me, and they’d known the truth about what happened in Connecticut. That had made everything all right.

  But they weren’t here now. Over a year ago, my husband had come to me and I could feel he was very excited about something, but I was, yet again, between nannies so I was taking care of the girls by myself. I’d volunteered for this after I