Page 20 of PenPal Hero

“But true.” Laughing, she stepped into her suite and shut the door…and promptly skidded sideways on something slick.

She did a little dance to regain her footing and discovered an envelope lying on the floor. White. Sealed. Her room number was written in fat black marker letters.

What in the world? She bent to pick it up, wondering if the front desk had delivered the bill to her for her B&B stay by mistake. Alice had already paid for it in advance.

She ripped open the envelope. It contained a single sheet of paper — not the bill she’d been expecting to see, but a letter. She scanned its contents and grew still.

Dear Bonnie,

What we’re about to tell you may come as a shock. Locating you took years of searching. Eighteen years, to be exact.

We’re your birth parents.

What? Bonnie’s hands started trembling so badly that she nearly dropped the letter. She sank to her knees on the floor and continued reading.

You disappeared while playing in our backyard a few days before your third birthday. The police issued an amber alert and followed every tip that came through their tip line. Days, weeks, and months passed. Then years. Long after your case grew cold, we still refused to give up hope, not until we located a body to lay to rest. It never occurred to us that you would end up in an orphanage. Or adopted. One of the private investigators we hired finally figured it out.

We’ve enclosed a photograph of your mother rocking you in our nursery. We’re also enclosing forensic sketches of what you would’ve progressively looked like as you grew older.

From the information we were able to gather, it’s unclear if you’re even aware you were adopted, much less taken from your rightful family.

As you can imagine, we would give anything to see you again. Absolutely anything. We understand it’s your decision. You’re an adult now. You already have a family and the life they gave you. But if you can find it in your heart to pay us a visit after all these years, this is how you can reach us.

Besides the forensic sketches, the letter included a telephone number, a hotel name and address, and the signatures of Greg and Bonita Williamson.

Bonnie’s lips parted in astonishment at the similarity between her name and Bonita’s name.

Is this the woman I was named after?

Bonnie had never given much thought about where her name had come from. Or where she had come from, for that matter. Sure, every kid gets angry sometimes and wonders if they’re adopted, but most of them don’t actually want it to be true.

Bonnie sure didn’t. The very thought of Preston and Pearl not being her real parents made her heart ache as she examined the sketches enclosed with the letter. Each one looked eerily familiar. Other than the fact that the clothing and hair styles were a little off, they looked an awful lot like her school pictures over the years.

Is it true, then? Am I adopted?

If she was, her family’s exorbitant display of over-protectiveness might not be about her protection after all. Maybe they were in on the kidnapping. My first kidnapping. Bonnie’s stomach grew queasy at the possibility that she’d been unlawfully taken from her home — not once, but twice.

Her thoughts reeled chaotically, but her common sense eventually kicked in. Her gut told her there was no way the kindhearted Yates would’ve ever taken part in something so despicable. Was it possible they’d suspected something was amiss with her origins, though? That would certainly explain their overprotectiveness, wouldn’t it? But so would her second kidnapping. It was all so confusing.

One way to get some answers to the many questions swimming through her head would be to call the number listed in the Williamson’s letter. But something held her back.

What if none of Greg and Bonita Williamson’s claims were true? For one thing, they hadn’t disclosed any details about how they’d located her, and she wasn’t exactly sitting at home or at work at the moment. She was attending a business retreat, for crying out loud. How had the people claiming to be her birth parents pinpointed her exact location at the B&B? The more Bonnie thought about it, the more questions she had.

Am I in danger right now? She rose shakily to her feet and moved across the room to peer out her second-story window. Below her was the parking lot, containing a handful of customer vehicles. Beyond the parking lot stretched the pastureland, where horses and cattle grazed lazily beneath the setting sun. It was a picture of peacefulness — exactly what their glossy brochures had promised.

Which in no way explained why someone with a long-range camera had been snapping photos of her. Or how the bizarre letter she was clutching had found its way beneath her door. She tossed it on her bed and did a frenzied search of the suite, but found nothing out of the ordinary. No hidden cameras. Nothing that didn’t belong there.

Her suitcases were where she’d left them, unzipped and sitting open against the far wall. She’d worked her way through most of the clothing she’d packed for the week. Her dirty laundry was forming a small mountain in a corner of the bathroom, waiting to be taken home and washed.

A quick glance at her cell phone proved that time was ticking away faster than she’d expected. Holt would return soon to escort her downstairs for dinner.

She numbly went through the motions of showering and getting ready. All the while, new questions continued to pop into her mind. Another way to get answers would be to simply call her parents, but that didn’t feel right, either. If any of what the letter stated was true, then they’d been lying to her for her entire life.

She shook her head, nowhere near ready to write Preston and Pearl Yates off as criminals. If they’d adopted her, that didn’t mean they’d known she’d been kidnapped. A lifetime of memories with them told her they were too full of good old-fashioned morals and standards for that.

But that didn’t excuse them from keeping her adoption a secret from her. If she was, in fact, adopted…

A knock on the door made her nearly jump out of her skin. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she crept silently across the room to peer through the peephole.

---