Page 39 of PenPal Hero

“I don’t know.” Holt studied her with concern. “I have my suspicions, though.”

“You must think I’m crazy.” More tears leaked from Bonnie’s eyes. This time, they were mournful ones. Tears for the mother she couldn’t remember. Tears for the tender moments they’d surely shared.

“No. I don’t.” He cuddled her against his chest. “I just found out something this evening about my own past that’s a little disturbing. Actually, it’s very disturbing.” He recounted his meeting with his bosses to her. “You want to talk about crazy? I’m the one who felt crazy when my employers exposed the fact that I was transposing VIN numbers.”

He retrieved her cell phone and led her to the living room in the front of the house and took a seat on the sofa. Then he tugged her down beside him. “I think we’ve been tampered with, babe. You and I.” He studied her gravely. “During our respective abductions. I thought mine was all about revenge for helping put some dangerous men in jail, but what if it wasn’t about revenge? What if it was about something more sinister?”

“Like what?” she begged piteously. She hated feeling so vulnerable and helpless.

“Mind control.” He gestured as he expounded on his theory. “There are techniques that can be used to plant false memories in a person. Everything from hypnosis therapy to the power of suggestion to the ingestion of substances that can make a person more impressionable. More susceptible.”

Bonnie closed her eyes, trying to absorb everything she was hearing. “Meaning I could be remembering things that never happened?”

“Exactly, babe.” His voice was low and soothing. “You and me both.”

That would certainly explain the enormous blanks in her memories. If she’d been unconscious when she was taken, she would never recover the intrinsic details about what had happened to her. Oddly enough, the possibility that she’d been unconscious at the time made her feel a little less damaged.

It’s perfectly normal not to remember things when you’re asleep. It was still disturbing that she’d been kidnapped at all. It was even more disturbing to know that someone had deliberately altered her memories. As much as it hurt, she was forced to acknowledge that the woman’s voice singing the lullaby and the white curtains blowing in the wind probably weren’t real.

What she didn’t understand was why anyone would do this to her. What had they hoped to accomplish by it? One thing was clear. Whoever was pretending to be her birth parents wanted to see her in person. But why? Their reasons couldn’t be good.

Holt reached for her hand. “We should report this to the police, babe.”

She nodded. “I think we should now that we have something tangible to show them.” Maybe they had a way of tracing the phone call from Greg and Bonita Williamson.

It was a quiet BBQ dinner. Bonnie and her friends were each lost in their own thoughts. It was still a pleasant dinner, just somber. They sank against the plush blue cushions on the patio furniture, munching on their hamburgers, hotdogs, spicy brats, and fruit salad.

Afterward, Holt walked Bonnie to her tiny house. It rested above a boat dock on the biggest pond on Zayden’s property. If a person was being generous, they might call it a small lake. The white siding and stacked stone home yielded roughly three hundred square feet of living space in one-and-a-half stories. Her white Civic was parked in the attached carport.

She tossed her purse inside the door and returned to the cozy front porch.

Holt was leaning on the railing, staring at the water. “Do you want to call the police, or do you want me to call them?” he offered without looking up.

She joined him there, allowing the view to calm her troubled soul. “You,” she said simply.

He dug out his cell phone and dialed Sheriff Cade Malone, tapping the speakerphone button so Bonnie could listen. To his enormous gratitude, his call didn’t immediately roll to voicemail.

“Hey, Holt!” The sheriff’s voice was filled with energy. “Just finished a chat with Foster Kane and Lyon Garrett. Was about to give you a call myself.”

Something about the sheriff’s tone told him they’d been talking about him. “It’s, uh…about Bonnie Yates.” He glanced at her, and she gave him a tight nod, urging him to continue.

“Ah.” Cade Malone’s voice grew cautious, indicating he already knew something about her unfortunate past.

“She’s remembering, sir.”

“Oh, boy,” the sheriff sighed. “Listen, I already know about her abductions.”

Bonnie gave a strangled gasp and clapped a hand over her mouth as he continued speaking. “Foster and Lyon just finished sharing what they know about the first abduction, and Bonnie’s parents filled our department in on the second one right after they moved into town. We’ve been running random patrols around their place ever since.”

Holt frowned “And?”

“And nothing.” The sheriff sounded bleak. “For six straight years, there’ve been no trespassers, no loiterers, no attempted break-ins. Nothing.”

Holt’s jaw tightened. “What we called to share with you isn’t nothing.”

“We?” the sheriff asked quickly. “Is she with you?”

“I am.” Bonnie’s voice was deceptively calm for a woman who’d been weeping so hard before dinner. She plunged into her sordid tale. “I received a letter a few days ago from a couple claiming to be my birth parents.”

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