Page 64 of Refuge for Cherilyn

“Four as of now,” Shaw mumbled.

Aaron chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Maisey says she’s quite the fireball.”

“That may be the understatement of the millennium.” For a split second, Shaw felt like he was suffocating. He did indeed have too much on his plate, but there was nothing he could do about it. He just had to hang on and trust that the three men in the room with him could handle it, and he realized something important.

If anyone could handle it, it would be them.

CHAPTER9

Cherilyn paced.They’d managed to identify the guy. What next? If he found out they knew who he was, what would he do? Disappear? Come after her? Come after all of them? Sometimes she wished she’d stayed in the woods with the girls.

But that dissolved as she thought about Shaw. Absolutely everything about that man spoke to her, and the thought that the happiness she’d started to feel just from being there might be snatched away from her was something she couldn’t even entertain. No. It just couldn’t happen. She finally had a chance to have a real life, one for her and her girls, and she wasn’t going to let that slip away. She’d do whatever it took to make sure it didn’t.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice. “Hey, what’s going on?”

She spun to find Candace standing there. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come into the room.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t sneaking around or anything.” Candace flopped down in a kitchen chair. “So what’s going on? You look weird.”

“Oh, thanks for that.”

“No, no. I don’t mean bad or anything. You just look, I dunno, worried? Or something?”

Cherilyn sat down across from the girl. “You do know why I’m here, right?”

Candace’s eyebrows arched and she rolled her eyes. “Nope. Nobody’s told me anything. You two act like it’s a big secret. I have no idea what’s going on.”

Should I tell her?Cherilyn asked herself. Candace and Maya were the same age, but Candace was much more mature. No, maybe it wasn’t maturity. She was just much more… exposed to the real world. Maya and Candace might’ve both been fifteen, but that was where the similarity ended. This seemed like something Shaw’s daughter could understand. “Okay, so I’m here because I saw a murderer coming out of the apartment next door to me.”

“Oh, shit! That’s not good.”

Normally, she would’ve corrected the girl for the swear word, but she just didn’t have the energy at the moment. “No. Especially since he’s somebody I know.”

“Youknow a murderer? You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He was my ex-husband’s best friend.”

“Yeesh! That’s pretty awful.”

“Yeah. Scary. That’s how I wound up here at your dad’s. I was hiding in the woods at the state park with the girls, afraid the guy would find me and kill me next.”

“You were in thewoods? Like out in the trees? At night? In the dark?”

“Yes, Candace. At night, in the dark, and in the rain too.”

“Wow. You were really scared.”

“I still am.”

The teenager was obviously thinking about what was being said, so Cherilyn said nothing. In a minute or two, Candace glanced back at Cherilyn. “So that doesn’t explain it. How did you wind up here?”

“The employees at the lodge saw my car sitting out there and were worried. They called the sheriff’s office, and that’s how Aaron got involved. And then Aaron needed somebody he figured would know the park better, or know how to hike it or track something or somebody, so that’s how your dad got called. Just a random transmission over the radio. Took him a couple of days to find us, but he finally did.”

“Oh.” She twiddled with the glass sitting on the table in front of her. “You really like my dad, don’t you?”

Cherilyn straightened her spine. “I do. I more than like him. And I’m sorry you think I’m not good enough for him, but I’ll always be the person he needs me to be.”

“Look, I’m sorry I said that. I guess I always hoped my parents would get back together, but my mom and my dad are nothing alike?I mean, nothing?and that would be a mistake. I don’t know how they wound up married in the first place. They’re the last two people on earth that I’d throw together.”

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