Page 66 of Shelter for Shay
The air inside the cabin was stale with age and secrets. Shay could barely breathe. Her heart beat so fast it hurt. She glanced around, blinking, looking for… something… anything… that might help her escape.
Rough-hewn beams crisscrossed the ceiling, thick with dust. Faded curtains sagged from rusty rods, and the woodstove in the corner groaned quietly as heat leaked from it in low, lazy puffs. The place smelled like pine sap, old coffee, and rot. Outside, the wind moaned through the trees, brushing the structure like a warning.
Shay sat in the center of the room—hands zip-tied behind the back of a dining chair, ankles bound to its legs. Her lip was split from when one of Blake’s men had shoved her into the truck. Her hair clung to her cheek with sweat, and tears burned her eyes.
Blake Edmonds stood across from her, lit only by a flickering oil lamp that threw wild shadows across his face. He looked… normal. Expensive boots. Rolled-up sleeves. Calm, like a man who’d just finished signing contracts, not orchestrating a kidnapping.
“Where are we?” she asked with a shaky voice, barely audible over the tremble of her vocal cords.
“I hate this place,” he muttered, glancing around the room. “Margaret used to say it was peaceful. She was wrong. It’s full of ghosts.”
“You and my mother spent time here?”
He laughed. “It’s where you were conceived,” he said. “It belonged to my grandfather. Then my father. I only kept it because my wife never knew about it and I could bring a mistress here. Your mother was the only one who liked it. The rest, I had to fork over money for hotels. I’m not even sure why I’ve kept it so long. Maybe nostalgia. Maybe I kept it for you.” He smiled, staring at her as if he could see into her soul.
She shivered. “I remember my mom going to a cabin when she needed a little space,” Shay said quietly, letting all this sink in. Every damn CSI show that Becca had watched, and tried to explain the plotline, rattled around in Shay’s brain.
Keep them talking. Killers like to explain themselves.
What a god-awful thought.
“Yeah. I let her use it.” Blake leaned back. “Until she changed the terms of our deal and I changed the locks.”
“Why am I here?” Shay asked with a little more power in her voice. “You already destroyed the trial. You exposed who I am. You won. What else do you want?”
“You think this is about the case?” He let out a dry laugh and leaned against the edge of the old kitchen counter. “That was just a tool. A lever. You were always the problem, Shay. You… and your mother.”
“Mom’s dead.” She swallowed hard, trying not to let the fear show, but she doubted she’d been successful.
“What? You don’t want to know the history? You don’t want to know anything about dear old Dad?” He smiled. “Come on,Shay. Isn’t that why you had that boyfriend of yours start digging into my personal business?”
“No, I wanted to know about the man Ithoughtwas my father. That wasn’t you,” she fired back. She shouldn’t have said it with such an attitude, but she wanted nothing from this man. Except to be let go.
“Bradley Morrison?” Blake tossed his head back and laughed. “I’m the one who told your mother to make up a name. To give you a story you could really sink your teeth into.” He waved his hand. “I never expected her to use a real person, but the point had been for Margaret to sell it, and for years, she’d done just that. I know because she’d come crying to me about how hard it had been for her to lie to poor little Shay. How devastating that had been for her, but she was positive you’d never come looking for your dad.”
“And yet you showed up at some of my school functions,” Shay said. “Why?”
“Oh, now we remember,” he said. “That wasn’t about you. That was about Margaret. I needed her to know that I was there. Watching. Always watching.”
“The flowers,” Shay whispered. “From the study group. That was you.”
“It was. I’m not as cold as you’d like to believe I am. I was extending an olive branch, but your mom, she stuck her middle finger at me, metaphorically speaking.” He crossed his arms.
“The LLC, that was also you, right?”
“Looks like you might have some of my smarts after all,” he said. “I met Margaret when she was eighteen. She had fire. Ambition. And she knew how to listen, which made her useful. I was already working with international holdings—slush money, gray accounts, layered LLCs so deep the Feds couldn’t touch them. I needed someone Stateside to launder for me througha domestic account, something that wouldn’t ping too many alarms.”
“So you used her.”
“I paid her,” he snapped. “Generously. And at first, she was grateful. But then… she got self-righteous. She said she didn’t want the money anymore. Said it wasn’t worth what it was doing to her soul. I told her walking away wasn’t that easy. She said she didn’t care.”
Shay blinked. “So you cut her off.”
“I warned her. And she ignored me. So I closed the pipeline and let her twist in the wind. That house you grew up in? She couldn’t afford that on a school counselor’s salary. The car, the insurance, your college—all of that was me. Once it stopped, she spiraled. Took out credit lines to cover the gaps. Tried to cover it all up, from what I can tell. I told her I’d always be there, if she wanted, but she’d have to show me loyalty.”
“Except you let her drown.” Shay’s voice cracked.
“She chose it.” He paused. “I even gave her a way out. One more drop. One favor. That’s all I asked.”
