Page 3 of Tracing Her Stolen Identity
Reece froze in place, his heart sinking the more she explained. “Where are you now, Sky?” He accidentally referred to her by the nickname he’d used all her life but didn’t take the time to correct himself. “Are you safe?”
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed again. “I locked myself in my duplex because I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t have any money or paperwork proving who I am other than my driver’s license.”
“Okay, stay put until I get there. What’s your address?” he asked as though he didn’t already know.
“It’s the same place I’ve always been. You don’t have to come. I can meet you somewhere.”
“I’d rather you stay put until I get there. I’m only ten minutes away.”
“You’ll see a truck in the driveway. It’s mine. The garage is too full to park in.”
“Okay. Don’t unlock the door until I ring the bell. If anyone else shows up, hide. I’m on my way.”
After a quick goodbye, he hung up the phone, slammed the door behind him and ran for his truck. Something wasrotten in Duluth, and the woman he once thought he’d marry was in the middle of it.
As soon as the truck roared to life, he threw it in Reverse, then headed toward the Duluth Heights neighborhood. They’d grown up there, and her address was the same as it had been her entire life, which meant she must have bought the house from her parents when they moved to Florida.
He blew out a breath and used voice to text to call Mina again. When she answered, he didn’t let her speak. “Skylar just called me. Her duplex has been vandalized and all her bank accounts have disappeared.”
“That’s not all that’s gone,” Mina said, her voice even, but he could sense her underlying nerves. “Her entire life has been wiped away, Reece. She’s in trouble.”
Those three words had him jamming his foot down harder on the gas pedal as a sense of doom filled him. He’d let Skylar down once; there was no way he would do it again.
Chapter Three
The doorbell rang in eight minutes, which meant Reece had either broken some laws or was closer to their old neighborhood than he’d thought. Skylar rolled to the door and grabbed the handle, taking a steeling breath before opening it. She hadn’t seen him since he’d graduated from college and left for a job elsewhere. She had attended the University of Wisconsin Superior across the bridge for a degree in art, but she had promptly dropped out after a year when she discovered making money as an artist had nothing to do with a degree.
While he’d attended college, Reece had lived at home, which was next door to her house. They’d grown up that way, spending most of their waking hours together as kids, but their social time had become less and less as he made new friends in college and his high school relationships became less important to him. Whenshebecame less important to him, but she’d wanted it that way, hadn’t she? Skylar had told him in no uncertain terms they would never be more than friends, even though he had made it clear several times that he wanted to date her. She’d had her reasons back then. Reasons that didn’t seem nearly as important to her anymore.
“Skylar!” He pounded on the door, drawing her from her thoughts as she jumped and yanked on the handle.
The man standing on her ramp took her breath away. “Back up,” he said, his words clipped. Once she was clear, he closed the door behind him as he assessed the front room. “Holy hell.” The two words were said in one breath before he knelt to make eye contact. “Are you okay?”
“Shaken but not hurt,” she answered, inhaling his scent. He still wore Stetson cologne on his body and a Stetson hat on his head, but everything else about him, besides the color of his eyes, was bigger, stronger and sexier than she wanted to face right now.
As he gazed at her from under the brim of that black hat, his one blue eye and one gray eye sparked with the same kind of familiarity she was sure was in her own. Their childhood years ran through her mind as she came face-to-face with the boy who was now a man. Reece, the boy she had called Land because he called her Sky, had always been tall, but even squatting, he could meet her eyes in the chair. His curly blond hair peeked out from under the hat and nearly touched his collar. It was either a sign that he liked it long or hadn’t had time to get it cut recently. She remembered how she used to play with his hair, twirling the curls around her fingers, when she was a little girl. She wanted to do it again and then let her fingers travel to his face to touch the shaped, tightly trimmed goatee that cupped his chin. She wouldn’t do that, though, because they weren’t friends anymore.
“Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what else to do until I remembered you were back in town.”
“I suppose everyone knew I was back in town after the Red River Slayer case ended.”
“That, but also, your mom told my mom, who told me.”
“Does anyone else live here?” he asked, and she could tell the idea that more people might be mixed up in this made him nervous.
“No, I live alone, other than while renting the other half to Mrs. Valentine. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m the only one involved as far as I know.”
“Good. Well, that’s not good, but I’m glad we only have to worry about your safety right now. Let’s get your things and get out of here.”
“What? No. I can’t leave my house like this!” She flung her hand around at the mess behind him, but he was already walking toward the bedrooms, the ones he knew well, considering he’d spent half of his childhood here.
Reece spun on the heel of what she noticed to be a pair of black snakeskin boots. “You can and you will. We don’t have time to clean it up right now. Besides, my friends from Secure One will come in, look around and see what they can find.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s happened?”
“Not here,” he said with a tight shake of his head as he mouthedbugs. “We need to get out of here. Where’s your phone?”
Without thinking, she dug it out of the bag under her chair. As he walked back over, she handed it to him. Did he think someone had bugged her house? A glance behind him at the destruction in her living room made her admit it was possible. The computerized voice started again, and she dragged her gaze to his, his brow up as he listened to the message. A shudder ran down her spine at the laughter. Would she hear that in her nightmares for the rest of her life? The idea worried her, but she bit back the whimper and straightened in her chair. When the video ended, Reece grabbed a pen and paper from the table drawer near the couch and turned back to her.
