Page 30 of Shelter for Shay (Broken Heroes Mended Souls #2)

SHAY – SATURDAY | THE CABIN

T he 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 I thought was 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 through a 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.”

Her voice dropped. “The night Adam Lawrence was killed.”

His jaw ticked. “There were other times, but yes, that night.”

“She refused,” Shay whispered.

“She got cold feet. Said she wasn’t part of it anymore. But by then, my assistant was already unraveling things I couldn’t afford to have unraveled.” Blake turned toward the window, watching wind push against the pane. “I cleaned up the mess. That was the end of it.”

Shay felt ice in her veins. “You killed him.”

Blake didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.

She struggled in the chair, fury rising in her throat. “Then why keep coming back? Why watch us? Why keep tabs on my entire life if you didn’t give a damn?”

He finally turned back to her.

“Because it was easier than killing you,” he said plainly. “You were leverage. A failsafe. As long as you didn’t know who you were, I was safe. If Margaret ever turned on me, if she ever decided to hand anything over to the Feds—you’d be my shield. And she knew it.”

Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “She died anyway.”

“She got sentimental,” he muttered. “Started poking around old accounts. Asking questions she shouldn’t. And then she got sloppy. Left behind traces I couldn’t afford to exist.”

“Did you have a hand in her death? In her illness?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I didn’t have to. Mother Nature took care of that. But I made sure she was denied clinical trials. Experimental medications. Especially after she decided she couldn’t stomach taking my money anymore.”

Shay wanted to scream. She wanted to sink her teeth into him. Instead, she forced herself to breathe.

“So what now?” she rasped. “The trial’s over. You burned the whole thing to the ground. Why keep me alive?”

He stepped closer, his tone shifting—colder now.

“Because the only way this ends clean for me… is if you and your boyfriend disappear.”

Her heart stuttered. “You don’t just disappear a Navy SEAL.”

“And you shouldn’t underestimate your father.

” Blake crouched down, eye level with her now.

“See, I’ve already fed the police photos—ones that paint Moose as your kidnapper.

I’ll even leave the murder weapon on him when the time comes.

A disgruntled ex-sailor who never quite got over his past. It’s a neat little bow. ”

“No one’s going to believe that.”

“They don’t have to believe it. They just have to buy it long enough for me to get out clean.”

He rose to his full height again. “Moose will come for you. That’s a certainty. And when he does, he dies. And you? You die in the crossfire.”

Shay’s blood went cold. “You’re going to kill us both.”

He shrugged. “It’s the simplest ending. No loose ends. No leverage. No legacy. Just silence.”

He turned toward the door, calling over his shoulder, “You’re right. I’ve already won, Shay. I just have to make it look messy on the way out.”

Then he was gone—leaving her alone in a creaking cabin deep in the woods, with darkness pressing against the windows and death closing in from both sides.

And suddenly, Shay couldn’t breathe.

Her chest locked up, lungs refusing to expand as panic closed in like a vise. Her skin felt too tight, her heartbeat wild and ragged in her ears. The restraints on her wrists burned now, raw and unrelenting, a sick reminder that she was trapped. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally.

Truly. Literally. Trapped.

She stared at the door he’d just disappeared through, half expecting him to come back—to finish it now. To make good on the threat.

Her body trembled so hard her teeth clacked. She bit down to stop the sound, but it wouldn’t still the shaking. It was everywhere now—her hands, her knees, the hollow place in her gut where courage used to live.

She didn’t just feel fear.

She was fear.

This wasn’t courtroom tension or nerves before a verdict. This was survival measured in breaths and heartbeats. This was the kind of terror that clung to your bones and haunted your sleep. The kind that didn’t fade when it was over, because part of you never left.

She turned her face toward the wall and whispered, “Please. Please hurry.”

Because if Moose didn’t get there in time?—

If he walked into a trap meant to kill them both?—

Then this wouldn’t just be the end of her story.

It would be the end of everything .