Page 14 of Tracing Her Stolen Identity (Secure Watch #2)

It was easy to be mad at him for bringing him up, but Skylar knew it was inevitable. You can’t have a skeleton that size in your closet and not expect someone to want to take a peek. “We don’t need to involve him. He’s dead and gone, Reece.”

“Gone? Yes. Dead? Maybe not.”

“He’s been gone for thirteen years, Reece. He’s dead. A John Doe in someone’s morgue or buried in a potter’s field somewhere. Leave it alone.”

“We have no evidence that he’s dead,” Reece argued. “When did your parents stop looking for him?”

Her shrug was jerky as she did the math in her head.

“Probably nine or ten years ago? There wasn’t much sense in paying someone to look for a kid who didn’t want to be found.

As parents, that was hard for them to accept, but let’s not mince words here.

Silas had problems. We can’t and never did deny that was part of the situation.

” The following sentence would take him by surprise, but she had to tell him.

“Silas didn’t even graduate from high school. ”

“What? No, I remember that he did,” Reece said, turning to face her better. “Your mom had a party and the whole thing.”

“Silas walked the stage and there was a party, but that diploma case was empty. He had two credits he was supposed to finish that summer and then they’d mail him the diploma, but he never went to summer school, so he never got the diploma.

That’s why he worked low-wage jobs and just drifted around.

My parents tried to help him. They found ways for him to get his diploma, but he refused to do any of them.

Eventually they gave up, deciding he was an adult and had to make his own decisions. ”

“Which is why they stopped looking for him, too?”

She made the so-so hand motion. “In a way, yes. When Silas left home, we thought something bad had happened, but there was no evidence of that. The police could locate his car on traffic cameras throughout the state, but when he didn’t return in a few months, Mom called the police again.

They insisted there was no evidence of a crime or foul play, so they couldn’t get involved.

Private detectives came up empty-handed every time they hired one.

Our family therapist finally sat everyone down and suggested that maybe Silas left because he wanted a fresh start.

After my accident, life was difficult for a few years, and as an adult, he didn’t have to stay there and live through it, too. ”

“He could have left a note,” Reece said through clenched teeth.

“Silas could have done a lot of things he didn’t do, Reece.

That was the nature of the beast with him.

It was hard for my parents to detach themselves enough to see their son for who he was.

That’s just being a parent. I never liked him, so that gave me clarity they didn’t have.

It was hard to hide my relief when he didn’t return after a few weeks. ”

His shoulder tipped in agreement. “You know how I felt about him.”

It released some tension in her chest when she laughed, which felt good considering the situation. “You never made it a secret that you’d like to take Silas to an island and leave him there.”

That made him smile. “He wasn’t my favorite guy, but I still believe we must do our due diligence where he’s concerned. I don’t need your permission, but I want us to discuss it so you’re prepared for what we might find.”

A heavy sigh escaped, and she tossed her head back on the pillow to avoid eye contact with him.

“Do what you have to do regarding Silas. I’ll continue to believe this has nothing to do with him.

Even if he is alive, he doesn’t have the base knowledge to pull off a quarter of what this Binate guy has done in the last twenty-four hours, but you do you. ”

“Thanks, I will,” he said with a wink when she sat up again. “Now that we have that settled, we need to do a deep dive into your social media accounts.”

“That’s going to be difficult since I can’t access them.”

“You can’t, but one Mina Jacobs can. She’s working on it right now and will call me when she’s in. While we wait, I’ll fix your wheel so we’re mobile should we need to be.”

With a nod, he headed for the garage, and Skylar flopped her head back on the pillow again.

There was no way Silas was behind this, right?

She’d never had any illusions about who her brother was, even as a kid.

He’d shown his true colors to her at an early age.

Growing up, she had very few memories of her brother.

He was always on the outer edge of their family.

She could only describe it as he was there to cause problems and stir up resentment but emotionally checked out.

Was it intentional to treat him as an outsider?

It was for her. She was positive that if Land hadn’t walked in on them one day when she was in the seventh grade, her brother would have crossed a line and done something that would have torn their family apart.

Land may have been young, but he was loud.

By the time he finished with Silas for touching her, Silas had a black eye, a busted lip, a concussion and a healthy respect for keeping his hands off his sister.

Unfortunately, it also filled Silas with rage, which he carried for them for too many years.

Skylar’s parents had put Silas into therapy immediately and made sure their daughter was never alone with him again, but that only made matters worse for her.

The Sullivan household had always been tense, something she hadn’t realized until Silas left home, but it got worse as soon as Silas hit puberty.

That was why Skylar had gotten involved in cheer at such a young age.

It gave her an escape she needed from the angry young man who often refused to leave his room for days, screamed at their parents and repeatedly got in trouble at school.

Skylar always thought it was a case of any attention being good attention, but the weird part was that their parents were good parents.

They loved them both equally and didn’t play favorites.

Silas didn’t want love, though. He wanted power and control, at least if you listened to him.

He took his hatred out on her for ruining the control he had over their parents for the first six years of his life.

The only reason she understood all this was due to the years of family counseling.

Between the accident and Silas leaving, their family was in shambles.

At the time, Reece’s mom had gently reminded them that their work benefits covered therapists, so maybe it was time to visit one.

Skylar had agreed immediately. Her father took a bit longer to convince, but eventually, they’d found a counselor who helped them see that what happened with Silas was no one’s fault but his.

They’d done their best to help him, but he’d refused all help and chosen to go it alone.

Families fall apart all the time, and the only way to move forward is to accept that person’s decision as their own and continue to live your life.

If you don’t and instead focus all your time and energy on someone who doesn’t want or deserve it, your life is no longer your own.

It had taken her parents two more years to accept that, but everyone’s lives improved once they did.

They had retired from their jobs in Duluth and moved to Florida, where they’d invested money into a small marina.

Her father had always loved boats and the water, and the new business allowed him to enjoy both at a slower pace.

Her mom grieved the little boy she remembered, but she accepted that he was an adult now and that they couldn’t change who he was.

The idea of letting Reece dig Silas back up after they’d buried him as a family rankled her.

He didn’t have the right to tell her she had blinders on when it came to her brother, because she didn’t.

She was fully aware of who and what her brother was.

As in past tense, because whether he still sucked air or not, he was dead to her.

He had been for most of her life. But she knew Reece.

He wasn’t going to let this go until he proved one way or the other whether Silas could somehow be involved in the destruction of her life.

The implications of finding Silas alive hit her, and she groaned.

She would have to tell Reece the truth about him, because if she knew one thing, it was this: Silas Sullivan had to remain dead, or their entire family was at risk.

* * *

R EECE TAPPED HIS pen on the desk as he pored over the information about the nationwide network of crimes against art galleries.

He’d be mad about it, but it was too laughable to think anyone would believe that Skylar was capable of something like this.

She was so physically incapable of almost all the damage that he was starting to suspect that might be why the cops hadn’t knocked on her door.

It wouldn’t take much underlying investigation to see she couldn’t do this, and she was right when she said the cops in Duluth knew her.

That might have been why they hadn’t pulled her in yet.

They’d watched the original Binate video again after Mina sent a copy, but the voice was electronic and the figure behind the camera could have been his own father.

Skylar couldn’t say it was Miles Bradshaw, but she also couldn’t say it wasn’t, which was precisely what this person wanted.

He wanted them to think everyone was a suspect so they could never narrow in on him.

If Reece had to guess, Binate had been expecting Skylar to go to the police when she got that video, not the premier cybersecurity group in the nation.

Maybe Binate should have done a little bit more research on who Skylar’s friends were before he decided to take her on.

Were they friends, though? For the last fourteen years, he didn’t know what they were.

They weren’t friends, but they also weren’t frenemies.

Reece couldn’t speak for Skylar, but he could say with certainty that he had thought of her every single day since he’d last seen her.

It was impossible not to when half of him was missing every second of the day.

While he couldn’t speak for her, since she was the one who pushed him away, he still considered them friends.

Sky had pointed out that whoever this was, they thought she was far more capable than she was.

At first, he’d thought she was trying to explain why she’d pushed him away, but when he put that aside and listened—really listened—that wasn’t what she was saying at all.

She was saying that there was no way she could travel alone by car for long distances.

She certainly couldn’t fly and keep a low profile when she had to check her chair and be carried on and off the plane.

She could not roll around these buildings, spray painting and breaking glass from a wheelchair without being noticed.

Short of hiring someone to do the crimes, it was unrealistic to believe Skylar was involved.

The sick soul that dreamed up this scheme either didn’t know about her limitations or was hoping people would think she’d hired someone to do it and just wanted to ruin her reputation.

It also made her a persona non grata within the art world.

Unless they could prove this wasn’t her, she’d never be invited to hold a gallery showing with these accusations hanging over her head.

That’s what made him lean toward Miles Bradshaw as the instigator.

It seemed he’d do anything to sideline her career.

The sticking point for him was that Miles knew her and could see her limitations, even if he didn’t understand them.

Then again, he didn’t have to understand them to ruin her reputation.

All he had to do was convince people she was behind it.

On the other hand, Silas had taken off so early in Skylar’s recovery that he might not know her limitations, but he also might not care.

“When is Mina calling?” Skylar asked as she rolled into the room, breaking him from his spiraling thoughts.

When Reece turned to face her, he couldn’t help but drink her in.

She would always be the girl next door, but she was also stunning in the simplicity of her style.

She wore floral boho pants and a blue-green blouse that drew his eye to hers.

Her eyes told him she was still terrified, but he also saw determination.

When she gazed at him, he wanted to believe he saw desire in her eyes, but he couldn’t let himself go there.

She’d made it clear they could never be more than acquaintances, and once she was clear of Binate, he would have to let her go again.

Self-preservation had him turning away before he answered. “Mina will be calling any minute.” An electronic tone rang out. “Speak of the devil. Are you ready? This won’t be easy, but with any luck, she has the information we need to get your life back.”

He waited, watching the fear, anger and determination roll across her face before she nodded. “I’m ready. It’s time to end this so we can return to our lives.”

As Reece pressed the button to respond to Mina, all he could think was that was the last thing he wanted to do.