Laura's Secret (5 page)

“Which hospital, where are you taking them,” he shouted, causing his sons to come to the doorway.

His heart in his throat he rushed back to his car, his sons on his heels. By the time they got to the hospital, Josh had called their Uncle Matt and put the wheels in motion that would bring his other brothers home. Aaron was somewhere on the other side of the world and probably wouldn’t be able to make it right away but he’d be with them in spirit.

Four hours later the surgeon walked into the waiting room to give them the news. Both mother and daughter would make it. However, Laura's spine had been severed and she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

Aaron and his brother Evan walked into the room interrupting their father’s reverie.

“Did you get any more information, Dad?” Aaron asked.

“No, I didn’t. She really covered her tracks. She even donated her car, so I have no idea how she’s traveling.”

“What about her prescriptions, can we track her that way?” asked Evan.

“She told the pharmacy she was going to be traveling extensively and they sent her a six month supply. She’s been taking them long enough that they weren’t worried about her possibly overdosing,” he said, sitting in a chair and running his hands through his hair. “Did I smother her too much? Maybe we should have encouraged her to get an apartment of her own?”

“I might agree with you if it was only the wheelchair, Dad. But how can she manage the rest? She can’t go out in the sunlight. And what about her therapy? I’m so angry with her, she’s acting so irresponsibly!” Aaron said, smashing his fist onto his knee.

“At least she promised to contact us within six months. I keep grabbing onto that like a lifeline. That doesn’t mean that I won’t try to find her in the meantime. How did it go with the neighbors?” he asked.

“One thought an extended cab truck might have pulled into our driveway on Saturday but they weren’t sure. They couldn’t remember enough for us to put out a BOLO and we can’t exactly ask the police to be on the lookout for movers. They haven’t done anything illegal,” said Evan.

Both Evan and Aaron were worried about their father. It looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept since he’d left the cruise ship and come home.

“Dad, why don’t we all post questions on our Facebook pages. Even if she doesn’t answer, she’s bound to check. We might be able to track her through social media.”

Their father looked up at his son. “It’s against company policy and could get me fired but your right. I’ll get over to the office and set up a search on all social media. I have some guys who are loyal to me, they’ll keep it quiet. I feel shitty about using NSA assets for personal business, but I won’t feel better until I know something. She’s been gone for three days.”

*****

Two weeks later around the same time Laura was shopping in Montana, all of her brothers had returned home. None of them had difficulties getting their orders changed. That in itself made Doug suspicious, but he had no proof that anything hinky had taken place, just a feeling. They were just sitting down to lunch and another brainstorming session when all of their cell phones chimed at nearly the same time. Josh was the first to realize what was happening.

“She’s sent another email!” he said as they all quickly dug their phones out of various pockets.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you know I’ve made it to the house safe and sound. It’s been a really exciting trip. I’ve only been driving at night so I’m perfectly well, no worries there. The house is perfect and the views are great, even if I can only see them on a computer monitor. I have room for all you guys and I’m looking forward to having you visit for Thanksgiving. I’ve been learning to cook and by the time you come I’ll be baking pies, I promise. I miss you all a lot and that part has been really hard. This is something I had to do, I know you don’t understand now, I’m hoping I can explain it all when the time comes.

Love you! —Laura

“Well, that gives us a pretty large area to search if it took her two weeks just to get there,” said her father.

“You don’t want to let her have these six months?” asked Aaron. He’d had a lot of time to think during the past two weeks of worry. Maybe they had been a little overprotective. He hoped his sister hadn’t felt like a prisoner.

“No. There’s something else going on here. If she just wanted to move out, I don’t think she would have gone so far away. Then there was her comment about hoping she could explain it to us. As if it wouldn’t be up to her. No, we keep looking.”

All of the Donahue men exchanged looks and nodded. They would not give up.

Chapter Six

“Come on into the back,” Laura said to Mara.

She unlocked her chair from its position behind the wheel then turned and opened the door that separated the camper from the cockpit of her vehicle. Shutting the door again after Mara entered.

“I need to be able to shut out all natural light,” she explained, pushing back the hood and pulling off the ski mask and goggles. “Oh, that feels so much better, I was getting very warm under there.”

Mara got her first look at the young woman and was surprised at her beauty. Generally shifters were a beautiful species, with their toned bodies and strong bone structures. Here was a young lady as delicate as a fairy, long shining hair almost white in color, sharp features most likely due to lack of nourishment and skin so pale, it almost made her believe in vampires. This was skin that had never seen the kiss of the sun.

Before either woman could say anything there was a knock on the side of the camper.

“That’ll be the guys. We need to let them know how you want them to proceed,” she said.

“Let me go into the other room for a minute, then you can open the door by pressing that button over there and tell them we’ll be with them in a few minutes,” Laura explained as she maneuvered her chair to another door.

Mara waited until the second door had closed before pressing the button Laura had indicated. When the doors opened like the louvered doors on a bus she stepped onto the platform that Laura would normally roll her wheelchair onto.

“Call the alpha, we’ve all been invited for dinner after we help her move her things into her house,” she said in a voice so low only the shifters' hearing could pick it up.

“Sure thing, Mara,” said Ben.

After hitting the button again to close the doors she called out to Laura to let her know it was safe. Laura opened the door and waved Mara over.

“I’ve called the tram down the mountain. When they were enlarging the natural caves to make my home I had them use the rock they pulled out to create the foundation bed for the tram system. When it reaches the bottom, if the guys will load up the groceries, I’ll go up with them and start putting them away. Then they can use the tram to move all this stuff.” She waved at all the boxes stacked around the room and secured against shifting with webbing.

“That tram system is ingenious and the wooden walkway running alongside is nice too. Why did you put the walkway in if you have the tram?” Mara asked.

“The tram can be claustrophobic and during summer months my chair can go up and down the walkway if I’m not in a hurry. Or someone can keep pace with the tram and talk to me. My brothers used to do that a lot with my chair lift back at my father’s house. Here are the keys to the RV so you guys can lock it up when you’re done. Don’t forget to bring the clicker up to the house after you close up the garage.”

“Since you don’t have any other vehicles in here yet, why don’t I have the guys pull the truck inside and then we can shut the door against the sun? I’d like to introduce you to them and you can show them exactly what you want moved?” Mara suggested.

“That’s a great idea, we’ll do that. The side door leads to a covered corridor from here to the tram and walkway. I figured in winter it would make it much easier to get around. The chair isn’t rigged for snow. I have a snow-cat on order being modified for hand controls. It’ll have a plow attachment so I’ll be able to get into town.”

“It seems you’ve thought of everything,” Mara said, giving her a searching look.

“I have to be able to convince my brothers that I’m completely self-sufficient or they’re going to try to move in and take care of me again. Aaron is nearly thirty-seven and he should be married with a family of his own. I’m a burden,” she said simply before moving her chair away from the door.

When Mara would have said something Laura waved her off, she didn’t really want to discuss it with her new friend now. She still had to come clean about knowing they were shifters and give them all the intel she had accumulated on their enemies.

Mara saw a flash of something cross Laura’s face and she knew then that what she’d already learned was most likely only the surface of Laura’s personality. There were hidden depths. Hopefully they would learn all they needed to know at this dinner. She hoped the alpha didn’t find it necessary to kill the young girl who had already known so much pain.

*****

It took about four hours to get everything up to the house and halfway unpacked. Mara helped her with the kitchen and bedroom, and when Laura discovered Ben was a bit of a geek, she had him help her set up the house mainframe computer. She didn’t think she’d get all the house systems up and running the first day so this put her ahead of schedule. She had programmed an artificial intelligence she called Maggie House to run all the internal systems. Maggie would keep the temperature and security systems up and running at the proper levels. She would answer the door and deal with visitors. They had discovered an underground river that mimicked the nearby creek only it was much deeper. The underground cavern had a waterfall that fell into a deep pit that fed the underground water table. So instead of hooking up generators, her architect and engineers had set up a small hydroelectric plant in the cavern.

She was generating her own electricity, enough to power a city. Heat and power were covered, along with access to water. The only other issues she and the architect had had to work out were air ventilation and plumbing. The plumbing was complicated as an internal septic system was also put in place with a small water treatment plant. All those caverns under her land were coming in very handy. She would have to have engineers in to service the equipment twice a year, but that was a small price to pay for being so autonomous in the middle of nowhere.

When she was aware of the extent of the cave system, she had her people modify her plans, adding to them. They had given her a brainstorm and she felt it would be a gesture to the local shifter community that she was sincere. It meant she needed to use up an extra two and a half million dollars on the build but she considered it money well spent.

“This is a sweet system. I don’t know what half this shit is,” said Ben with some awe.

“Thanks, I designed a lot of it myself. I’ve been in this chair since I was seven so I’ve had a lot of time in my head to work on stuff. If you want to work on a barter system, I’ll trade your strong legs for some of my knowledge. Wanna be a part-time helper? If not, I can always pay you for your time,” she said in a rush.

The young man’s cheeks turned ruddy. He knew this woman wasn’t his mate but he still felt protective of her. It was almost unheard of for a shifter to be crippled in the way Laura had been at such a young age.

“I would be privileged to be your helper, but I would need to check with my al…elder family members first.”

Catching the slip of the tongue she slowly nodded her head. It was the first concrete evidence that she was right in her conclusions about the three people being shifters. She pretended not to notice.

“Okay, that’s fine. Why don’t you go get a second chair and I’ll start the system and run it through all the necessary check routines. You can watch and if you have questions, I’ll answer them as they come along.”

Ben nodded eagerly and went to get a chair from the dining room. Laura was taking a huge risk, this was the first time she’d let anyone see everything she was capable of doing with a computer. But if she was going to earn their trust, it was important that she not hold back from them. It was the reason she told Mara up front about her family and their connection to the government and military. She knew in their culture those connections might be held against her so she put it all out there.

She’d had the entire house pre-wired before the sheetrock went up so connecting in hadn’t taken them long. She didn’t use Wi-Fi for her main connections, too much of a security risk. The electricity was all connected up and the power levels were more than enough to run the entire house. She had a separate Wi-Fi router, which was only good internally. The house was shielded from outside access. It couldn’t be used to access the web, but she could run any system in the house from her chair with a computer tablet if she needed to. It was a failsafe in case Maggie House had a bug.

By the time Ben got back with the chair, she was already logged in and had started running her checks. This specific computer would be running the house solely. She was setting up the rest of the equipment in her office. This room was the terminal room for Maggie. She’d based the image of Maggie on an actress named Juliet Mills from a 1970 TV show called
Nanny and the Professor
.

“Hello, Laura is that you, dear?” Maggie said through the speakers, making Ben jump a little in his chair.

“Yes, Maggie, it’s me. Are you completely functional?” she asked.

“Let me run a diagnostic…please check the sensors in quadrant two. I think there might me a loose connection,” she said in her soft voice with its British intonations. Laura had recorded and isolated Juliet Mills’ voice from all the episodes of
Nanny and the Professor
and she thought she got the voice just right.