Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (5 page)

Okay, a few steps … still no spinning. Even better. Slowly, she moved to the window, resting her brow on the icy glass.

“Are you okay?”

Shay laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it.
“Okay? Yeah. Sure. Why not?” Sighing, she lifted her head away from the glass and turned back to her desk. The computer sat there, the screen glaringly white. Okay, so somebody had set up a Facebook page for her. She could deal with that mess—she’d just get it shut down. It wasn’t her page, she didn’t want it there, end of story. Since she hadn’t set it up, that made it a fraud and there had to be rules on Facebook’s site against that, right?

Shay always dealt better with things when she had a solution in sight.

There was still the problem of the book—of
all
of those books back at Elliot’s store—and she’d deal with that one, too.

First, she had to get off the phone, though. “Darcy, look, I need to figure out what’s going on. So we’ll talk later.”

“But—”

She hung up. Darcy would keep her on the phone for the next two hours and although Shay loved her dearly, she just didn’t have time for it.

The woman she remembered from school was just … different. Oh, Darcy still loved to talk, but the funny, free-spirited chatter had been replaced and more often than not, Shay was stuck listening to chatter about TV shows, or hot guys that Shay had never heard of, or why wasn’t Shay getting better placement at some bookstore in Boise, Idaho.

A pang of longing hit her. She missed her friend. But she just didn’t have time to deal with the chattering or nonsense right now.

Surrounded by the peaceful silence of her home, Shay pushed Darcy out of her mind. She bent over the desk and set to work. She didn’t use Facebook, although she’d set up a dummy account for a book she’d written a year ago where the killer had stalked his victims
through the social media site and she’d needed to understand how the platform worked.

Using that persona, she logged in and started poking around.

“This isn’t good,” she muttered as she did the
LIKE
thing. More than ten thousand fans. Shit. Shit.
Shit
.

Six weeks ago …

All of the info on the page was crap that could be found on Shane’s admittedly minuscule website. She kept it short and sweet for a reason—it was all about the books, what had been written and what was coming. Next to no info on her—or him, as the world thought Shane was a guy.

There weren’t any author photos on the Facebook page. The images were all of her book covers and that sort of thing. She was both grateful and a little frustrated. While it would have been terrifying if somebody had pictures of
her
and freaky if somebody had been posting pictures masquerading as her “other” self, having a picture of somebody might have clued her in to what was going on. Maybe.

What was really disturbing, though, was how this person related to the world. Although there was no
way
Shay would be doing this, it sure as hell sounded like her. A lot. She recognized phrases she used, her general attitude … everything.

The worst thing of all was that the imposter “Shane” sounded like a woman.

It was pretty damn clear by the interaction on Facebook that many of the readers there didn’t seem to buy the
guy
bit anymore. The commentary on the page from the
Shane
wannabe had a decidedly female voice to it and about two weeks ago, the imposter had up and stated:

“Lucky guess? Or did you know?” Shay murmured, stroking one of her scars and steaming. The more she read, the angrier she got. Hardly
anybody
knew. A few might suspect, but the people who
knew
? She could probably count them on her hands and still have fingers left over.

She’d kept as much of her real identity—name, gender, where she lived, everything—as hidden as she could, and this freak went and blasted something in the open. Even if it was just her gender, it was too much.

“Who are you?” Shay stared at the monitor, but it didn’t yield any answers. Not that she was expecting any.

Absently, she touched the ridges along the right side of her face, ridges left by burns.

I’ll find you …

She swallowed, shoving that voice out of her head. She’d escaped. He’d been put in prison. She’d left and hadn’t been found.

That was what mattered. Not those terrifying, ugly memories. Even if what had happened to her had destroyed any carefree nature she might have had. Everything she’d hoped to be, everything she’d been—it had all withered and faded and ultimately it died, one ugly, awful night.

But she’d remade herself.

Frowning, she clicked on the link on the
Shane
page, skimming over the “likes.” It was a sucker punch when she saw a name she recognized.

Winter’s End
. Shit.

That was
Elliot’s
store.

Winter’s End
 …

She had an imposter masquerading as her online, and there was somebody who’d gone and signed her books, at least
once
, at that store. Just miles away. Coincidence?

Shay was too paranoid to believe in coincidence.

With a pounding head, and a heavy heart, she started to dig further. She’d seen other links when the search results had come up, and sure enough, there was plenty to find.

A blog.

A Twitter account.

The longer she read, the more disturbed she got.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

Swallowing, she reached for the phone. She needed to contact whoever on Facebook could handle this mess, but she also needed to let her agent know something very strange was going on.

She felt a little bit better as she dialed the number. It would be late in New York, but Anna would have an idea where to go from here. It was also Friday, but Anna would answer, and if she couldn’t, she’d call back. Then they could get this mess straightened out.

Anna
always
knew how to handle things. Although they had never met in person, Anna was definitely somebody Shay could count on and when it came to all things writing, she was like a port in the storm.

Anna would know what to do.

Anna was Shay’s port in the storm.

But Shay’s port in the storm, it seemed, was closed.

Scowling, she lowered the phone after the message finished playing. “That sure as hell is the right number.” She punched it again and waited, listening as she was told the number was no longer in service.

“Okay, it hasn’t been
that
long since I called her, has it?” Bringing up her email, she did a quick search and found the phone number on Anna’s last message.

Yep. It was right.

So what the heck was this?

Sighing, she shot Anna an email.

She cut the link to the Facebook page from the browser bar and added it to the email.

She sent off the email and switched back to the Facebook page, scrolling down until she found the
help
option. Which
wasn’t
particularly helpful.

By the time she’d finished with that, her head was throbbing, her shoulders were tight, and she was so pissed she couldn’t see straight. She kept shooting her phone hopeful glances, thinking Anna would call. Any minute now.

As soon as she got the email, Anna
would
call. Instead of wasting time worrying about that, she went back to her Googling. Her brain almost exploded at what she saw next.

Yeah, she’d seen the blog. The Twitter account.

But that wasn’t all.

LinkedIn, Goodreads, an Amazon author account—pretty much every damn social media thing an author could do. Pretty much everything she’d avoided.

It was all there now.

And she hadn’t done any of them.

Son of a
bitch—

Nearly six hours after she’d left, Elliot sat at his desk, still brooding over Shay.

Fuck, he missed her.

Just seeing her made him ache.

Even when she pulled away.

Not too many things had left a hole in him. Losing his parents. Yeah, that had done it—their abrupt death in a freak accident years earlier had left both him and Lorna reeling.

He’d reeled himself right into the military, but it had been a good fit. He’d belonged there. It had left another hole in him when he finally realized that something could happen to change that—ugly accusations, nasty lies, a disaster that had ruined his career. Eight years he’d given them … and it had ended in a nightmare that had sent his life spinning right out of control, again.

But he’d put it back on track. He came back home to Alaska, opened the bookstore with Lorna. Good choices, both of which had worked for him, and he hadn’t had to worry so much about what others thought. His life had been his own and he was ready to live it just as he saw fit.

Then he met Shay. Once more, his life was jerked off course, but in the best way imaginable. For a while. Until he realized she’d never let him in. But shit, he missed her. Maybe—

“No.” He shook the thought off, reminding himself of just how miserable he’d been those last days before he’d finally acknowledged the truth. He wasn’t going through that with her again. Not with her, not with anybody. He’d either be able to trust her, and have her trust, or it just wouldn’t happen.

Determined to distract himself, he logged into his email. That was a chore that would keep him glued to the desk for another two hours and by the time he was done, he’d be stupid-tired—too tired to think.

Excellent.

Thirty minutes into the job, he came across a request that made his eyebrows go up.

A friend request.

From Shane Neil.

Running his tongue along his teeth, he read it again, studying the book’s cover image that served as her picture.

He’d been surprised as hell to find out that Shane Neil wasn’t a man, but a woman. Very much a woman, with dark hair, curves out to there, and a wide, flirtatious smile. She’d done a little heavy-handed flirting, including inviting him out to dinner, but he had about as much interest in that as he would have had in an IRS audit. Maybe even less. He liked the woman’s writing, sure. Outright loved it. But she’d left him cold … in so many ways. Something in her eyes just hadn’t been right.

She’d brought bookmarks. An advance reader’s copy of her next book—one not due out for four months yet. The new book he had in the store now was the paperback issue of the hardback that had come out earlier in the year. He’d read it in one sitting. He’d done the same with the ARC she’d brought in.

Yeah, he’d been surprised when she’d come strolling into his store a couple of weeks ago, but this caught him a little more off guard. What was a big-name author doing friending him on his personal page?

He almost deleted the request but figured it wasn’t a big deal. Hell, she had only a couple hundred personal friends and he even knew a few of them—booksellers, industry people that he’d met here and there. What was the problem?

Shay stared at the online diary she kept. She’d started doing it after a therapist had suggested writing things down. The nightmares had started coming more frequently after college, and although nothing had been clear, they didn’t need to be clear for her to relate feelings, thoughts, or even the vaguest bit of memory.