Chapter 7 All Tripped Up

CHAPTER 7: ALL TRIPPED UP

Thirty minutes earlier

"These look delicious!" Bonnie palmed a kiwi in the produce aisle of the grocery store and tossed it to Alice.

Alice caught it and mimed making a basket with it.

"A kiwi style layup. Now I've seen it all," Bonnie chuckled. "I was thinking of grabbing a few of these to put in a fruit salad."

"Oo, good idea." Alice pulled a clear plastic bag off the nearest dispenser and started shoving kiwis into it.

Bonnie moved to a refrigerated display case and selected the freshest looking clear plastic containers of strawberries and blueberries. She returned to the cart with her hands full. "The fruit salad will be one of my contributions to the BBQ this evening." She was tickled to pieces that Alice and Zayden had invited her and Holt to join them for dinner. She was looking forward to getting to know Alice's fiancé better. The four of them had never hung out together as a group. Bonnie hoped it was the first of many such visits.

"One of your contributions?" Alice looked surprised. "Trust me. A fruit salad is more than enough."

"Are you sure?" Bonnie wanted to pull her weight. "Holt has been putting in such long hours lately. I'm not sure he's going to have time to bring anything."

"I'm sure." Alice smiled. "Y'all can pay us back by inviting us over in return."

Bonnie snickered at the picture that popped into her head. "If we all suck in our breath, we might fit side by side like sardines in the kitchenette of my place."

"Zayden's waterfront cottages are pretty cozy, aren't they?" Alice's voice was edged with smugness, probably since the whole waterfront property project had been her idea.

"I love it there." If Bonnie had searched the whole town over, she couldn't have found a more perfect spot to call home. "It's so peaceful and…" She shook her head as she replayed her new favorite morning ritual inside her head. "I start off every morning with a cup of coffee on the front porch, just so I can watch the turtles diving off that old tree stump sticking out of the water." She was grateful that Zayden had been willing to rent her one of his tiny houses, especially since she was pretty sure he'd given her the friend discount. He would've made more money from a complete stranger.

"I'm happy that you're happy." The edges of Alice's eyes crinkled warmly. "You deserve to be happy, Bon Bon. Just don't, um…shut your family out forever, okay?" Her smile slipped. "They're good people, even your annoying brothers."

"I know." Bonnie pushed the cart toward the bread aisle. "I just needed some space to lick my wounds." Having her own air to breathe was downright therapeutic. Her festering anger and frustration were drying up. She was healing.

"It's been nearly three weeks," Alice reminded softly, falling into step beside her. "You should at least call your mom."

Bonnie wrinkled her nose. "Who says I haven't?"

"I do, since you tell me everything," Alice pointed out.

"Guess that's what I get for having a boss who feels more like a sister," Bonnie sighed.

"You mean a partner who feels like a sister," Alice corrected. "My attorney just this afternoon finished drawing up our partnership agreement. I'll email you a copy this evening so you can start reading through it. I want to make sure it includes everything we want."

"Thank you! This is so exciting." Butterflies danced in her stomach as she selected a bag of sourdough dinner rolls from an end cap display. "I hope you don't mind me admitting I'm a little nervous about it, too."

"You'll get used to it." Alice looked supremely unconcerned about it. "Who knows? Maybe a year from now, we'll both have our own administrative assistants to boss around."

She was joking, of course. She'd always treated Bonnie like a valued employee.

The mere thought of having her own assistant made Bonnie shiver. "One step at a time. My main focus right now is passing the brokerage exam."

"You'll do great. You already know the business inside and out, thanks to one really cool realtor in town." Alice gave her a mischievous smile. "You're welcome."

Bonnie burst out laughing. "Like you ever made it a secret that you were training me for greater things."

"I know, right?" Alice nudged her playfully with an elbow. "Subtlety isn't exactly my forte." She was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of gal. It was one of the things Bonnie had always loved about her.

They picked up a few more items —paper plates, napkins, and bottled water. Then they headed for the self-checkout line.

"Divide and conquer." Alice positioned the cart between two empty and available scanning stations and started ringing up her purchases.

Bonnie did the same. A few short minutes later, they were on their way back to Alice's shiny red Mustang.

"Oh, my goodness!" Alice abruptly held out the handles of her white plastic shopping bags to Bonnie. "Do you mind taking these? I see a friend from high school I haven't spoken to in forever. She just moved back to town to marry her longtime boyfriend. And if the rumors are true, they're in the market for a new house!" She chortled with delight when Bonnie took the bags off her hands. Then she took off across the parking lot.

"Before you get too far..." Bonnie raised her voice so it would carry. "I'm gonna need your keys, boss lady."

"True." Pausing her jaunt, Alice dug in her purse and came up with a set of keys. She tossed them to Bonnie, not even waiting to see if Bonnie caught them before she hurried away.

Bonnie managed to catch them, though it wasn't easy with so many grocery bags looped around her wrists. "Go get ‘em, tiger!" She sincerely hoped Alice was able to serve as her high school friend's real estate agent. Reaching Alice's car, she popped the trunk open. "Whoa!" Something about the dark, looming interior of the trunk brought on a wave of dizziness.

Blinking to clear her vision, she leaned over to deposit the grocery bags in the trunk and experienced another wave of the same weird feeling — a woozy, sinking sensation that threw off her equilibrium. If she leaned forward any farther, she felt like she'd fall face-first into the trunk.

What is wrong with me? She frowned at the yawning opening for a few seconds before noticing that her carton of strawberries had come open. "Oh, no!" She leaned over to gather the loose strawberries and return them to the carton.

Her movements threw her off balance again. She had to splay both palms against the bottom of the car trunk to keep from falling in.

She squeezed her eyelids shut against the rush of sights and sounds flooding her senses. Voices. Flashes of color. Flickers of light. Radiating heat that made it harder to breathe. She tasted an icky metallic tang.

Blood?

She rolled her tongue around, wondering if she'd accidentally bitten the inside of her mouth.

She found no cuts or abrasions, and the taste faded. Her eyelids fluttered open, and the blast of sensations receded, making her realize she must have imagined them. Unless…

There was another reason why they might have felt so real, a much more plausible reason.

Confusion shuddered through her. Was some remnant of the missing three days of her memories bleeding through the walls her subconscious had built around them?

Am I finally remembering?

She closed her eyes again, keeping her hands splayed against the bottom of the trunk, and tried to relax. The flood of sensations returned, making her feel things she'd long since forgotten.

Short wool-like fuzz beneath her fingers.

A dark, enclosed cocoon.

The slam of a door.

Movement beneath her.

At some point in her life, she'd ridden inside a car trunk. Was that how she'd been taken six years ago from Mack's General Store in Dallas? She squeezed her eyelids tighter and tried harder — as hard as she could to remember.

"Bonnie?" A woman shouted her name. "Bonnie!" It was Alice.

"No, no, no," Bonnie murmured, as the memories she was reaching for drifted away. "Don't go!" She curled her fingers against the carpeted trunk, trying to hold on to them, but they drifted out of reach.

"Bonnie!" Alice's hands closed around her shoulders, shaking her gently. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

Bonnie slowly straightened and opened her eyes. "I remembered something," she said, twirling around to face her friend.

Alice stared at her in confusion.

"About my abduction." Bonnie flicked her wrist in agitation.

Alice's expression grew more concerned. "What are you talking about?"

Oh, that's right. Alice didn't know. Bonnie made a rueful face at her. "It happened before we moved here. I was fifteen."

"I had no idea." Alice's voice grew stricken. She enclosed Bonnie in a tender hug. "Your unusual connection with Holt. It all makes sense now." Her sigh held a hitch of emotion. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I'd put it behind me," Bonnie murmured against her shoulder. "My parents moved us here to put the past behind us and start fresh." For some of her brothers, it had worked. Not so much for Jackson. He was still beating himself up over what had happened. "Also," she confessed with a wry chuckle, "because I haven't been able to remember it —any of it —until today."

"Oh, Bon Bon!" Alice rocked from side to side with her for a moment. Then she led her around to the passenger side of the car. "What do you want me to do? Where would you like me to take you?"

"To the BBQ." Bonnie didn't have to think twice about that. "I seem to recall you and Zayden inviting us to dinner. Holt's probably already there, wondering where we are."

"Do you seriously feel up to hanging out after…?" Alice stood by the door, watching Bonnie with concern while she buckled her seatbelt.

"Absolutely!" She was sure of it. "After my little flashback, there's nothing I'd like more than to spend a normal evening with normal people." She made a face at her friend. "So I can feel normal again."

"Okay, then." With one last concerned look, Alice shut the door and moved around the front of the car.

Bonnie whipped out her cell phone and opened her text message app. She'd typed a message there a few days ago, but she hadn't sent it yet. It was to the couple claiming to be her birth parents.

Tell me something only my birth parents and I would know.

It was a foolish attempt to prove they were who they said they were. Or catch them in a lie, thereby exposing them as frauds. There was one big problem with her plan. She'd been a baby at the time, and she remembered next to nothing prior to her adoption. Only tiny snatches of things that she'd never told anyone about.

A song that a woman had sung to her. A lullaby of some sort. White curtains blowing in the wind. More white. Blankets maybe?

Alice opened her door and slid behind the wheel. "My hands are shaking," she announced out of the blue.

"Why?" Bonnie glanced up from her cell phone. I'm the one reliving trauma here.

"Because you're my best friend in the world, and I didn't know you were kidnapped." She sounded close to weeping.

"I'm sorry for keeping it from you." Bonnie stuffed her phone back in her purse.

Tears glistened in Alice's eyes. "I've spent the last couple of years drumming real estate into your brain, teasing you mercilessly at every opportunity, and?—"

"Treating me like a normal person," Bonnie interrupted. "That's what I wanted. It's what I needed more than anything. Thank you."

"And now that I know about the other…" Alice choked.

"You're going to continue treating me like a normal person," Bonnie said firmly. "Otherwise, I'm going to quit real estate and join a convent."

"Ha!" Alice chuckled through her tears. "They'd never agree to take you on. You're too much trouble."

"So my brothers keep telling me," Bonnie grumbled.

"Mostly Jackson, right?" Alice started the motor.

"Yes. Mostly him." Bonnie rolled her eyes. An unexpected wave of homesickness slammed into her from out of nowhere. "Oh, wow! Now I miss him."

"Good." Alice drove out of the parking lot and turned left toward Zayden's place. "You should call him."

With a sigh, Bonnie pulled her cell phone back out of her purse. A text message was waiting for her, one that shook her to her core. She frowned as she read it, wondering how in the world her birth parents had responded to a text she'd never sent, unless…oh!

It dawned on her that she must've accidentally hit the send button with her thumb while she was stuffing her phone back into her purse earlier. She read what Greg and Bonita Williamson had written her a second time and a third time.

I used to rock you in the chair by the window in the living room. And sing this lullaby to you.

A sound file was attached to the message.

Bonnie wanted so badly to listen to the file, but she decided to wait until she was alone.

"So, are you going to call him?" Alice urged.

Bonnie blinked at her. It took a few seconds to realize who she was referring to. Jackson.

"Later." She was careful to turn off her phone this time before putting it away, not wanting to accidentally send a message to anyone else. "I'd like to enjoy the BBQ first and deal with my family drama later."

Alice's smile was bland. "Whatever you think is best."

Bonnie could sense she didn't quite approve of her putting it off, but her mind was racing over the message she'd inadvertently sent to her birth parents for a response. She needed to pull Holt aside as soon as possible to tell him about their response.

They must be who they say they are. Though Bonnie's heart was unsettled about the whole situation, there was no denying that Bonita Williamson had shared something only her real parents would know. Her next thought was even more poignant.

I want to meet them.

Did that make her a bad person? Would it mean she was being disloyal to her adoptive parents? To her brothers? The feelings swirling through her were all so confusing!

The next thing she knew, they were pulling into Zayden's driveway. "Wow! That was fast." She reached for the door handle.

"Not really." Alice gave her a searching look. "You were just too zoned out over there to pay much attention to the drive. Or me," she added in a voice of mock petulance as she opened her door and stood. "I feel neglected," she declared dramatically as Zayden strode their way.

"Well, let me remedy that." The dark, good looking police detective had a short apron tied around the waist of his jeans and a spatula in hand. He hooked his other arm around Alice's waist and tugged her closer for a kiss. "Nice of you two to finally join us," he muttered against her lips. "We were about to send a search party after you."

"Hey!" Alice spluttered. "I told you we were stopping by the grocery store on our way here."

"Well, you took too long." Zayden kissed her again. "I missed you."

Holt jogged around the side of the farmhouse and made a beeline for Bonnie's door. "There you guys are. We were getting worried." He held out a hand and tugged her from the car.

"Your sister ran into an old friend who's in the market for a house." Bonnie stood to give Holt a hug. "We need to talk," she said softly for his ears alone.

"Plus. Bonnie tripped and nearly fell into the trunk of my car," Alice announced dramatically. "We had all kinds of adventures on our way here."

Bonnie winced as she slipped out of Holt's embrace. The flashback was still too fresh. Too raw. She wasn't ready to joke about it yet.

Looking worried, Alice whispered something to her fiancé that made him glance in concern at Bonnie.

"Really?" Bonnie scowled. "I'm right here, you two. At least wait until I walk away so you can talk behind my back."

"That's not happening, partner." Alice sailed around the car to link arms with her. They headed to the porch together. "I've got nothing to hide from you. So when I'm worried about you, you're going to know it."

"I just wanted to have a normal evening." Bonnie tipped her head in defeat against Alice's shoulder.

"Oh, honey," Alice exclaimed to no one in particular. "You think the Underwoods and the Winchesters are normal? Bless your heart!" She sniffed.

"Knock it off!" Holt caught up to them as they rounded the first corner of Zayden's wrap-around porch. "I've got her fooled, and I'd like to keep it that way."

A chuckle escaped Bonnie despite her frustration. Hearing her dearest friends in the world bicker was exactly what she'd needed to make her feel normal again. It also made her miss her brothers again. Alice was right. Bonnie needed to call Jackson soon. And her parents. It was time to smooth things over with her family.

When the four friends reached the back porch, Zayden hurried ahead of them to check the meat on the grill. It was puffing smoke at the far end of the porch and filling the air with the delicious scent of grilling meat.

A scattering of wicker furniture with comfy blue cushions overlooked the yard. Pastures stretched as far as the eye could see. Zayden's plan was to have a herd of cattle grazing there soon. He was still saving money for that.

Bonnie's feet ground to a halt by the back door. "Mind if I head inside for a pit stop?"

Zayden nodded. "Powder room is under the stairs."

"Thanks." She added in a warning voice, "Talk about me all you want while I'm gone, because when I get back, I'm changing the subject." Without waiting for anyone to answer, she opened the screen door and headed inside.

Though she ended up in the half bathroom beneath the stairs, she didn't actually need to use the facilities. Instead, she perched on the toilet seat and pulled out her cell phone again. Opening the message from her birth parents, she clicked on the sound file.

A lilting lullaby filled the small room. It was louder than she'd anticipated. She hastily turned the sound down, but there was no mistaking the woman's airy voice. Bonnie recognized it, because she'd heard it before — singing the same song to her when she was small.

She closed her eyes while she listened, ignoring the dampness of tears on her cheeks. While the woman sang, Bonnie visualized white curtains in a nursery. They were rippling in the breeze from an open window. The scent of cookies wafted through the air.

A tortured sob escaped her that she fought to muffle. Then another sob came, and another one.

"Bonnie?" Holt knocked on the door. "You okay in there?"

She was weeping too hard to answer. Instead, she stood and opened the door. The music file was still playing. She laid her phone on the vanity and stumbled into his arms.

"No," she quavered, burying her face against his chest. "I'm not okay."

"It's okay not to be okay." His voice was rough with understanding as he pressed his cheek against the top of her head. "I've got you, babe."

They stood there in the hallway, wrapped in each other's arms, listening to the music until the last note faded.

"That was my mother." Bonnie's voice was muffled against his shirt. "My birth mother. She used to sing that song to me when I was little."

Holt rubbed one large hand in a circle against her back. "Uh…you wanna tell me what's going on?"

So she did. She told him everything, from the accidental text message to the response she'd received from it. "It's them, Holt. This song proves it. It's my mom's voice. I…remember her."

He drew a heavy breath and didn't immediately answer.

Alarm swept through her at the strange look on his face. "Please tell me you believe me."

"I do," he said carefully. "I believe you heard this woman's voice, probably from the time you were…" He stopped and sighed.

"A baby?" She leaned back in his arms to scan his features. "That's what you were about to say, wasn't it?"

He drew another heavy breath. "Not necessarily. It's difficult to decide what to believe and not believe these days, but I'm just not swallowing the whole miraculous reappearance of your birth parents. I'm sorry, but I can't."

All she could do was stare. "Why not?"

"Because the song sounds like a professional recording."

Professional? Her brain latched onto the word. Now that he mentioned it, though… She winced, not wanting to go there inside her head. "What exactly are you saying?" Acute disappointment swept through her.

His arms tightened protectively around her. "I'm saying that if someone was doing a casual recording at home, there'd be some background noises. Simple things like inhaling and exhaling. Maybe the rustle of clothing. Normal, everyday sounds. This file," he pointed at her phone. "I'm sorry, but my gut says it's too clean."

She frantically searched her memories, longing to give credence to the music and the feelings it had evoked in her. However, she struggled to remember her mother's arms. Or face. Or the bottle she must have been holding to her baby's mouth. Bonnie honestly couldn't remember a blessed thing beyond the voice and music.

"Why can't I remember her face?" Her voice grew wistful and pleading. "Her touch?" Every cell in her body longed to remember her birth mother.

"I don't know." Holt studied her with concern. "I have my suspicions, though."

"You must think I'm crazy." More tears leaked from Bonnie's eyes. This time, they were mournful ones. Tears for the mother she couldn't remember. Tears for the tender moments they'd surely shared.

"No. I don't." He cuddled her against his chest. "I just found out something this evening about my own past that's a little disturbing. Actually, it's very disturbing." He recounted his meeting with his bosses to her. "You want to talk about crazy? I'm the one who felt crazy when my employers exposed the fact that I was transposing VIN numbers."

He retrieved her cell phone and led her to the living room in the front of the house and took a seat on the sofa. Then he tugged her down beside him. "I think we've been tampered with, babe. You and I." He studied her gravely. "During our respective abductions. I thought mine was all about revenge for helping put some dangerous men in jail, but what if it wasn't about revenge? What if it was about something more sinister?"

"Like what?" she begged piteously. She hated feeling so vulnerable and helpless.

"Mind control." He gestured as he expounded on his theory. "There are techniques that can be used to plant false memories in a person. Everything from hypnosis therapy to the power of suggestion to the ingestion of substances that can make a person more impressionable. More susceptible."

Bonnie closed her eyes, trying to absorb everything she was hearing. "Meaning I could be remembering things that never happened?"

"Exactly, babe." His voice was low and soothing. "You and me both."

That would certainly explain the enormous blanks in her memories. If she'd been unconscious when she was taken, she would never recover the intrinsic details about what had happened to her. Oddly enough, the possibility that she'd been unconscious at the time made her feel a little less damaged.

It's perfectly normal not to remember things when you're asleep . It was still disturbing that she'd been kidnapped at all. It was even more disturbing to know that someone had deliberately altered her memories. As much as it hurt, she was forced to acknowledge that the woman's voice singing the lullaby and the white curtains blowing in the wind probably weren't real.

What she didn't understand was why anyone would do this to her. What had they hoped to accomplish by it? One thing was clear. Whoever was pretending to be her birth parents wanted to see her in person. But why? Their reasons couldn't be good.

Holt reached for her hand. "We should report this to the police, babe."

She nodded. "I think we should now that we have something tangible to show them." Maybe they had a way of tracing the phone call from Greg and Bonita Williamson.

It was a quiet BBQ dinner. Bonnie and her friends were each lost in their own thoughts. It was still a pleasant dinner, just somber. They sank against the plush blue cushions on the patio furniture, munching on their hamburgers, hotdogs, spicy brats, and fruit salad.

Afterward, Holt walked Bonnie to her tiny house. It rested above a boat dock on the biggest pond on Zayden's property. If a person was being generous, they might call it a small lake. The white siding and stacked stone home yielded roughly three hundred square feet of living space in one-and-a-half stories. Her white Civic was parked in the attached carport.

She tossed her purse inside the door and returned to the cozy front porch.

Holt was leaning on the railing, staring at the water. "Do you want to call the police, or do you want me to call them?" he offered without looking up.

She joined him there, allowing the view to calm her troubled soul. "You," she said simply.

He dug out his cell phone and dialed Sheriff Cade Malone, tapping the speakerphone button so Bonnie could listen. To his enormous gratitude, his call didn't immediately roll to voicemail.

"Hey, Holt!" The sheriff's voice was filled with energy. "Just finished a chat with Foster Kane and Lyon Garrett. Was about to give you a call myself."

Something about the sheriff's tone told him they'd been talking about him. "It's, uh…about Bonnie Yates." He glanced at her, and she gave him a tight nod, urging him to continue.

"Ah." Cade Malone's voice grew cautious, indicating he already knew something about her unfortunate past.

"She's remembering, sir."

"Oh, boy," the sheriff sighed. "Listen, I already know about her abductions."

Bonnie gave a strangled gasp and clapped a hand over her mouth as he continued speaking. "Foster and Lyon just finished sharing what they know about the first abduction, and Bonnie's parents filled our department in on the second one right after they moved into town. We've been running random patrols around their place ever since."

Holt frowned "And?"

"And nothing." The sheriff sounded bleak. "For six straight years, there've been no trespassers, no loiterers, no attempted break-ins. Nothing."

Holt's jaw tightened. "What we called to share with you isn't nothing."

"We?" the sheriff asked quickly. "Is she with you?"

"I am." Bonnie's voice was deceptively calm for a woman who'd been weeping so hard before dinner. She plunged into her sordid tale. "I received a letter a few days ago from a couple claiming to be my birth parents."

Dead silence met her announcement.

"I wrote them back, but I never sent the message. I wanted to, but…" She shook her head. "It didn't feel right to. I left the message sitting on my screen, though, asking them to tell me something only I would know. Earlier this evening, I sent the message by accident." She drew a deep breath. "And they responded. Or my birth mom did. I mean…the woman claiming to be her," she corrected. "She described a flashback I'd experienced only minutes earlier. White curtains blowing in the breeze and a woman singing me a lullaby. She attached a sound file of the song. I'd be happy to forward it to you if you want."

"Yes, please." The sheriff's voice was profoundly gentle. "Are you alright?"

"I'm trying to be." She scrolled through her messages on her cell phone and pulled up the short conversation thread with Greg and Bonita Williamson. Then she handed her phone to Holt, so he could do the honors.

He caressed her fingers during the handoff. "Sir, we're forwarding you the text conversation and the sound file."

"I'll take a look at them right away." The sheriff was silent for a moment. "Have you told your parents about this, Bonnie?"

"Not yet." She gave Holt an agonized look.

He nodded in resignation. "We're about to give her oldest brother a call."

She looked taken aback and mouthed to him. We are?

"Good." The sheriff sounded relieved. "We're gonna need as many folks as possible looking after you in the coming days, Bonnie."

"Why?" She sounded hesitant.

"Because we believe we're closing in on the scalawags behind all this nonsense. And they're not going to like it one bit." He gave a low whistle. "Expect some fireworks, y'all."

He didn't explain what he meant by fireworks, and neither Holt nor Bonnie asked.