Alice wasn’t ready yet to have police and agents swarming around her and asking her a slew of questions. She claimed that she was fine, but Dylan was much less confident about her emotional and mental well-being. It was only two days ago that she’d been told she’d been born a completely different person than the one she’d believed herself to be.
She certainly wouldn’t be prepared if her “mother,” Sissy Reed, and some or all of her many uncles were implicated in colluding with Avery Cunningham, one of Addie Durand’s kidnappers. She hadn’t asked him about the Reeds’ involvement in the past few days and Dylan hoped to spare Alice that reality until some future date. In Sidney Gates’s professional opinion, Alice suspected the Reeds’ collusion and was repressing it. Her silence on the matter was an indication to him that she wasn’t ready to tackle that painful territory yet.
Don’t ask. Don’t tell. That was the course of action Sidney was recommending for now.
To have the Reed clan thrown into prison right this second might give Dylan a rush of sweet vengeance, but it would only leave Alice feeling more torn, confused, and alone. She despised the Reeds, but they were family, too. Dylan knew better than most that feelings toward family members could be a tangled, confusing mess.
He unclenched his jaw and exhaled his frustration. “Jim Sheridan, I’d like you to meet Alice Reed.”
“Do you have a license to carry that five iron, ma’am?” Jim asked, stepping forward with his hand extended in greeting. Alice glanced dazedly at the golf club she gripped like she’d forgotten it was there. She grimaced and unpried her hand, shaking with Jim.
“It was the first likely candidate I saw in Dylan’s closet.”
“I’ve always preferred a seven iron for a fight myself, but I can see how the five might give you a little more maneuverability in a pinch,” Jim joked.
“You wouldn’t have needed either if you’d done what I’d asked you to do and stayed put,” Dylan reminded quietly, leaning against his desk with forced casualness.
That wild, cornered-animal look leapt back into her eyes. “What if you needed help? I couldn’t just wait up there without knowing what was going on!”
“I told you I could handle it myself, Alice,” he said, his pointed stare meant to remind her of what else he’d asked her to do. She looked a little abashed, but clearly was not subdued.
“So what is going on?” she asked, shifting on her bare feet and glancing at Jim.
“Nothing much. And unless you can fight the aftereffects of an electrical storm with that golf club, there’s nothing here to do,” Jim said.
“The storm set off the alarm?” Alice asked, lowering Dylan’s club slowly. “But the storm has been over for hours.”
“Maybe it was some kind of residual electrical burst,” said Jim. “Hard to tell.”
“The point is, everything is fine,” Dylan said. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her, as if she had just become aware of her disheveled appearance. Dylan didn’t care for the way Jim stared at her face fixedly, a slightly bemused expression on his face. Again, Dylan experienced that sharp urge to hide her. “The house was never breached. Why don’t you go back upstairs? I’ll be up in a minute,” he added when she furtively met his stare from behind the partial shield of her spiky bangs.
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed huskily after a moment. “I guess that alarm clock is going to go off soon.”
“Have to work early in the morning?” Jim asked.
“Yeah,” Alice replied.
“There was some pretty serious flooding a few miles south of town in the vicinity of Chandler Creek. I hope you don’t have to drive far to work,” Jim said concernedly.
“Oh no. I’m just down at the camp.”
Dylan resisted an urge to roll his eyes at her giving Jim exactly what he’d angled for with his fishing. She gave Dylan one last fleeting glance and walked out of the room.
*
THE next morning her kids were still riding high from being the top team in accumulated points after the first week at Camp Durand. It was a good time to have everybody so cheerful, because the morning mandatory activity was the zip line challenge—the activity Alice had struggled with most during her training. Alice was terrified of heights. Worse yet, she’d been paired up for the zip line during training with Brooke Seifert, who had been Alice’s nemesis since the first day she’d arrived at camp.
Today Alice was more fortunate.
“At least I don’t have to do the zip line myself this time around. And, I’m with you instead of Brooke,” Alice said quietly to Kuvi Sarin as they walked side by side through a meadow toward the woods, the twenty kids from both of their teams spread out around them. Kuvi was her cabin mate and friend. She was warm, genuine, funny, and smart. Except for the smart part, she was pretty much the exact opposite of Brooke Seifert.