Bikinis in Paradise (Tj Jensen Pardise Lake Mysteries) (24 page)

“Papa and Mr. Ward.”

“Aaron’s dad?”

“Yes
.”

Tj sat up and leaned against the wall behind her. She touched her forehead
and felt her hair matted with a wet substance, most likely blood. The room she and Kiara were trapped in was made up of a cement floor and walls. There was a small window at the very top of the room to let in just enough light to make out the shapes of objects. There was a cot with a heavy blanket and a bucket, which Tj guessed served as the latrine. There was little else except the stairs that led upward to a doorway.

“It’s locked,” Kiara
told her.

“And the window?”

“Bars on the outside. We can’t get out. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You’ve been here since Wednesday?”

Kiara nodded.

“Have you been given food and water?”

“They come by twice a day with food and water.”

Tj closed her eyes and considered the situation. If whoever
had hit her in the head meant to kill her, she’d be dead. There was really no reason to bring her here only to finish the job later. The room they were trapped in was cold and dismal, but if they’d intended to kill Kiara, they would have already done so. The fact that they were feeding her showed that they intended to keep her alive.

“How did you find me?” Kiara asked. “I saw you walking toward me and then I saw Papa and Mr. Ward.”

“Annabeth called me.”

“She called you?”

“I gave her a cell phone so she could get hold of me when she needed me. She told me that she heard Aaron and your dad arguing. Aaron insisted that they couldn’t keep you locked up forever. He wanted to let you go, but your dad refused. Annabeth remembered playing near this place, so she called and asked me to come out and look through the window. I was supposed to rescue you, but I guess that didn’t turn out all that well.”

Kiara gently brushed Tj’s hair from her face. 
“Annabeth shouldn’t have gotten you involved. She should have known that something like this would happen.”

Tj winced as she shifted her position. Her head felt like it had been sp
lit in two. “She’s really scared for you. She came to the resort to see you, and when she couldn’t find you, she panicked. We’ve been looking for you ever since.”

“You
’re from the resort?”

“Yes. My name is Tj.”

Kiara leaned against the wall and began to cry. “I can’t believe how messed up everything has gotten. I’m so sorry you’ve been hurt. This whole mess is my fault.”

“Perhaps you should tell me what you know,” Tj prompted.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

Tj looked around the room.
There was absolutely nothing to do and no way out. “It appears that my day has been freed up. How about we get up off this cold floor and sit on the cot,” Tj suggested.

Kiara helped
her stand. Tj felt like she might faint or vomit, or both, when she first tried to get up, but somehow she made it to the cot. Kiara insisted she lie down. After covering her with the blanket, Kiara sat on the cot at her feet with her back against the wall.

“It seems that you already know quite a bit
,” Kiara began.

“I know that your name is Kiara Boswell. You grew up in Vengeance and recently became involved in an arranged engagement to Aaron Ward. I know you ran away about a year ago and in that time somehow managed to become involved in the Ms. Tropical Tan competition. I know Aaron met you at the bus and you left with h
im. No one has seen you since. Beyond that, I don’t know a whole lot. Why don’t you fill in some of the blanks?” Tj grimaced as her head began to pound even worse than it had before.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“How about the beginning?” Tj suggested.

“My mother died giving birth to me,” Kiara began.

Tj didn’t mean that far back, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to keep Kiara talking. If nothing else, her story would provide a distraction to the pain her entire body was feeling. She hoped that the pain she felt was due to bruising and not a more serious injury. In addition to the throbbing in her head, her leg was bleeding, and she was fairly sure that several of her ribs were bruised.

“There are those in the
village I grew up in who believed that her death was my fault,” Kiara began. “Like I was some kind of demon who killed my own mother when I came into the world. My father didn’t want anything to do with me, so he gave me to Nona, which I might add, was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Nona is different from the others. She chooses to stay in the village for reasons of her own, but she’s not of the village, if you know what I mean.”

Tj believed she did.

“Nona taught me how to read and introduced me to a world beyond the walls of Vengeance. For as long as I can remember, all I’ve ever wanted to do was leave. With Nona as my unofficial guardian, I believed that was possible.”

“And then your dad decided you should move back in with him.”
Tj decided it was time to bring the story around to the present.

“Exactly. Worse than that
, he arranged for me to be married to his friend’s son. I like Aaron; I really do. He’s sweet and gentle and seems to genuinely care about me. But I don’t want to be married to him or anyone else.”

“So you ran away.”

“Yes, I ran away. It was hard. Really hard. I didn’t have any ID. I was born at home, so I never had a birth certificate. I never went to school or visited a doctor or got a driver’s license. The only job I could get was at a dive diner in Los Angeles, where the owner was willing to pay me under the table and didn’t seem to care whether I had a social security number or paid taxes.” Kiara stopped to catch her breath.

“Go on,” Tj encouraged.

“About five months ago, a woman came into the diner. I knew right away it was Annabeth’s mother, Katharine. She had dark hair, while Katharine was blond, and was going by the name Tonya, but when she smiled, I knew it was her.”

Oh God
. The dead woman was Annabeth’s mother. Poor Annabeth. She’d never known her mother, so one might assume that the news of her death would be anticlimactic, but Tj knew that just because your mom leaves you behind, it doesn’t mean you stop missing her.

“
We got to talking, and Katharine told me how desperately she wanted to rescue Annabeth from our father,” Kiara continued, oblivious to Tj’s distress. “She had been living on the street in Miami and didn’t have any money or transportation to make the trip west, so she came up with a plan. Katharine heard about the bikini contest several months before we met. She knew that the finals were to be held in Serenity, so she’d used her friend’s ID to get a job with the Tropical Tan Corporation. She was in Los Angeles for a seminar when we ran into each other.”

“The real Tonya Overton was
Katharine’s friend?” Tj realized that she’d become distracted by thoughts of Annabeth’s grief and needed to catch up.

“Yes
. They met when they both lived on the street. Katharine faced the same obstacles I had when she left Vengeance. She effectively had no past. It’s very difficult to get a job and a place to live with no form of identification.”

“There are people who make fake IDs,” Tj pointed out.

“Sure, for a lot of money. Katharine didn’t have any. She told me that when she left Vengeance, she intended to come back for Annabeth, but the years slipped away. When I recognized her, she began to cry. She didn’t even realize that Annabeth was almost a teenager. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re living on the street.”

“So
back to the real Tonya Overton . . .” Tj persuaded.

“Tonya was a
drug addict,” Kiara continued. “She’d had a good job until she got into heroin and ended up a total mess. I guess she quit her job and took off when things got too intense, and at some point, she ended up in the same homeless shelter as Katharine. They became friends. Tonya got sick and knew she was going to die. In the end, she told Katharine to use her ID to get a job so she could go find her little girl.”

“And the real Tonya’s family?”
Tj asked.

“She grew up in foster care and didn’t have
anyone.”

“
And after you met Katharine . . . ?”

“
She said she could get me an audition for the bikini contest. We figured that if we both went to Serenity, we could work together to liberate Annabeth from the village. Besides, if I won the contest, I’d have money for us all to start over. Katharine said she could arrange it so that I made it to the final twenty-five. I’d have to place in the top five on my own, but Katharine was certain that goal was within my reach. She helped me with my hair and makeup, and somehow she scrapped together enough money for me to get the headshots I needed. I didn’t have a car or money for a cab so I walked everywhere I went. I was in pretty good shape, but I needed a tan, so Katharine found a tanning salon that was willing to sponsor me.”

“So you made it to the top
twenty-five and came to Maggie’s Hideaway,” Tj urged. “I assume something went wrong.”

“Katharine
had to attend some sort of meeting at the Tropical Tan headquarters in Miami,” she explained. “She was supposed to meet us at the bus and make the trip to Maggie’s Hideaway with us, but she never showed. When I got off the bus and saw Aaron waiting for me, I panicked. He said that there’d been a change of plans, but that he’d take me to Katharine, so I went with him.”

“And then?”

“After we got down to the beach, I began to get suspicious. Something seemed off. If Katharine couldn’t come to the resort for some reason, why not meet me on the beach? Why the cove? I wanted to go back to the resort, but Aaron assured me that meeting Katharine in the cove was the only way to ensure Annabeth’s safety. So I followed him.”

Kiara stopped and took a breath. She appeared to be gathering her strength to continue. Tj realized that whatever happened to Tonya happened in the next moments of the story. Tj hated to make Kiara relive those horrible memories
, but sometimes talking about what had happened was the only way to exorcise the memories that haunted you.

“When we got to the cove
, Katharine was there to meet me, as promised, but my dad and Mr. Ward were there too, waiting on a boat.” Kiara began to sob. “She said she was sorry. She said they’d threatened to hurt Annabeth if she didn’t cooperate. She was crying, and I knew that she felt trapped by the situation. My dad demanded that I get into the boat, but I refused. He jumped onto the beach and grabbed my arm. I tried to get away, but he picked me up and hauled me onto the deck.”

Kiara put her head down.

“You can stop if you want,” Tj offered.

“No, it’s okay.
” Kiara took a deep breath. “Katharine climbed aboard and demanded to be taken to Annabeth. She was upset and kept saying that she’d done her part and wanted her child. My dad just laughed and said that she’d never see her daughter again. He shoved her off the boat and she hit her head on a rock. I screamed, but there was no one to hear me. Aaron tried to save her, but she was already dead. My dad, calm as could be, tied her to the anchor, took her out to deeper water, and let her sink to the bottom. Then he brought me here, and I’ve been here ever since.”

So Fenton
had
lied about his son’s part in Tonya’s death, Tj realized, just not for the reason she’d suspected. If neither Fenton nor Porter had killed Tonya, what possible reason could Fenton have had for turning Porter in to the sheriff? Fenton had told Roy that he had proof of his son’s guilt, which was impossible if Porter was innocent. Tj suspected there was a
lot
more to that story than any of them realized.

“Do you know why they
’re keeping you here?” Tj asked.

“They want me to have a child. Aaron’s child. Some Gypsy fortuneteller told my father that we would have an offspring with great power. Children are a commodity to
people like my father. A grandson who’s believed to possess some great supernatural abilities would bring him a certain level of prestige. They’re planning to keep me here until I come to my senses and have the child they feel I am destined to bear.”

“If Aaron loves you
, why doesn’t he help you escape?” Tj wondered. She yawned and snuggled closer to Kiara.

“Aaron is sweet but simple. I doubt he has what it takes to defy his father. And, like our fathers, he really believes we
’re destined to have a child who will do great things.”

“H
mm.”

“Are you going to sleep?” Kiara demanded.

“Just resting my eyes,” Tj answered.

“You can’t go to sleep. You most likely have a concussion. You need to stay awake until we can figure out how to get out of here.”

Tj sat up and looked around the room. “Annabeth has a phone. I’m sure she’ll call 911 when I don’t get in contact with her.”

“I hope so.”

“So you want to be a doctor?” Tj knew it was best to keep talking.

“
It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, other than to live my own life and help Annabeth to do so as well. I know it’ll be tough. I have absolutely zero formal education. I know that I can take an equivalency test, and I’m fairly certain I can pass it, but I still have to convince a decent college to take a chance and let me in. And even if I get in, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to pay my tuition. Winning the bikini contest was always a long shot, but now . . . Besides, I won’t leave Annabeth again,” Kiara stated definitively. “I never should have in the first place. I really thought I’d be back for her within a matter of weeks. Katharine thought that too, and she never did get to see her daughter again.”