Guarding Autumn (Crimson Point Security #3)

Chapter One

––––––––

Present Day

“Mom, where’s my pink unicorn hoodie?” Autumn’s twelve-year old daughter Carly called from upstairs.

“Either folded in your closet where I put it, or dumped somewhere you left it,” Autumn replied from the little work nook in the kitchen where she was quickly going through the morning’s emails. Her dad was due to arrive any minute now to take them to the airport. She’d packed a suitcase for Carly last night, leaving her daughter to gather her own personal items for the trip.

“I can’t find it!” There was a definite note of panic in Carly’s voice.

“Keep looking.” There was always a mound of clothes hanging off Carly’s desk chair, and more piles all over her bedroom floor.

One of the joys of parenting a tween.

In the lull that followed, she read and responded to a few more emails, mostly from work. The conference coming up next weekend was a big deal for her. Originally slated for Seattle, the organizers had opted for Portland instead at the last minute, which suited her perfectly since it was only a couple hours’ drive from Crimson Point where all the Abrams siblings now lived.

The owner of the advertising company she worked for had chosen her to head up the team presenting their most important pitch ever. This was the biggest career opportunity she’d had since joining the firm, and she intended to kill it.

“Find it?” she called up when a few more minutes passed without anything from Carly.

“Yeah, it was on my chair.”

“Amazing,” Autumn murmured to herself and kept typing. No wonder it had taken ten minutes for Carly to find it.

A new email popped up. “Ah! Great.” She’d been waiting for this response from the company for weeks. Excitement and curiosity sparked inside her as she clicked it open, read the message, then accessed the site.

Several interesting things jumped out at her right away as she studied the information on the screen, capturing her interest completely. Wow. This was so cool. Carly was going to be ecstatic.

She clicked on another tab.

Her hand froze on the mouse. She stared in incomprehension at what was written there on the screen in black and white.

Her heart lurched.

No. Impossible. “What the hell ?” she whispered as shock morphed into a sharp stab of panic.

She read it again. Checked everything a third time against the previous information she’d been given that had begun this whole process in the first place. Because they couldn’t be farther apart.

She clicked on more tabs to verify.

No, no, no...

But no one was listening to her silent, desperate prayer, because everything pointed to the same unbelievable conclusion.

She sat back, staring blankly at the screen as her stomach plummeted and the blood drained from her face. My God. This couldn’t be happening.

How ? Her mind raced, trying to make sense of it. There had to be a mistake, but...the scientific proof staring her right in the face said this was all too real.

Carly’s hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. Autumn quickly shut the laptop, heart thudding. She felt sick. Like she was having a bad dream.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Carly announced as she came around the corner carrying a loaded backpack and wearing her pink unicorn hoodie. She stopped, frowned at her. “What?”

Her daughter looked the same as always, slender and gangly, long strawberry blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, eyes the same pale green as Autumn’s. Yet now it felt like she was looking at Carly for the first time and seeing a stranger. And no matter how hard she wanted to, she couldn’t deny the truth of the evidence she saw with her own eyes.

Oh, God. Oh, my God...

“Nothing.” She put on a smile and hoped it looked convincing, her insides churning like a washing machine. Shit. Just... shit . “Ready to rock?”

“Yep. Are Gavvy and Trissy picking us up at the airport when we get to Oregon?”

The coffee she’d finished ten minutes earlier turned to battery acid in her stomach. “Yes.”

“Good, I can’t wait to see them. Oh, I hear Papa’s truck!” Carly turned and raced from the kitchen toward the front door, oblivious that their world had just been shifted permanently on its axis.

Autumn closed her eyes a moment, pushed out a deep breath, and then opened her laptop again. She hid the email in another folder for later, shut everything down, and then packed the device and the power cord away in her bag, still in a haze but out of time to dig into it more. She was just zipping up the case when her dad’s voice called out from the front door.

“I’m here, and I’ve got Carly outside. We’ll load the suitcases into the back and wait for you in the truck.”

“Okay.” Her legs felt a bit weak as she stood and hurried up the stairs to do one last sweep of the upper floor, still reeling from what she’d just learned. A sort of mental fog and numbness was starting to creep in.

She couldn’t unsee what she’d read on that screen, didn’t know how to process it, let alone what the hell she was supposed to do about it.

After setting the alarm and locking up, she climbed in the back of her dad’s truck cab, letting Carly sit up front with him. It gave Autumn a bit of privacy, and the constant stream of chatter Carly kept up with her grandpa saved Autumn from having to talk.

The ride to the airport passed in a blur. Then it was the usual rushed chaos of quick goodbyes, getting their luggage checked in, the frantic unpacking and repacking of carry-ons to get through security, and finding their way to their gate. Still on autopilot, she bought Carly a snack, and they sat together in the waiting area with a few minutes to spare before the boarding announcement started.

Autumn stared out the terminal windows at the planes coming and going, not really seeing anything. Her mind was in complete turmoil, circling around and around without finding a solution.

Except one. The only one.

And that solitary choice could destroy the stable, carefully constructed life she’d built for herself and her daughter from day one.

“You’ve been staring at that same spot for like, twenty minutes. Is something wrong?” Carly asked her.

Autumn surfaced as though waking from a dream. “No.” Yes. Yes, there was very much something wrong. Although buried underneath everything, there was also the tiniest flicker of relief. Which was nuts. “You excited?”

“Yep.” Carly adjusted one of her earbuds and went back to the current drawing in her sketchbook. Another character for her portfolio. She was getting better and better every month it seemed.

The boarding announcement came over the PA. Autumn reached for her bag. “That’s us.” But now she was dreading this trip. Dreading it with every fiber of her being.

She spent the short flight to Atlanta trying to work on final prep for the conference. Failed miserably because she couldn’t concentrate for shit with the recent bombshell clanging around in her brain.

Later, as their connecting flight to Portland roared down the runway for takeoff, it felt like there was a hot coal lodged in the pit of her stomach.

The final countdown to her unexpected moment of reckoning had begun.