Chapter Twenty-five
Beckett
“Watch out! There’s a godeon behind you!” I yelled as Zia was nearly pulverized by the scaly, eight-foot monster in Merivia’s Quest, a brand-new fantasy video game the four of us were trying out.
Zia’s avatar ducked and darted out of the way just in time. “Fuck. That was close. These bastards move fast!”
“I think if you hit the A-button double time,” Melvin said, “it makes you shoot faster. Watch. I’ll demonstrate.” He let a godeon approach him, and when it was in close proximity, he blasted it with a stream of electricity that fried the creature on the spot.
“Whoa! That did have some extra sizzle in it.” Leif’s avatar did the same maneuver, and soon all four of us were releasing these uber-lightning streaks at the godeons left and right. In under a minute, we’d defeated the level and a new map appeared.
“Sweet.” I leaned forward in my gaming chair to study the map more closely. “Looks as if we get to choose where to go next.”
“Oh, let’s try the Fabled Forest,” Zia said.
No one objected and our digital party entered a wooded realm where we rescued a herd of unicorns from an evil king.
“The graphics on this game are insane!” Melvin hollered when all four of our avatars were plunged into a sea and ended up in an underwater city full of merfolk.
“It’s a Carter Bennett game.” I swam my way over to a cave. “That dude always has the sickest designs.”
My three gaming buddies all voiced their agreement. If a game had Carter Bennett’s name on it, we were playing it. No exceptions. The dude was talented and local. He lived over in Maplehaven and one of these days I’d get up the nerve to go there, find him, and fanboy like crazy.
We continued exploring and playing and figuring out the logistics of the new game until Zia paused the play and all of our screens switched to our faces.
“Sorry, boys,” she said. “It’s three o’clock and I’ve got a shift at the hospital tonight. Gotta get a few hours of sleep before I become Super Nurse. I have the next two days off after that though so let’s get another gaming session on the schedule, okay?”
We all agreed and one by one left the game. I still had an hour before heading over to Sadie’s to pick her up for our costume supply shopping today, but maybe she’d be open to beginning that fun now. Why wait to see her if I could enjoy her company sooner?
I picked up my phone and saw a text from Darius to all of us Hartley siblings and subsequent replies. I must have missed them while lost in the video game realm with my pals.
Darius: Jimmy sent me a text asking to meet with us.
Logan: About?
Darius: No idea. I told him I’d check with you all to find a time.
The texts that followed were my remaining siblings discussing their availability for and apprehension about this meeting.
Me: I can make any time work.
And I had a feeling I knew why Jimmy wanted to meet and why he’d contacted the oldest Hartley male to organize it, but I kept that to myself for now.
Then I opened my photos, preparing to send Sadie a picture I’d taken of this massive sunflower in one of our gardens on the property, but my gaze landed on the photo of that cloak I’d seen in Sadie’s closet a few nights ago.
I’d forgotten about the cloak and its crest. Probably because Sadie had done a damn fine job of distracting me with that body of hers that night.
We’d enjoyed our Bear Belly Tavern takeout and the gingerbread cookies Sadie had baked for me.
Then we’d enjoyed a movie together all snuggled up in her bed where we’d eventually fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
Best way to fall asleep, by the way. I was hoping that was how tonight would end as well.
I tapped on the photo of the cloak and enlarged the crest so I could see its details again. I sent the image to my computer then conducted a search on the crest. Within moments, an AI summary about a country called Verdalach came up on the screen.
“A tiny island country to the north of Ireland that has remained largely unexplored. Monarch government, currently ruled by King Conall Síomóin and Queen Eithne Síomóin,” I read aloud.
I clicked a link at the end of the summary and was taken to a news article that had a picture of the king and queen.
And their daughter.
I jolted out of my gaming chair, sending it rolling a few feet behind me into the middle of the room.
“Holy shit!”
On the screen was a red-haired, green-eyed beauty. Sadie. My Sadie. Sadie Rodgers.
Only she wasn’t Sadie Rodgers.
She was apparently . . . I squinted at the screen, scanning the text under her picture. “Princess Aislinn Síomóin of Verdalach.”
I stared at her photo with my fists curling at my sides while my brain fought against the possibility that Sadie and this princess were the same person. It couldn’t be.
And yet . . . the two of them were identical. In their red hair. In their green eyes. In their freckles. In the way they stood.
In their goddamn auras.
I clamped my eyes shut, but the word liar flashed repeatedly behind my lids like a strobe light.
All this fucking time, Sadie had been lying. She’d been pretending to be Sadie. She’d heard me lament over the dating app chicks who filled their profiles with lies and had gone ahead and lied. Right to my face.
For weeks now!
Liar, liar, liar.
Suddenly her not wanting her photo on the website and her being short on details about where she’d lived before and her not telling me a single thing about her past or her family or anything really all made sense.
She’d been pretending not to be a fucking princess.
And I’d believed her act. I’d genuinely thought she’d come to Vermont merely looking for a place to start her business. Sure, I’d wondered why she’d been so tight-lipped about her life before coming to Greenridge, but never in a million years had I suspected I’d been falling in love with royalty.
Secret royalty.
Lying royalty.
But why was it a secret? Why had Sadie left her country? What was so bad about Verdalach that she’d take on the role of a . . . of a commoner and mix and mingle with a bunch of small-town folk in the middle of the woods?
I dug around online for a bit longer, but other than repeatedly seeing that Verdalach wasn’t a super advanced country, I didn’t find anything about harsh living conditions there. It didn’t appear to be a war-ravaged area or have difficult terrain or weather or poverty and disease.
So why would Sadie flee and not want to be associated with her roots at all?
And why would she lure me in and make a fool of me?
I’d only get these answers one way and unfortunately it wasn’t from combing the internet. I had to talk to Sadie directly and find out what was so horrible back in Verdalach that she felt the need to lie to me in Vermont.
Over and over and over again.
Since the day we met actually.
Unless she just had an uncanny resemblance to this Princess Aislinn and I was completely overreacting.
Again, I’d only know for sure if I talked to her.
I stormed out of my office, grabbed my keys, and ran to my SUV, but someone calling my name made me look over my shoulder. Logan gave me a wave as he jogged over.
“You look like a man on an urgent mission,” he said. “What’s the rush about?”
“I have to talk to Sadie.” I quickly updated him on what I’d found online.
“I’m coming with you.” He didn’t wait for me to protest. Instead, he ran around the back of my SUV and hopped in the passenger seat.
I was in too much of a hurry to get to Sadie to argue with him. And maybe I wanted the company.
Logan had his phone out when I got into the driver’s seat. “What’s the name of the country again?”
I repeated it and then Logan said, “Who is the princess of Verdalach?” He squinted at his screen and I realized he was using voice command to search online.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “That definitely looks like Sadie.”
“Fuck.” I started the SUV and navigated onto the dirt road. “I was hoping you’d tell me I was being crazy and the resemblance was all in my mind.”
“I’ll always agree that you’re crazy,” Logan said, “but not about this.” He touched his screen to make the photo bigger. “She’s even got the freckles across her nose and cheeks, man.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe she’d lie like this.”
“I’m sure she has her reasons,” Logan said. “The Sadie we’ve all come to know is a great person.”
“The Sadie we’ve all come to know is a liar,” I grumbled.
“Remember when Ashley first came to Greenridge,” Logan said.
“She wasn’t totally honest about who she was either.
She’d taken that job at Faraday’s Hardware and completely concealed the fact that she was actually a robotics engineer.
A freaking genius in fact. But she had her reasons, Beckett. Traumatic ones.”
That made me loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Had Sadie experienced trauma? Had she lied to cover up some deep hurt? Who had hurt her?
I thought about the night we’d showered together after the dogs had gotten us all muddy. She’d thanked me for treating her with respect and had said the person who hadn’t done so was out of her life now. Did hiding her identity have something to do with that jackass?
An instinct to pulverize anyone who harmed her surged inside me, despite the fact that Sadie had lied to me about who she was.
“It’s good that you’re going to talk to her,” Logan said. “Go directly to the source. Confront it straight on. Don’t make assumptions.”
I blew past Hartley’s Nest’s gates, navigated the dirt roads, and sped along toward Slater’s Pond.
Logan did his best to keep me calm, and I appreciated the hell out of his big-brother energy.
He could be a ruthless teaser, but with him being the brother closest in age to me, he also got me better than our older brothers.
His presence right now was doing wonders to keep me from becoming completely unglued.
We arrived at Hank’s cabin where the man’s pickup truck was parked beside the car he’d let Sadie borrow. A shop vac was near the car, but it was off and I didn’t see Sadie near the vehicle.
Logan and I got out of my SUV and I marched up to the front door, which was open a bit.
“Sadie?” I called.
When no answer came back, Logan said, “Princess Aislinn of Verdalach?”
This time Hank appeared, a rag in one hand and a filter in his other. “What are you two hollering about up here?”
“We’re looking for Sadie, Hank,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Don’t know.” Hank shrugged. “She was washing the car when I left for the hardware store to pick up a rubber gasket.” He wiggled the rag and filter.
“I’m doing some winterizing. When I came back she wasn’t here.
Figured she went for a walk or maybe you’d come to pick her up.
” He pointed to me. “Because the car is still out there.”
“She’s not with me,” I said.
“I’ll take a walk around the woods and see if she’s out there.” Logan gave my back a pat then left the cabin.
“You look concerned.” Hank put his rag down on the kitchen island and set the filter atop it. “What’s going on?”
I pulled out my phone, brought up the picture of Princess Aislinn, and handed it to Hank. At first the man’s brows furrowed as if what he was seeing didn’t compute. I knew the feeling.
“She’s a princess? From Verdalach?” He met my gaze. “What is she doing hiding in the woods of Greenridge and opening a mindfulness business?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Hank.” I scratched at my bearded jaw. “That’s why I’m here. To ask these questions and a million more. To get some answers.”
“Okay. Well, we just have to find her first,” Hank said. “Have you tried calling her?”
Duh. “No, I haven’t.” Because my brain wasn’t working apparently. I tapped her contact and a buzzing sounded over in the cabin’s living room. Hank and I both made our way over there to find Sadie’s phone on the coffee table.
“Okay. So a call or text isn’t going to locate her,” Hank said. “Last I saw her, she was over by the car. Let’s go out there and look around.”
I followed Hank outside, grateful to have someone more clear-headed than me take charge.
As we circled around the car, Logan joined us.
“I didn’t see her on that path to the pond,” he said.
“I tried calling, but her phone is here at the cabin,” I said. “If she’d taken a walk, she probably would have brought her phone along.”
I joined Hank on the driver’s side of the car where the shop vac hose was halfway inside the back seat. The upholstery was clean, but it was as if Sadie had stopped abruptly and had just let the hose drop back there.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “Something’s not right.”
In all the time I’d known Sadie—or the woman Princess Aislinn had pretended to be—she’d never dropped off the radar.
If an appointment had run long and she was going to be late to meet me, she’d texted.
If she’d been in the middle of doing some business planning and needed more time to finish up, she’d let me know.
Never had she failed to show up. Never had she disappeared.
“What’s all this?” Hank crouched to indicate a collection of paper scraps on the driveway near the shop vac. He turned them all over to reveal printing on one side.
Logan and I lowered to either side of Hank as he moved the papers around, fitting them in place like puzzle pieces. Some pieces were missing, no doubt blown away by a breeze, but the top right corner included something I definitely recognized.
I pulled up the picture of Sadie’s cloak and held it next to the same crest on the paper corner. “This paper is something official from Verdalach.”
“And if she ripped it up, it wasn’t something she wanted to see,” Logan offered.
“As far as I can tell,” Hank said, “this looks like an order for the arrest of someone.”
I had difficulty swallowing. Was Sadie wanted for a crime? Was that why she’d pretended to be someone else? Had she created a whole new identity, a whole new life to hide from the law of her country?
Had I been dating a fugitive?