Secret Bay High Confession (Secret Bay High #3)

  Secret Bay High Confessions

  By Blair Young

  Copyright © 2019 by Blair Young

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Prologue

  Sutton

  Richard and Pam are my real parents.

  The words took a minute to sink in, but when they did, I felt my heart nearly stop. I knew Damon had been with Susan for most of his childhood, but I never knew how much he knew about his birth parents. Clearly, by the time he reached the fourth grade he would know their names, but the fact that he was reacting so strongly to it now made me feel uneasy.

  He seemed uneasy, too.

  I’d seen Damon react to things in a number of ways over the time I’d spent living with him and his foster mother, but I’d never seen him so visibly rattled by something so suddenly before.

  He looked around the room, his eyes darting from one corner to the other, as though something was hiding in the shadows and just waiting for the opportunity to jump out at us.

  “We need to leave, now,” he said suddenly as he turned to head out the door.

  “What! Wait! Why?” I called out after him.

  “We need to go!” he said over his shoulder, not at all slowing his pace as he grabbed the handle on the door.

  “But we just found something that could be useful,” I argued. “Let’s find out what else is in here.”

  “No, I don’t care what else is there, and I don’t care what that stupid piece of paper has to say,” he snapped back at me.

  “I do, it might have the answers you and I have been looking for!” I yelled. I didn’t want to make too much noise. Though this building appeared to be abandoned, and I didn’t have any reason to think anyone would ever come back here, the fact was there were people outside, and I didn’t want anyone to call the cops on us being here.

  I didn’t want Susan to know that we were down here, and more than that, I didn’t know if she should know that my father was investigating her. I wanted to know the answer to that as much as anyone, but I had a feeling that, if she were to find out about it before I had the answers I was looking for, she would shut down the investigation and I would be thrown back into the dark.

  It was something I really hated about living with Susan and Damon. There was so much she didn’t tell me.

  At first, I thought she didn’t know the answer. I thought she was just some woman who cared about kids in need and opened her home to them. I didn’t buy the story that she was good friends with my parents and that was the reason why they chose her to be the one to take me in should something happen to them. But, I didn’t think she knew a lot about my situation, either.

  That is, at first.

  I found out from Susan that I was adopted. If my counselor never brought it up to me during one of our sessions, I might have lived my entire life without knowing the truth.

  It had been something I had to grapple with, and it only threw more mystery and stress into the drama I referred to as my life. And now, I wanted answers.

  There were strange things going on at school, things that went deeper than being bullied by a jealous girl or by the people who wanted her to like them. There was someone who kept leaving notes for me, telling me they knew my secrets and threatening me.

  And I wanted to know who they were, what they wanted, and why they were after me – and my family. I had a feeling the person who left the latest note I found in my locker – the note threatening me over visiting my parents’ grave – had something to do with the fact they were dead in the first place.

  Clearly, whoever this person was, they knew who I was and they wanted me to stay out of this. But that, too, only led to more intrigue on my part. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know why my parents had to die, I wanted to know why I had to move from my home fifteen miles away and live with this woman I’d never heard of before and the kid who was the reason my life fell apart in the first place.

  Although Damon and I were on good terms off and on now, I still couldn’t help but think about how he was the one who tore my childhood up so many years ago, and though he might not have anything to do with the murder of my parents or the fact that I was living with him and his foster mother now, because of him I never got to have the normal childhood.

  But then, with the four names on the same piece of paper, and those four people all being investigated by my father, I knew there had to be more of a commonality between the two situations than I originally suspected.

  I’d never heard of Richard or Pam, and before just a couple of months ago, I’d not heard of Susan or Dean, either. But clearly, according to the piece of paper I was holding in my trembling hand now, my father knew all four of them.

  At least, he knew who they were, and he knew them well enough to investigate them for reasons I didn’t yet know.

  Growing up, I’d never been very close to either of my parents. My father was a PI and gone for work much of the time. My mother was a stay-at-home alcoholic who spent her days in the living room watching soap operas with a bottle of wine in her hand.

  She didn’t pay much attention to me once I was old enough to entertain myself during the day, and she didn’t have much in the way of friends, either. My father, thanks to the job he worked, was also much of a loner, and I had a feeling he didn’t like to see my mother in the state she was in at the time of her death, so he occupied his time with work rather than dealing with her.

  It had been a sad way to grow up, and the issues I had in school certainly didn’t help things. As if dealing with the bullying and issues I had because of that weren’t enough, the fact that I had attempted to kill myself because of the stress I’d been under made things even worse.

  That was when the drinking really got bad for my mother, and that was when I really started to live life as a loner myself.

  But, when my parents were murdered, all that came to an end for me. I didn’t know who would want them dead, and, as far as I knew, my father wasn’t involved with the sort of people who would come for him in that way, either. Even with his dangerous job, we didn’t think he would get tied up with the wrong crowd.

  And why did my mother have to die as well? She wasn’t ever out of the house unless it was absolutely necessary, and she didn’t interact with the world around her, either. She didn’t have time to go out and make enemies, and yet, she was killed right along with my father.

  Whoever it was wanted them both dead for some reason, and they had done a good job of covering their tracks in the process. The case was quickly going cold, and though the police assured me they were still investigating, I had a feeling whoever had done the crime wasn’t going to ever be caught.

  It was one of those things I would have to deal with and move on from, just like the other issues I’d gone through in life.

  But, that wasn’t enough for me. My father deserved more than that after he had spent his life dedicated to helping others, and I was going to find the person who killed him. I was going to find the one who killed them both. I didn’t care if they were my adoptive parents and I didn’t know where I really came from.

  I didn’t care how long it would take me to get the answers I was looking for, either. It seemed that, no matter what, mystery and antagonizing situations would keep cropping up, and all I could do was try to figure out the answe
rs behind all of it.

  Damon had been there to help me, and I was glad he brought me down to the office now, but with the way he reacted to seeing the names of his parents on the paper, I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew more than he was letting on. If my dad knew his birth parents, as well as the woman he was living with, then did he know more about my father than he was telling me?

  Ever since I moved in, Damon had acted like he was learning just as much about me as I was about him. He had felt guilty about the things he did to me when we were in middle school, and it had taken some time for the two of us to reconnect, but, with all the things he refused to answer about himself, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was even more to him than I realized.

  I had accepted the fact he didn’t want to tell me many of the intimate details about his life, but when it came to my father – or the fact that my father knew who his parents were – I wanted to know more.

  And if there was any way he could shed light on that, then I wanted him to be open with me. I could accept not knowing some personal things about him, but this felt more personal to me. This felt like something I deserved to understand.

  Sure, they might not be my parents on the paper, but, at the same time, my father was interested in them. And there had to be good reason for that. The way Damon reacted to seeing his parents’ names confirmed my suspicions, but I wasn’t sure how I would get him to open up.

  He had stormed out of the building, and I wasn’t sure if he would leave me there. I didn’t think he would, but I didn’t want to test it. Damon did whatever the heck he wanted, and if that meant he was going to leave me to find my own way back to the house, I had a feeling he would do it.

  But, I didn’t feel right about taking the sheet with me, and I didn’t have time to memorize what was written on the paper. So, I grabbed a pen and another sheet of paper off the desk and scribbled down as many notes as I could in 30 seconds, then I folded the paper and shoved it in the back of my jeans as I headed toward the door myself.

  There were so many questions running through my mind, but I didn’t have time to keep looking around the room. Damon said there wasn’t anything else of interest to see, but I still wanted to go through the file cabinet.

  Still, I had gotten some information, and that would give me something to study later, even if it didn’t give me the answers I wanted.

  At least it was something.

  Chapter 1

  Sutton

  I rushed outside, hoping I wasn’t going to be met with Damon speeding off down the street. But, relief set in when I stepped onto the sidewalk and saw him across from me, leaning against his bike with his arms crossed. He was visibly upset, and I didn’t understand why, but I felt bad.

  I was the one who wanted to come here, and he had tried to talk me out of it. But, I insisted I get the chance to look around my father’s old office, and see if there was anything I could find. I thought I could uncover some sort of clue that might help me understand what happened to them, or why they wanted me to live with Damon and his mom when they passed, but all I had found was a file that pissed Damon off.

  At least, he seemed pissed. I wasn’t sure what was really going on inside his head, and I was uneasy about asking him. Damon was so closed off from me and the rest of the world much of the time, and I had a feeling this would only make things worse.

  The walls he had up were unscalable, that was for sure, and he clearly didn’t like seeing the names of his parents alongside the names of Dean and Susan on that file.

  “Hey,” I said when I crossed the street. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what we were going to find here, but I can promise you I had no idea it would be that.”

  “It’s fine,” he said dismissively. “It’s not your fault. I just want to get out of here, so can we go now?”

  “We’re going,” I said.

  “Good,” he replied flatly. He climbed onto the bike and I crawled up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist before he sped off faster than normal. I could feel the tension in his body as we drove along the street heading back home, and my mind was filled with questions.

  Clearly, he was shaken by the fact his biological parents’ names were on that file, and I could understand that. I had recently learned that I was adopted by my parents, and I was still confused about who I truly was.

  When I learned the truth, so much of my life felt like such a lie, I was thrown into a bit of an identity crisis. As if the bullying I had endured in my younger years wasn’t enough, to know that I wasn’t even who I thought I was sent me down a whole new rabbit hole, and I wanted answers.

  Damon, on the other hand, had been part of the foster system since he was in fourth grade. He knew Susan wasn’t his real mom, and, evidently, he did actually know the names of his real parents, though he never talked about them with me or anyone else as far as I knew.

  But, he clearly didn’t know they were under investigation, and the idea of it had him rattled. Or, perhaps he did know why they would be, and he didn’t want me to find out the truth about that.

  Considering the note I had received in my locker – the one telling me the author knew our secrets – perhaps there was even more mystery to Damon than I realized. Every time I asked him about it, he would tell me that he had a lot of secrets, and there was no way for him to know which one the note was referring to.

  And, he had no interest in figuring it out, either.

  Maybe he had family secrets he didn’t wish to share with the rest of the world, and my father – my adoptive father – was investigating what those secrets were. Then again, there wasn’t anything about Damon that made me think he would come from a violent home – at least, not the kind of home that would end in the murder of my parents.

  Susan and Dean, too. While they were exes and didn’t seem to get along with each other much, I didn’t think of either them was worth investigating. And why would my father want to send me to live with someone he was watching before he died?

  No one had given me any direct answer on why my parents had wanted me to go live with Susan should anything happen to them, and knowing that my father was investigating Susan at the time of his death didn’t give me any answers. In fact, it only added to the mystery surrounding the entire situation.

  Why not try to ask Damon about what he might know? Clearly, he knows something he’s not telling you, and even if it’s hard for him to talk about it, maybe it would do some good for everyone. Your father might not have been the most liked guy in the world, but you know he was a good guy.

  He didn’t do anything wrong, it was just the fact he was PI that made people hate him. But then, he didn’t investigate people for no reason, so why did he want to keep an eye on Susan and Dean? And who are Pam and Richard? Damon hasn’t told you hardly anything about his life before he lived with Susan, so why did he end up in the foster system to begin with?

  Sure, Susan might offer her little insights here and there, but she, too, is full of secrets, and you really can’t fully trust anything that comes out of her mouth. She kept a lot from you, a lot she should have told you from the beginning. How far do the lies go? How deep do these secrets run?

  And how are you going to get answers when you can’t trust anything anyone is telling you?

  I bit my tongue. As much as I wanted to ask Damon what he might know about the situation, I had a feeling pressing the matter was only going to add tension to the already tight moment. He didn’t want to come down here, and I had insisted. Now, I had to be respectful of the fact we had uncovered something he clearly didn’t want to know, and I was better off waiting for him to come to me.

  I sighed as I hung onto him. We were nearly back to the house, and I knew Susan would be home soon. But, being upset as I was by what we had found down in the old office, I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to tell her what we had done, and I didn’t want to put on the fake smile to make it through dinner, either.

  I just wanted to have the answers
, and I wanted Damon to open up to me and tell me what he knew.

  But, we pulled into the driveway in silence, and he didn’t say anything as he parked his bike up inside the garage. He always kept it in there so no one passing on the street would bother it, though he usually was more talkative as he parked it.

  Now, however, he merely turned off the engine and headed into the house, walking faster than me on his way through the door so I had to open it for myself. He darted up the stairs as soon as we were back inside, closing his own bedroom door behind him so he didn’t have to talk to me.

  With a sigh, I kicked off my shoes and headed up the stairs to my own room, my mind still spinning. I had the few notes scribbled down on the paper in my pocket, but that’s all they were at the moment. Notes. They didn’t offer me any new answers to the situation I’d found myself in, and they only added more questions.

  Part of me was tempted to confront Susan about everything and find out what she knew. She had to know at least who Pam and Richard were, even if she didn’t know a whole lot about them. I couldn’t imagine she would take a child in out of the foster care system and not know anything about his parents.

  Perhaps she would be able to tell me why my father would be investigating them. On the other hand, I could bring up the fact she, too, was being investigated, and demand to know why she was under his surveillance. I wasn’t sure it if would be a good idea to catch her off guard and try to get answers that way, or if it would be better to keep up my own private investigation of the situation and see what I could learn through my own research.

  She might not even know she was being investigated. It’s not like your father would stop by and give his calling card to the people he was researching. Or, she might be part of something she doesn’t want you to know about, and she’ll get mad if she knows you found out she was being watched.

  Then again, if there was something bad going on, why would she want to take you in when your parents were murdered? She’s really been nothing but nice to you through all of this, even if you are mad at her for keeping things from you and making you go to therapy when you would rather not.