Triple Beat-nook(2)

And this time, things would end much differently than they had before.

This time, they were going to finish what they’d started.





Chapter One


Dani Lewis turned onto the highway and settled in for the long, lonely eight-hour drive from Nashville to New Orleans. She hadn’t been back to Louisiana since she’d stumbled across the state line in the dead of night twelve years earlier. At the time, she had promised herself she’d never step foot in the Big Easy ever again.

So much for that vow.

She fiddled with the radio, looking for a station actually playing music versus the nonstop barrage of commercials, or deejays who loved the sound of their own voices a little too much. When she found nothing of interest, she switched the damn thing off and let the silence come in.

Unfortunately, with nothing to distract her, memories started to reemerge and form, playing in her mind like a flashback montage in a movie. Good and bad things converged until she was helpless to stop any of it, everything closing in on her at once.

Typically she pushed away thoughts of the past, burying all the horrible stuff deep, even at the expense of happier times. She couldn’t seem to separate the two, so she simply chose to forget it all.

This trip was going to bring it back again. Because of that, Dani would be smart to let the memories come. Force herself to face the tougher things so that she was prepared for what awaited her in New Orleans.

For the four-gazillionth time, she wondered if she should have told Aiden and Bryson where she was going. And just like the three gazillion, nine hundred and ninety-nine times before, she decided she’d been right to keep them in the dark.

If she had told them, she would have had to confess to lying to them about everything from day one. She never wanted to hurt them that way. Never wanted them to think she didn’t trust them. She did. There were just some things she’d worked very hard to bury. Dani had no desire to resurrect the victim she’d once been. She was dead and gone and, with any luck, she’d put the final nail in that coffin this weekend.

Of course, even if she had confessed to Aiden and Bryson the truth about her childhood, she didn’t doubt for a minute that her wonderful, loving, amazing best friends would have insisted on coming to New Orleans with her. She couldn’t let them do that.

Couldn’t put them in harm’s way.

The highway was quiet this late at night, the endless expanse of asphalt stretching out before her. At the end of the line were two emotions. The first was a fear so powerful and overwhelming, it was almost tangible. But she also felt utter, indescribable joy and excitement over the prospect of being reunited with her beloved foster family.

She’d been shocked when Jett had contacted her two months earlier. Apparently, he had hired a private investigator to find her. The fact that the family had cared so much and gone to such lengths to locate her touched Dani more than words could say.

Hearing Jett’s voice on the phone the first time had taken her so much by surprise that she’d had to sit down, her knees too weak to hold her up. She remembered every word they had said.

***

She jumped slightly as her home phone rang. Most people had her cell number these days, which meant no one called her landline except politicians on the election trail and telemarketers. She’d been meaning to get rid of the landline once and for all, but as a woman living alone, she felt safer with it.

She considered not answering, but reached for the receiver anyway.

“Hello?”

“Dani?”

Dani stood frozen at the kitchen counter. She set down the knife, forgetting about the tomato she had been chopping for her salad the instant she heard her name. She knew the voice, but her head kept telling her she had to be wrong. It couldn’t be. “Yes.”

“I found you. God. I can’t believe it. Your voice is the same. Exactly the same.”

“So is yours.”

He laughed. “I just started talking, didn’t I? Didn’t even remember to say what I’d practiced.”

Dani laughed as well, despite the fact her heart was racing a million miles an hour. “You practiced?”

She stumbled clumsily to the kitchen table, dropping down into a chair. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact she was talking to Jett Lewis. While most of the world heard that name and thought “author”, Dani only thought “brother”.

“Yep. Wasn’t sure if you’d be happy to hear from me or not. I was nervous.”