Justified Secrets

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Prologue

16 years ago

“Summer,” her mother whispered, her voice harsh and full of anxiety. It wasn’t anything new. Joseph was a monster. Her mother lived in a constant state of terror. Everyone at the compound did.

“It’s time to go.”

Summer blinked, trying to get her mind to focus. “What?”

“Let’s go. We need to go.”

For a long moment, her brain swam in confusion, as if it were drowning in denial. Then, finally something clicked, and she sprang into action. They had planned for this for over a month, and it was finally happening.

She grabbed her go-bag, her shoes, and ran to join her mother. Silently, they slipped down the hall, their bare feet barely making a noise. They moved like that until they reached the outside of the building. It was cooler outside, a light trade wind dancing over her hair. Fudge, she should have put her hair up. Too late for that, but she would fix it the moment they were free of this cursed compound.

Crowding their bodies up against the outside wall of the house, they made their way to the back of their dwelling. They were lucky that her mother was the only woman legitimately married to Joseph, which afforded them the two room “house.” It was more of a condo with no real kitchen, but it was better than one of the many multifamily units. Those were crowded with people.

Her mother raised her hand. Summer held her breath. The seconds ticked by…the silence surrounding them as fear pounded in her head. She knew it had only been a few seconds, but it felt as if she would die if she didn’t take a breath in the next few milliseconds.

Finally, her mother waved her hand. Summer gulped in air as she followed her mother. Their house backed up to the fields, so that gave them an easy way out if they could avoid the patrols.

Her mother stopped and slipped on her shoes, and Summer followed suit. They hurried to the taller crops, the ones that would give them cover as they stole away from Joseph.

They were almost to the edge of their property when the shouts went up, with the sirens sounding. Panic hit her first as they picked up their pace, running and not caring how much noise they made. Their pursuers were getting closer, then they heard the four-wheelers.

Her mother stopped so abruptly that Summer ran into her.

“Oof,” Summer said.

Her mother took Summer by her upper arms and propelled her forward.

“Go. There will be a man by the name of Sam Smith. He will take you somewhere safe.”

“Where are the other girls, Mama?”

She shook her head, her tired eyes filling with tears. “I couldn’t get them out. Just you.”

“No!”

“I know you don’t think much of me, but you need to go. Sam’s an old friend. He knows who you are. Go with him. He will explain everything. Just run straight ahead. He should be waiting on that dirt road back there.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s tall, handsome, with dark hair and amber eyes. Go.” She pulled Summer into a hug so tight she almost stopped breathing. “Make sure you tell people. We need to save those girls.”

Then, her mother turned and cut across the fields, leading the idiots on a chase. Tears filled Summer’s eyes. Her mother had just sacrificed herself. Joseph wouldn’t hesitate to torture her.

“She’s moving North now,” Amos yelled out. That guy was a moron.

Knowing that she had to move now, or she would end up back on the compound, she turned and ran as fast as she could, knowing those pinheads would pursue her mother and not send scouts out to make sure they hadn’t split up.

Her side was hurting by the time she arrived on the dirt road.

“Woah,” a cultured English voice said as a man hurried up to her. “Are you okay, love?”

She looked up at the man. Salt and pepper hair, big, strong…and amber eyes.

“What’s your name?”

He nodded as if he approved of her question. “Sam Smith. Where’s your mother?”

Her eyes filled with tears again. “The guards realized we left too soon. She’s distracting them. Can we wait?”

He looked over her head at the fields behind her, the noise of the engines still blaring, but further away.

“No. I would like to, love, but she made me promise to get you out of here and off the island.”

She swallowed the need to argue. One thing everyone at Joyous Wave understood was that arguing could have dire consequences, especially with older men.

“Come, let’s get off this island and then release the news.”

“What?”

“Sorry, I thought your mother told you. If she didn’t get out of there, I was to release the news, let everyone know what has been going on there so we can hopefully save your mother and the other girls. But she wanted you off the island.”

“They’ll see us at the airport.”

He smiled, a flash of white against the dark Hawaiian night. “Good thing I have my boat. Let’s go, Summer.”

“I don’t want to be called Summer.”

He blinked. “Okay, we can talk about that later.”

She followed him to the Jeep, and climbed in. Within twenty minutes, they arrived at the dock. The boat was a yacht with a full staff onboard. “Mr. Smith, we’re ready to leave as soon as you give us the word.”

“Now. We go now before any of those bastards can figure out where I took her.”

“Yes, sir,” he said hurrying away.

“Come, are you hungry? I made sure there was food here because your mother said you would be hungry.”

As if to prove her mother’s point, her stomach growled. He smiled. He had a kind one, not calculated, but filled with good humor.

“Who are you?”

He sighed and motioned with his head. “Let’s go and grab something to eat. It’s a long story.”

The moment she stepped into the galley, her eyes bugged out. It was opulent, and nicer than anything she had ever seen, but then she’d spent almost every minute of her life at Joyous Wave. While Joseph lived in luxury, the majority of the cult lived in barely standing huts that leaked in rain showers and drowned them in storms.

“Have a seat…wait, what do you want to be called?”

She blinked, then remembered that she had declared she wanted to change her name. “I don’t know. I always hated the name, though.”

He smiled. “But you were born in the Summer.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sounds like a Joseph idea.”

His smile faded. “I wish your mother would have called for me. I just didn’t know about you, about where she was. I knew she was married to Joseph, but I didn’t know.”

“You knew my mother before Joseph?”

He nodded as he handed her a glass of water. “I have soda too.”

She’d never had soda before. “My mother?”

“Right. Sorry. You look so much like her.”

“Are we related?”

“Why do you ask?”

“We have the same eyes. Are you a distant relative to my mother?”

He shook his head, sadness filled his gaze. “No. But I am related to you, and I will explain everything to you, but let me fix you some food first.”

She nodded and looked out the window. Maui grew smaller and smaller into the distance, as Sam puttered around the galley. She sent up a prayer that her mother would be safe, that she could lie and tell Joseph that she had been chasing Summer. In her heart though, Summer knew bad things were going to happen.

She just didn’t know how bad it would be, and how many of her friends would die.

Chapter One

Present Day

“Autumn, are you with me?”

Autumn blinked, her gaze focusing on Jin Phillips, soon-to-be Jin Lee. It took her a moment to bring the present back into focus. Jin smiled at her, her kind expression relaxing Autumn’s nerves. Not that Jin would have picked up on it. Autumn learned at an early age to hide her emotions.

Her boss’s fiancée hosted Beyond Murder, a cold case podcast that went beyond just the nitty gritty most true crime shows talked about. As someone who had been the subject of many true crime shows, Jin understood that there was more to every story.

Her interest in Autumn came from a case Task Force Hawaii had all worked on a few months earlier. It was then that she had come to Autumn about recording a podcast about her time at Joyous Wave. Autumn had planned on avoiding the subject, but she knew there was one thing that would bring out Joseph: Autumn spilling all his secrets.

“Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

“No problem. If you aren’t up to talking today, we can handle this another day.”

She shook her head. Autumn was usually better at ignoring the memories, but since Joseph’s minions had popped back up a few months ago and wreaked havoc on the island, she’d been falling back into those wretched memories. It had not surprised her that Joseph was entangled in drug smuggling and murders.

“Let’s talk about your name change.”

Autumn smiled. That was an easy answer. “Rumors were Joseph picked my name.”

“And you didn’t want any connection to him.” Not a question, because Jin researched the people she was going to interview. “You even went back to your mother’s maiden name.”

“Officially, I was never a Watters. Joseph wasn’t on any of my identification.” She shrugged. “Truth?”

Jin nodded. “Always.”

“I didn’t even have a birth certificate when I ran away from Joyous Wave.”

“You mean on you. Was it destroyed in the explosion?”

“I mean I didn’t have one. None. Not that I know of. Nothing was ever filed with the state. I was born on the compound, so there was no official record of my birth.”

Jin blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head. “I have no idea why the other kids did. But I was the first one born there, so that might be why. Anyway, once I escaped, I had the choice of what name to put on my birth certificate.” It had taken her a few weeks to decide, flinching every time someone said her name.

“And you chose another season. Any particular reason?”

“It’s the season Sam Smith met my mother. And since he saved me, I thought it was a great way to honor him and my mother.”

“Your connection to the Smiths, they adopted you?”

“Yes. Although my brother,” she said using air quotes, “wasn’t thrilled, but I totally understood. His mother had just died six months earlier, and here comes this weird girl who didn’t know how to operate a computer, let alone how to function in the real world, taking up his father’s time.”

Another pause from Jin. This is why Autumn rarely talked about Joyous Wave. People were astonished that she had been so backward. “You didn’t know anything about computers?”

The old embarrassment threatened to rise up again, but she forced it back. “Tools of the Devil, according to Joseph. I mean, he used them, but he was the leader, right? I think the entire circle—meaning the stupid men—all had access to them.”

“Your education was stunted?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. I was lucky that my mother was teaching me things on the side. Reading for women was allowed, but only scripture.”

“The Bible?”

“No, scripture. The nut bag had his own bible which was all about him being the Messiah. Want to know a secret?”

“Again, always?”

“Joseph was a conman, from start to finish. He never believed he was there to rescue people. He was there to prey upon them.”

“Aren’t most cult leaders that way?”

“To an extent, but I’m convinced Joseph started Joyous Wave as a way to make money. He was a drug dealer before, during, and after Joyous Wave.”

Jin studied her for a long moment. Again, it was the same look she got from almost everyone when she talked about Joseph still being alive. According to the FBI, Joseph Watters was dead.

“So, back to your brother. He’s younger?”

“Yes, by about two years.”

As if on cue, her phone buzzed on the table. She knew without looking who it was. Him.

Ian: I said don’t do the interview and you ignored me. WTH?!

She was positive he had some kind of tracker on her or her phone. How did he find things out so fast? It wouldn’t be the first time he did it, but it had been years. When she had been undercover as a DEA agent, Ian had been so overprotective. Even as he was traipsing around the world being a spy for the British government, he somehow kept track of her. After they found out Joseph was back on the islands, he had started playing the mother hen again.

“Do you need to take that?”

“No.” It buzzed again, and she turned it over. He should know after all these years that he had no control over her. “What else do you want to know?”

---

She climbed the stairs to her apartment, dreading her showdown with Ian. The moment her foot hit the landing for her floor, two doors opened. Ian stepped out of her apartment, glowering in a way most women would find sexy. She did not.

The other door was Freddy’s. His wrinkled face probably came from his time in the sun and the drugs he had taken over the years. The truth was, she had no idea how old he was. Over the last eighteen months, she had formed a relationship with him though. She paid him for news on the streets about new drugs or dealers.

He smiled at her, showing off his three missing teeth. From his facial features, she knew he was at least a quarter Asian, with dark hair that needed a good wash. He had a scar on his right jaw that looked like it was a from a knife. He stood at least three inches shorter than her.

“Hey, pretty Autumn.”

“Hey, Freddy. Howzit?”

He frowned. “Not sure.”

That was a regular thing. Freddy was still using and at this point in his life, she wasn’t sure he would ever be able to beat the addiction. He had a thing for crack, and it had left his brain mushy. She never knew when she would find him dead, but she knew that day was coming.

“Did you have something for me?”

“Other than that pretty boy giving you the look of death?”

She smiled. Freddy was gay and had a thing for Ian. He talked about her best friend/brother incessantly.

“Yeah, other than that. That I deserve, but don’t worry. I know how to handle him.”

“I could handle him, too.”

She barked out a laugh. “Stop that. You sure you haven’t heard anything?”

“Not anything yet, but there’s word about a new synthetic on the streets.”

She ordered her heart to settle the hell down. There was always something new on the islands, and it didn’t mean it was Joseph. The former cult leader loved to deal synthetics.

“Find out where they’re selling it, okay?”

He nodded and turned back into his apartment. “Wait.”

Freddy turned around to look at her.

“When was the last time you ate, Freddy?”

“Don’t worry about that, pretty Autumn. I’ll get you the info as soon as I can.”

“No,” she stepped forward and dug into her back pocket for a gift card to a local fast-food place. She had them on hand to give to kids on the streets. That way she knew they would at least get food and not drugs. She held it out and waited. Freddy was the weirdest informant she’d ever had. The man truly didn’t ask for more than he deserved.

“You don’t need to give me that.”

“I know. But I’ll just shove it under your door, so save me the trouble and go get something to eat.”

He hesitated then took it. “Deduct it from my payment.”

“Can’t. The money has to be allocated to you, and I would be breaking the law if I did that.”

That was a lie. The money she gave him came from her own pocket, but Freddy didn’t need to know that.

“Thanks.”

He acted like she had given him the most precious gift, and it hurt her heart. People like Freddy were preyed upon by drug dealers and manufacturers. Yes, they were weak to start using, but if people like Joseph weren’t around manufacturing and selling drugs, they might have found help elsewhere.

She pushed those thoughts aside and turned to head for her apartment. Ian was still glowering at her. Women always lost their head around him, probably because they didn’t know what a pain in the ass he could be. It was the midnight dark hair and blue eyes…and that stupid accent. It irritated her that she couldn’t mimic it well. Southern US was about as far as she could get in accents.

“What the bloody hell did you just do?”

“I gave Freddy a gift card for L and L. Are you jealous? I can give you one.”

A flush started at his throat, then filled his cheeks. He was her brother and, dammit, she loved messing with him. It was fun to watch the former MI-6 agent lose it.

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you being at Jin’s.”

She rolled her eyes. “No need to get your panties in a twist.”

“We talked about this, and we agreed that it was a bad idea.”

“First,” she said, stepping over the threshold of her apartment, “I didn’t agree. You agreed with yourself.”

“Dad agreed.”

She glanced at him. “Should we call him and check?”

He hesitated.

“That’s what I thought. Ian, it’s been months since we knew for sure Joseph was back on the island. He hasn’t made a move.”

She could feel the former cult leader circling her like the shark that he was. He loved head games, so she refused to let him see that it was giving her the freaks. By doing the interview, she hoped it would trigger him.

“So you think participating in a podcast that’s going to call him out is a good idea?”

He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

“Do you have another idea? Sitting here waiting for that bastard to make a move is not the smartest thing. That’s playing his game.”

This argument was tiring her out. Every time they got together, they ended up in a fight about it. She wasn’t going to change her mind. This was the only way to draw out that bastard. The only thing she was thankful for was that her brother and father believed her. Most people would nod and ask questions, but there was always a hint of disbelief in their voice that Joseph was still alive.

“And what do you call this?”

“Checkmate.”

He sighed. She hated discussing this with Ian. He always took it to heart that she might get hurt. Truth was, she knew there was a ninety-nine percent chance she wouldn’t make it out of this alive. She knew what Joseph was after. The only way he achieved his success was if she were dead. At least, if he still believed he was her biological father.

“Did you really tell Dad?”

He shook his head. “He’s got enough on his hands right now.”

Sam was moving to Hawaii. He’d had a kidney transplant four months ago and decided that life was too short to keep working. With both her and Ian living in Oahu, he had decided to move to the islands. It seemed like out of the blue, but Sam was like that. He would brood about something for months before making a decision. The problem was that in most cases, his actions would put him in harm’s way—especially if Ian or she were involved.

“Why is he coming here?”

“You know. He wants to be close to us.”

Yeah, she understood that, but there was something else going on with him. Everything had been surface talk lately. He would ask about her job, about the weather…but nothing else. It made her suspicious of his true reason for coming to Hawaii. Probably because they didn’t know her full plan. And if she worried about it too much, Ian would pick up on it.

“I’m hungry.”

“Color me surprised.”

Again, sarcasm. Truthfully, she understood it. Her metabolism mimicked a hobbit’s. Autumn was convinced that it had to do with her sixteen years in a cult. There was never enough food when she was a kid.

“Let’s get something to eat,” she said.

“You could cook.” One little known fact about her was her love of cooking. It was something she learned after leaving the cult. Since she had to be tutored from home for the first year, she spent a lot of time watching TV, which is when she discovered cooking shows.

“Not in that kitchen. It’s a death trap.”

He followed her out of the door and onto the landing. She locked her door, although she was sure anyone could break in. It’s why she rented it.

“I mean at the other place.”

She stopped in her tracks and glanced over her shoulder at him. “No. I need to limit my time there now that we know Dear Leader is back on the islands.”

He nodded in understanding. She would not lead Joseph there.

“I think I need a big meal.”

“You always need a big meal,” he said following her to his car. She was really amazed it still had the tires left. She’d picked this apartment building because it was close to work, and she didn’t care if people broke in.

“Where do you want to go?”

She checked the time and realized it was almost six. No wonder she was hungry. And that meant no Liliha Bakery. Bummer.

“Hmm, not sure. Do we want local cuisine or something else?”

“I don’t care, just not a dive bar. I think that last one gave me food poisoning.”

“It did not. It was all the alcohol.”

He cut her a glance but kept driving.

“I know. Let’s hit up that taco place in Aiea. The one in the gas station. Amanda and Felix went there one time, and it looked amazing.”

“I need to block that channel.”

“Go like you’re heading to Bravo’s.”

“Just for the record, I think you need help with your food fixation,” he said as he took the Pali to get on the interstate.

“I don’t have a food fixation.” She totally did.

“Have you ever noticed that you give directions by restaurant or food truck?”

She frowned. “I do?”

Ian laughed. “Yeah. And why are we going to a gas station to eat?”

“It used to be a gas station, you’ll see.”

He grumbled but headed in the direction of Aiea. She needed some good food andtime with her brother not talking about her childhood.

 

 

End of Excerpt