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  Strange Secrets

  YOUR PAST DOES NOT define you. It prepares you.

  Everyone has a past.

  But not everyone has a past like mine.

  I’ve left the life I lived before behind. Started over in Kingston—a small town with a big heart. Nothing like the cold, hard city that I’d called my home before.

  But to begin again, I had to piss off some dangerous people.

  And now, she is here, too. Sarah. Intrepid new reporter at the Kingston Press, and the hottest thing on two legs that’s ever walked through this town. She’s set her sights on me and the past I’ve been running from all this time.

  They say lies are just a temporary delay of the inevitable. If she finds out the truth...

  Everything could come tumbling down—and she could be caught in the middle of it.

  Contents

  Secrets & Lies Series

  Find Lexy Timms:

  Strange Secrets

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Evading Secrets

  Secrets & Lies Series

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  Chapter One

  Jesse

  MY HANDS WERE SHAKING as I looped the knot around the bag and tied it shut, closing off the eye that peered in on the stack of cash that I had just stolen.

  My hands never shook before. Well, they had when I started all of this, back before I had known just what I was doing—back when I felt like every move I made was the wrong one, back when I was sure that I’d turn a corner to find the worst of bad news looking at me from the other end of a gun.

  But these days? I had no reason to let them shake. I was better than anyone else in the game, and I knew it. Everyone else did, too—everyone knew clear as day that there was no point in trying to throw down with me, or Joe in general, because they’d have to deal with the mess that I left behind when it was over.

  That was how I had liked it. Stay in charge, stay in control, don’t let a chink of light through to cast a glow on how all of this really made me feel. I was doing it for a reason, for my family—for Mom and for Luke. I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this world if I thought that there was any other way to guarantee their safety and their happiness. I had to make some sacrifices to be sure that they never would. And I could live with that.

  Or at least, I had been able to. Before she had died. Before my whole world had come tumbling down.

  My mother was the reason that I had gotten into this in the first place. She had never known the details of what I’d done, and I’d liked it that way—the less she knew, the better for her and for me. I was certain that she would have dragged me out by my hair if she’d discovered the truth, and it was just better for her to stay ignorant. Besides, what other choice did we have? I was older than Luke, and someone needed to step up to pay the bills.

  I could remember staring at the crack in the ceiling of my bedroom, watching the water drip through from the apartment upstairs and knowing that I couldn’t keep living like this. I couldn’t put them through living like this, either—I needed to do something, anything, to change the mess that we were stuck in right now.

  And so I did.

  I never thought that it would get as serious as this. In all the time that I had been growing up, my mother had instilled morals in both of us—family first, then everything else. That was the excuse that I used for myself whenever I found myself doubting what I was doing—it was for my family. And family came first. Right? No matter how many times I felt like I was letting them down doing everything that I did.

  Eventually, though, the guilt started to dull. It had to, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to succeed the way I had. I had started off low-level, running drugs, a go-between for clients too big to be seen on the streets themselves. Yeah, I had to deal with a few scraps here and there, but nobody really got hurt. The worst I had to deal with was a cut above my eye which I told my mother was from tripping up a step at school.

  Not that I had attended my high school in a while. I had been making too much money working, and I had to admit, I got a little addicted to it. Not just to the cash, though for sure it made our lives one whole hell of a lot easier. My mother started asking questions about where it came from, but I was quick to deflect her. She didn’t need to know. She didn’t need to worry about that. I just wanted her to stay focused on getting what she needed, and then we could take it from there.

  By the time I was eighteen, I was already working full-time for a few low-level thugs who were paying the bills for me, and then some. My brother was young enough that he didn’t really understand everything that I was doing, and that was the way that I wanted to keep it. I knew that he would find out eventually, but I was worried that he might find himself drawn into the same lifestyle. I wanted something better for him. Because, deep down, I knew that the life that I was living wasn’t much for anyone in the long-term.

  And then my mom got sick.

  Really sick. Cancer-sick. She had been pushing herself so hard for so long that when it hit her, it hit her so hard that it took her off her feet. She assured me that she was going to be fine with the meagre health insurance that her office job provided, but I went back out on to the street, working overtime to make sure that she had the very best care that she could. Back then, I was sure that she was going to beat it—I just couldn’t approach it any other way. The thought of losing her was too alien to me, too impossible. She would always be around, we would always be part of that family unit together, and we would always find a way to navigate around the problems that arose when they turned up. As long as we were all together, that was all that mattered, right?

  Of course, life doesn’t play games like that. No matter how many promises you make to the universe, it’s always going to take something from you when you’re least expecting it.

  She had been doing better for a while—more energy, getting up and moving around the way she used to, and I had started to lull myself into a sense of security about the whole thing. Yes, she could make it. She could survive. Luke and she and I would be able to look back on this and thank everything that we had that she had come out the other side in one piece...

  And then, of course, she was gone.

  It happened so fast that I had hardly had time to wrap my head around it, let alone prepare Luke for the shock of losing our mother. I could still remember standing there at her funeral, feeling numb, wondering if this was ever going to change. Would I ever let myself feel something again? I didn’t know if I could. I didn’t know if I wanted to. If all I could feel was the pain of her loss, of having to live without her....

  All the work that I had done hadn’t been enough to save her. And suddenly, the gloss was coming off everything that I had done. I had worked for Joe for years at that point, one of the biggest names in the city, and I had been sure that he would keep me on his payroll for the rest of my life—I could take care of shit that needed to be taken care of quickly and without much fuss, and I knew he valued that about me. It might not have been what I had imagined for myself when I was young, but it was enough.

&nbs
p; Or at least, it had been. Before I had lost her.

  And then I started to doubt it. To look at the life that I had been living and question it. I was the only family that Luke had now, and he was getting old enough to understand what I was doing. He would start to be drawn into this life, and I couldn’t allow that. Not just for his sake—but for hers. My mother’s.

  It had all come boiling over in me earlier that evening. I had been in a meeting with Joe, in the mansion that he called home, and I had been listening to him talking about taking out one of his rivals like it was the most natural thing in the world. This was a man who had kids, a family, a life—and he was going to snuff him off the face of the Earth like none of it mattered.

  I needed to get out. Now. While the certainty was still fresh in my brain. I knew where he kept the cash, and I slipped into the room under cover of night, when I knew that the rest of the staff would be asleep. They all trusted me, anyway. But after this, I knew that I was never going to be allowed back into this fold.

  I managed to grab some cash. No idea how much it was. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice for a while that it was missing, and by the time he did, I would have had time to get far from here. I stuffed it into the bag, tied it tight, and texted Luke to let him know that he was to meet me outside the apartment building. I didn’t tell him why. The less that he knew, the better.

  My heart was pounding as I headed to my car—no, couldn’t take that, too obvious. I had to take a different one. I looked around and spotted one of Joe’s beat-up old muscle cars—it would do for now, as long as it took to get away from here. I dropped the bag to the ground and opened the door, then hotwired it, pressing the split wires together until they sparked to life and the engine purred into action below me. I slipped into the front seat, tossed the money in the back, and tore off to the back of the mansion, where I knew the gate would be open so I could hit the open road before anyone noticed that I was gone.

  I could feel the house staring at me as I drove—in the mirror, I looked back to see the dark windows gaping at me like a cavernous face, eyes and an open mouth ready to swallow me whole if I didn’t drive fast enough. I put my foot down on the pedal and focused my gaze on the road in front of me. Get the fuck out of here. Don’t look back...

  I kept driving, glancing in the rearview mirror, waiting for the glow of headlights behind me. Someone to notice that I was gone, someone coming after me to remind me that my life was back there, whether I wanted it or not. I just had to get to Luke and get us both out of here, then I would dump this car and this life and get out for good.

  The roads were quiet, but my mind was racing with thoughts. I was going to get killed for this. If they caught me, if they ever found me, Joe would finish me off for this betrayal. He didn’t look kindly on those who let him down, and I had just undercut his trust in the worst way that I possibly could.

  But I couldn’t keep working for a man who made my guts twist up the way he did. I couldn’t keep doing a job that I knew would have killed my mother all over again if she had found out about it. I didn’t care how much it took—I needed to get out of there once and for all. I needed to start over. And I was finally ready to do just that.

  No matter what it took. I kept my eyes on the road and drove fast into the dark of that long night.

  Chapter Two

  Sarah

  AS I STOOD THERE, OUTSIDE the Kingston Press building, that old place made of red brick and hard work, I wondered if this could really be happening.

  Because I had dreamed of working here for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t count the number of times that I had taken a little diversion when I was coming home after school, just to walk past here, to linger outside in the hopes that one of the journalists within might need someone to grab coffee for them or something. I had always known that this was the home of the job of my dreams—but that didn’t mean that I actually believed that I was ever going to work here.

  When I had come back to Kingston after studying in the city for a few years, a lot of my classmates had told me that I was crazy. That there was better and more consistent work the farther you got away from my hometown. They had a point, for sure—I was certain that there were websites out there that would have had me churn out list articles about the best doughnuts in downtown Chicago or something, but that had never been my bag. It worked for some people—more power to them—but when I studied journalism, I did it because I wanted to break a story that would change the world.

  Or at least Kingston. I had grown up in this historical little town just outside of New York, and I had always felt at home here. I knew plenty of people who were just counting down the days till they could get out of there, the seconds till they could move on to something bigger and brighter, but there was a tie to history in these streets that always made me feel grounded.

  Not to mention the fact that Kingston Press is one of the oldest journalistic establishments in the state –with the reputation to match. I’ve been reading their journals since I was a kid, and even when I was away I kept up with the websites, marveling at the tight prose and the lean storytelling and the way that the reporters seemed to be able to sniff out the perfect story to keep readers coming back for more.

  A place like that, of course, had some heated competition for every new role that opened up. I had a hometown advantage, but that didn’t mean that they were going to ignore the stacks of prestigious applications from out of state, from graduates just like me who had even more impressive resumes than I did. I tried not to let that get under my skin, though, after I got a call back for their latest reporting job—I sat there in the interview, looking around at all of my competition, and I told myself that they didn’t stand a chance against me. It was all about positive thinking, right? A good mental attitude, that’s all I needed.

  Well, that and the assurance of the people that I would be working for that I knew what I was doing better than anyone else that ever would come near this place. I had worked too hard to get to where I was to even think about giving this to anyone else now, and, sure enough, after a couple of meetings with the editorial team and the hiring department, I had a shiny new contract in my inbox that offered me the position that I had been holding for all this time.

  It had been worth the wait—the pay was good, and I knew that I would be working alongside some of the most accomplished and hard-working staff in the country. Allison Vernon was the editor, and she had been running this place for years now. I was certain that she knew this town better than anyone else did, and I planned to learn everything that I could from her over the next few months. By the time that the induction period was over, I was determined that I would have reason to go to the top of her pile, and there would be nobody who could come close to challenging my superiority in this place.

  I pushed the glass door open and strode over to reception, where a slightly bored-looking teenage girl was fiddling on her phone. I almost wanted to remind her where she was working—didn’t she know how many people would have flipped their lids if they’d had a chance to get a foot in the door at this place? She should have been grateful just to be working the reception! But instead, I swallowed heavily and smiled at her.

  “Hi, I’m Sarah?” I greeted her, sounding a lot less assertive than I had intended to. She looked up at me, eyed me for a moment, and then reached into the drawer under her desk and pulled out a small piece of laminated paper.

  “Here’s your pass,” she told me, stifling a yawn as she did so. Even though I was a little annoyed at her attitude, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw my face printed just above the staff line for the Kingston Press. I was really here. This was really happening. And nobody was going to be able to take it away from me. I had finally gotten the job that I had always dreamed of, and now, I just had to make my mark on this place.

  I headed to the stairs that led up to the editorial space and took them one at a time, wanting to commit every moment of this to memory. When I wrote about this in my memoir
s, I wanted the readers to be able to feel this just the same way that I was.

  I emerged at the top of the stairs with a big-ass grin on my face and looked around the room in front of me. I had been here before, when I had been interviewing for this job, but it felt a million times better to be here now, now that I knew just what I intended to do here. I headed straight over to Allison’s office, as she had instructed me to do in the email she’d passed on about my first day here, and knocked on the door.

  A moment later it opened, and I came face to face with the woman who was to be my new boss—with her crop of gray hair and the glasses that dangled from a string around her neck, she looked as though she could have belonged in any grandmotherly family portrait, but she was anything but soft.

  “Come in,” she told me, stepping aside and gesturing for me to enter. There was a man already sitting at her desk, and he rose to his feet and extended his hand to me.

  “I’m Nathan,” he introduced himself as I took his hand. “I’m the arts reporter here.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I greeted him. “Sarah—”

  “I know who you are,” he replied, and he headed for the door and raised his eyebrows at me pointedly. “Good luck with your first day, Sarah.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, watching as he headed back to work. There was an amused glint in his eye as he went, as though he knew that I was going to be in for it dealing with my new boss.

  “It’s good to see you again,” I offered Allison.

  “Yes, well, I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do for us,” she replied, and she eyed me for a moment from the other side of the table like she was sizing me up. It was one thing to be in an interview with her, when I knew that I only had to impress her for an hour or so, but quite another to be sitting here opposite her right now and know that I had to pull that off long-term.