A building is only as beautiful as its construction—the parts you can’t see.
—HAMMER GIRL BLOG
Hope Beach, North Carolina, was a beautiful place with its thick sand dunes and clear blue waters. Grayson Bradshaw veered around a group of tourists who had blocked the sidewalk in front of the Oyster Café, then hurried away from the Coast Guard station in the harbor as fast as his lame leg would allow.
He worked in the Seattle area and was here to visit his parents, but an urgent phone call had summoned him from vacation. This station was the closest for reporting in. The commander here had relayed the full details of his new assignment.
Coast Guard stations up and down the West Coast had been on high alert ever since a seized shipment of two tons of cocaine worth twenty million dollars had gone missing three days ago. The stuff had simply vanished from the evidence hangar. He was being called back to Washington to investigate the seizure’s disappearance, and he’d have to board a plane for Seattle tomorrow.
As a sworn civilian investigator for the Coast Guard Investigative Services, or CGIS, for the past three years he’d been on the trail of Tarek Nasser, but the terrorist was a phantom, and every time Grayson got close to apprehending him, he’d slipped away, only to reappear in another part of the country.
His wounded leg throbbed, and he rubbed it. Thanks to Nasser, he was stuck at a desk, but even worse, his best friend, William Lacy, was in a grave. This time Grayson knew more about Nasser, and he’d get him. The man would pay for what he’d done.
Glancing in front of him, he saw the same couple he’d noticed yesterday. If it didn’t sound so paranoid, he would have thought they were following him, but Hope Beach would be filled with tourists for a few more weeks. Their sunburned skin showing below their shorts and short-sleeve shirts was a good indication they weren’t natives. He guessed them to be on their honeymoon, though, and the way his neck prickled when he saw them staring had to be just adrenaline from being tapped for a special assignment.
He crossed the parking lot toward his SUV but stopped when Chief Petty Officer Alec Bourne hailed him.
“Heck of a time to be called back to work. You just got here to enjoy yourself. Anything I can do?” Six two with blue eyes and an easy smile, Alec naturally drew people to him. He and Grayson had been friends from school but only saw each other on Grayson’s rare trips home.
“I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye on Mom.” Grayson’s mother had been recently diagnosed with diabetes, which was why he’d come home now. She looked okay, but he’d seen her sneaking Snickers bars in the night. That wasn’t going to stop the disease. Dad was no help either. He’d long ago quit objecting to anything she wanted to do. She ruled the roost with a steely green-eyed gaze and a determined manner.
“Will do.” Alec’s gaze went over Grayson’s shoulder. “That couple seems to be heading straight for us. Know them?”
He turned to see the honeymooners. “Nope.”
The woman had her sights fixed on him, and a tentative smile lifted her full lips. Her nearly black hair was twisted atop her head in a messy knot that gave another inch or so to her height of about five two, and her green eyes were startling against her pale skin. The man with her had a protective hand at her waist. He was about six two or so and held his muscular build erect. His dark-blue eyes went from the woman to Grayson and back again.
A jolt of déjà vu shot up Grayson’s spine. The woman reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t think who.
The man swiped dark-brown hair off his forehead. “Grayson Bradshaw?”
Heat radiated off the pavement, and Grayson squinted in the sun trying to think of a reason they would want to speak to him. “That’s right. Have we met?”
The man glanced at the woman, who clasped her hands in front of her and tilted an anxious smile up at him. She took a step closer. “I’m Shauna. Shauna Duval.” She bit her lip and glanced at the man. “Well, Shauna Bannister now. That part’s still new. This is my husband, Zach Bannister. We live in Lavender Tides, Washington.”
Shifting from foot to foot, she was as nervous as a seaman recruit in a room full of admirals. “Is there something I can do for you?” He vaguely knew Lavender Tides was near Sequim, though he’d never been to that area other than to the Coast Guard station at Port Townsend.
“I knew this would be hard.” She made a visible effort to drop her hands to her sides and force a smile. “I think you’re my brother, Connor Duval, who went into foster care following an earthquake in the Olympic Mountains in 1995.”
He started shaking his head as soon as she said the word brother. “I’ve only got one sister, and she lives in Okinawa where we grew up. I’m sorry,” he added when he saw the disappointment surge into her eyes.
Zach shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m pretty sure of the information I tracked down. You were adopted by Granger and Fiona Bradshaw six months after the quake. You were two, so you wouldn’t remember. They didn’t tell you?”
His chest tight, Grayson took a step back and shook his head. “I’m sure they would have told me about it if it were true. Look, I’m sorry you came all this way, but you’re very wrong. Nice to meet you.”
Shauna said something, but he couldn’t hear it past the blood roaring in his ears. Why was he feeling such panic over a case of mistaken identity? He’d tell his parents about it tonight and they’d all laugh about it.
He practically fled to his SUV to get away from those two. What a weird thing to have happen now. His mother would be appalled at his lack of manners, but those people should have been more sure of their facts before they showed up with such wild assertions.
Grayson waved at Libby Bourne, Alec’s wife, as he drove past Tidewater Inn on the narrow road to his parents’ cottage. The shingle-style house was across the road from the sand dunes, and the sea salt left the plants and shrubs his mother had planted looking straggly and forlorn. He parked in the oyster-shell driveway and stepped out into the ocean air.
His mother rose from in front of a leggy rosebush as he approached. She brushed the dirt from her hands on her khaki shorts that revealed how much weight she’d gained since he’d seen her last. “I didn’t expect you back for a while. When do you have to leave for Washington?”
“Tomorrow.” He stared at her short blonde hair, so like his own, and it was further confirmation the Bannister couple had their facts wrong. “Where’s Dad?”
“He was walking the beach. Here he comes now.”
Grayson waved at his dad strolling across the road. At fifty, Granger Bradshaw still possessed a military bearing even though he’d been out of the navy for ten years. There was little gray in his thick brown hair, still cut short. Since retirement he’d spent his time golfing and fishing.
His dad stopped at the foot of the porch steps and brushed his wife’s cheek with a kiss before smiling at Grayson. “There you are, son. Tell us all about your new assignment.”
Grayson told them about the cocaine theft. A jet ski revved in the waves behind the dunes, and he raised his voice a bit. “I might be gone a few days, or it might be weeks. I’ll keep you posted.”
His mother studied his face. “I thought you’d be excited at this opportunity. You seem a little distracted.”
Her green eyes were nothing like his, and his bulky height of six five dwarfed his father’s six-foot frame. He’d never for a moment entertained the idea that he might be adopted, and it was silly to let it nag at him. The easiest way to resolve it was to talk to them.
“A couple from Lavender Tides, Washington, tracked me down today. I’d seen them hanging around me since yesterday. The woman tried to tell me she was my sister and that I’d disappeared after an earthquake. Crazy, huh?”
His mother went still and her eyes widened. She glanced at his dad and wet her lips. “I-I see. Did she give her name?”
His gut twisted at the way his mother stepped closer to Dad and took his hand. “Shauna Duval was her name before marriage.”
“Lavender Tides, you say?” Dad set his other hand on her shoulder. “Fiona, I knew we should have told him.”
She batted his hand away. “Granger, how could you!” His mother turned and rushed up the steps to the door, which banged behind her.
“Dad? It’s true, then?” His throat was so tight he barely managed to force the words out. He blinked and tried to squelch the sense of being adrift at sea.
His father’s brown eyes looked moist and his face resigned. “It’s true.”
Grayson took a step back and shook his head. “You can’t be serious. I’m adopted?”
How could he have forgotten something so important as another family? A sister? Something about the woman had seemed familiar, but that was crazy, wasn’t it?
His father settled on the porch step. “Have a seat.”
“I don’t think I can.” Grayson wanted to pace, to shout and yell at the puffy white clouds floating by. This perfect day had taken a drastic and unwanted turn.
So many memories from childhood rose to his mind. Beachcombing in Okinawa, playing with his sister, Isabelle, in the yard, making cookies with his mom. Every part of who he was revolved around those memories. This couldn’t be happening.
His father pulled out a roll of mints and popped one in his mouth. “We were foster parents, and you were about two when we got you. You screamed every time I got near you at first. We assumed your dad was either not in the picture or wasn’t good to you. You had quite a few injuries from the earthquake. A concussion, a broken arm, and lots of cuts and bruises. We’d been told a rafter fell on you. You had regressed speech and didn’t say anything at all the first six months, then you started repeating everything you heard. We’d been told no one claimed you, so it was assumed your parents had died in the quake.”
“They never looked for me? You never heard of this Shauna?”
His dad shook his head. “As far as we knew, no one was looking for you, so we started adoption proceedings as soon as we could. I was stationed in Lavender Tides when we first got you. As soon as the adoption was final, we shipped out for Okinawa.”
Grayson’s earliest memories were in Japan. Nothing sounded familiar about an earthquake or Washington. Even a toddler should have remembered something that traumatic.
“What about Isabelle?” Right now he’d like to get on a plane and visit his sister, hear what she had to say about all this.
“She doesn’t know.”
Grayson paced the sandy grass as he absorbed the news. It hurt like the dickens that the sister he adored wasn’t adopted too. It would have been easier to accept if she had been as well.
“I need to take a walk. This is too much to take in.” He jogged across the road and ignored his dad calling after him.
How was he supposed to find that cocaine with this news hanging over his head?