A Matter of Circumstance - M J Marlow (best books to read now TXT) 📗

A Matter of Circumstance Prologue She had chosen the child especially; this bright beautiful three year old with hair like sunlit flames and eyes the blue of a springtime sky. She had hunted for such an open and questing mind for many years but those she had chosen before had failed her. But this one, this Juliana, was different. It had been so easy to stroll up while the mother was engaged in one of the daily arguments with the father. Their union was ending, and their attention was not on their youngest child, as it should have been. The older girl, who had been told to keep an eye on her baby sister, had only had to glance away for a few moment and that was it. Her flame lit sister was gone. She had told the small one the lies about her parents and her sister not wanting her. She was too small to enjoy the hunt her parents conducted; their tearful pleas for the kidnapper to return their child. But she had enjoyed their pain immensely from the apartment she had taken overlooking their home just outside the army base where the father was stationed. For five years she had worked to make the girl hers, but the child refused to accept the lies from her. Her unerring faith in her parents had begun to take the joy at her victory from the woman. When she had left one day to attend to the shopping, she had left the child beaten into unconsciousness and come back to find the authorities waiting for her. The child could not remember who she was after that and the family had long since fragmented and left the area. It was far from over, though. All the knowledge was locked inside the girl’s mind down deep where it should have remained until pain and fear unlocked it once again and signaled the woman that the time had come again for her to approach her Juliana had surfaced on its own accord. Fifteen years passed, long lonely years that were filled with a mounting hunger to reconnect with the only being who had ever been able to fight her; the fire kissed child of power, her Juliana. She sent her hunters forth to the town where her hunt had led her; the town where her Juliana would be waiting for her so that they could finally be united. It had not taken Victoria Ryan much longer than the time it took to finish reading the file and closing it to accept the assignment she was offered. Here was a chance for her to use her exceptional talents in acting and manipulation and mimicry for a good cause. So it was that a few weeks after her acceptance of the role, she lay in a hospital bed waiting unseeing as the blindfold covered her face. In all that time, she had heard nothing but the voice over the headphones from the girl’s interviews in her head. Someone touched her shoulder and she knew it was time for the act to begin. Joanna Marlow looked at the young woman in the bed and was excited about this ploy. She had read the file on Victoria Ryan and if anyone could pull off this duplicity, this was the woman. She was one of the best agents the FBI had ever seen, a chameleon who could take on another’s life with an ease that was astonishing. On loan from an international organization for this task, the woman had allowed her mind to be filled with the information on Juliana’s life that would allow her to play her part and bait a trap for the deranged woman who was threatening Joanna’s sister. “Can you tell us who you are?” a kind voice asked as she felt someone removing the blindfold. “I am Juliana Marlow,” Victoria Ryan replied, her voice that of the much younger girl, complete with the slight accent the girl had acquired being raised in an orphanage in France. “I was going to Montrose to find my family.” She shivered. “I am frightened,” she continued. “I’ve been told that they don’t want me and the thought that this lie will be the truth is terrifying me.” Everyone saw her face as the blindfold came off and nodded. There had been no surgery as she already shared the same basic facial shape and features as the girl she was being asked to portray. Her resemblance to Juliana was perfect, as the programming of the agent’s mind was perfect. The real Juliana Marlow was safely hidden and this agent had no knowledge of where that hiding place was. What mattered was that Victoria had made herself the perfect bait for the woman hunting for Juliana. “Why did you leave the orphanage, Juliana?” the lead agent, Martin Cavenaugh, asked over the intercom. The look on Victoria’s face was one of fear. She looked around as if a threat was coming from any direction and bit her lip. She gave the impression, as her weeks of watching the child had shown her, that she was poised to run if anything happened to alarm her. “The letter,” she said in Juliana’s voice. “It was lying on my bed. She bit her lip and tears misted her eyes. “I had almost begun to believe she’d forgotten me!” Her hands clenched in fists and she hugged herself as she sank back on the bed. “I had to run,” she sobbed. “I can’t let her get me again!” “You could stay with us, Juliana,” he said softly. “We could keep you safe.” “No,” It was Juliana who shook her head now. Victoria was gone for now, buried beneath the role completely. “There is no ‘safe’ while that woman is hunting me. I have to find my family,” she nodded decisively. “They’ll tell me what to do.” “And if the woman finds you there?” “I’ll run,” Juliana looked at the mirror. The determination in her eyes was frightening. “And when I can’t run anymore, I will make her stop. I won’t let her hurt me again!” “That’s Juliana,” the director of the orphanage where Juliana had spent the past twelve years nodded as he was brought in and asked to identify her. He watched Victoria as she looked around warily. “I’m so glad you’ve found her. We were so worried when she disappeared last month.” Martin thanked the man and watched him leave. He smiled at Joanna and they congratulated themselves on the work thus far. They were ready. The woman in the other room was ready. All they needed now was to place their decoy and wait for the woman to take their bait. Juliana watched warily as the door opened and the doctor came into the room. “You’ll spend another night in the hospital,” the doctor standing by her bedside smiled as he put his hand on her shoulder, “and then we’ll see you get on your way home.” “Thank you, Doctor,” Juliana smiled up at him. “I want to go home.” 1 It was Juliana Marlow who stood just outside the diner in the small town of Montrose, Arizona and froze when Victoria raised her hand nearly to the handle. Her dreams had led her to this town, telling her that here she would finally find some answer to who she was. For the past fifteen years, she had known she had a family who had left her behind when the woman who had left her for dead had stolen her from them. She needed to know why they hadn’t continued looking for her; why they thought she was so disposable. “Are you going to stand there all day, girl?” a worn-out looking older woman who died her hair a vivid shade of red asked. Juliana turned at the amused sound and shook her head. “Go on then,” the vision smiled and nodded towards the door. “You look like you could use a bite.” Juliana held the door for the woman. It was ingrained in her, the manners. The director at the orphanage where she had spent the past fifteen years of her odd half-life had been quite pleased to find her so well-behaved. She slid in after the woman and found a seat in the booth at the very back of the diner, where she could watch and observe. The woman went behind a long counter that ran half the length of the building and pulled an apron out from underneath. She smiled and talked to the men seated on the other side. For the next half hour, she poured coffee and chatted to people who came in and out. She was like a butterfly, Juliana mused as she watched her from the back booth. A quieter woman with soft brown hair and brown eyes had come and asked her what she would like and left her with a meal. “You’re not eating,” the butterfly frowned as she came over after looking her way now and then. She slid into the booth with her. “Are you in trouble, kid?” “Not at the moment,” Juliana answered and took a French fry off the plate. She chewed on it slowly, her mind too occupied with other matters to focus on such a mundane task. She looked at the woman as she felt the tears pricking at her eyes again. “Can I trust you?” It was a simple question, but one many people had answered with lies. She wanted to hear the words from someone who meant them. The concern she saw in this woman’s eyes warmed the empty place in her heart. This woman was not going to hurt her. “Oh, kid,” Vivian Washburn smiled gently in understanding. Juliana could tell she wanted to touch her, but wisely sat back and waited. “You are in trouble, aren’t you?” “I don’t know,” Juliana said softly and abandoned the meal. It wasn’t food she wanted. The nourishment was not what she needed just then. Answers were here for her, she was certain of it; but now she was terrified at actually finding them. What if the bad woman had been right? What if, after all these years of struggling to hold on to the one tiny crap of memory he had of her family, they did not want her? She pulled some money out of her jacket pocket and put it on the table and she did what she always did when she was overwhelmed by the doubts and fears. She ran. “I – I can’t do this!” she sobbed. “It hurts too much!” She was out the door, startling the man who was just opening it. She didn’t see his uniform or hear Vivian’s cry of alarm. She ran, as she always had towards a semblance of sanctuary, disappearing into the trees and the shadows. She had no right to be here, her doubt screamed in the voice of the woman who had stolen her from her life. “What the hell?” Sheriff Warren Marlow choked as he saw the girl run like the demons of hell were after her in force. He met Vivian’ alarmed expression. “What is going on, Viv?” he asked his sister. “Who was that child?” “I don’t know,” Vivian told him honestly as she handed him the backpack Juliana had left behind her when she had run. “She was standing outside the door when I got in looking like she had to convince herself to come inside.” She looked towards the shadows. “That poor kid is in some kind of trouble, Warren,” she continued. “You have to help her.” She kept running until she was utterly spent. She had not eaten since she had left the hospital in Phoenix; her mind had been occupied on her reasons