Treasure shivered against the cold as she sat in the wheelchair, waiting for her Mom to drive her car around to pick her up. She had entered the psychiatric ward at the Mayo Clinic the first week in January, and now she was leaving Regions Hospital in St. Paul in the first week of March. The coldest part of winter had passed while she was locked away in the hospitals, and now she was coming out to the snowiest part. Six inches of wet snow had fallen the night before, and parts of the lot were still being cleared. “Good luck, Rea,” the nurse said as the car stopped in front of her.
“Thank you, Nurse Miller,” she said as she stood up. Her art supplies had already been taken home, and she had left a painting of her favorite nurses at the nursing station as she left. They had been so helpful to her over the past month since her sudden arrival. When her Mom had found out what had happened while she slept, she had her transferred to the Twin Cities hospital by dinnertime that night. The police investigation and DNA testing proved the men had assaulted her, and both had pleaded guilty last week. The hospital was eager to put the incident behind them, and quickly settled with her lawyer. The $250, 000 settlement would cover her college and anything else she would need and was already deposited in a bank account for her.
She got into the car and buckled the seatbelt, placing the bag with her new drugs in the back seat. It had taken them a few weeks to find the right mix; after the attack, she heard the voice when she was trying to take a nap that afternoon. “We did nothing wrong,” it told her.
“We bit a man’s fingers off,” she argued, the pain coming forward, but she was too tired to fight it.
“No man should touch us except our mate,” the voice said. The pain went away, and she only told the doctors at the new hospital she heard it, not what it said. The voice confused her, and she already felt terrible about hurting someone again, even if they did deserve it.
The voices and the pain didn’t return, and she was finally cleared to go home. She had weekly therapy sessions, she had a tracking necklace again, and she had drug therapy, but she was going HOME and it felt great.
They arrived home to a dark house, and her Mom pulled into the garage and they went directly into the kitchen. She didn’t say anything, but Rea was kind of disappointed nobody was there to greet them. Of course, who would be there? She had exactly ONE friend, Jenny, and she was at basketball practice. Her grandmother was back in Florida. Nobody else in this town wanted to be with her, and tears started to flow as she realized she was even more alone than she was before. “Treasure, it’s going to be all right.” Her Mom pulled her into a hug as she let out the tears.
When she was done, her Mom made hot chocolate and they went to sit in the living room. She had removed all of the reminders of her husband, making the big house seem even more empty and impersonal. Rea took a sip, then set it down and looked at her Mom. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be ME anymore,” she said. “I wish we could just go somewhere else, where I’d have a different name, and nobody would know me or what I did. I just want to be NORMAL again.”
“Oh honey,” her Mom said. “Where would we go?”
“Away from here,” she said. “Look at this place. It’s too much for us, and what is really keeping us here anyway? We have no relatives here, most of your friends were friends with Dad, and I can go to college anywhere. I miss Grandma, and I sure won’t miss that six inches of white stuff out there.”
Dawn thought about it; she had her husband’s survivor benefits, her nursing license would easily transfer, and she missed her mother too. “Let me call a realtor in the morning,” she said. “You’re right, even if we stayed here, this house is too much for me anymore and has too many memories.”
“Mom? Can we go back to your maiden name, and legally change my name to Rea?”
“I’ll call our lawyer in the morning, honey.” She brought her daughter into a hug; this town had hurt her just as much as they hurt her daughter. She’d never get a break, and she never would escape the whispered comments and looks. “We’ll just disappear togethenthusiastic
It turned out that getting our names changed legally wasn’t as hard as one might think. Dawn called Chief Clarke and asked him about it; he quickly agreed that Treasure was eligible for a name change under the Minnesota Victim Protection Program. He wrote a letter to the Courts stating that she had been the victim of two attempted abductions and was still in danger. He further explained the police still had an open investigation into the identity of the driver of the SUV in the hospital parking lot, and the reason for the abduction attempts were still unknown.
Dawn called a lawyer, and with the Chief’s help they got a Court hearing a week later. By that time, they had already accepted an offer on the house and donated or sold most of their belongings. The things they would take with them to Florida were packed in a short container and hauled away. Dawn closed her accounts, arranged to have the pension checks routed through her lawyer, and cut all other ties to her life in Minnesota.
Rea had even less to deal with, since she had already graduated from high school. Her graduation certificate was from the State Board of Education, not her local district, so no one at her old school would know when the certificate when her new name was issued. Her medical records were printed out, and they spent a night going through and blacking out her name and social security number wherever it appeared. When they arrived in Florida, her new doctors could scan in what was needed, under her new identity.
The lawyer was given authority to complete the sales and was the only person who would know their new names and location. By the time the two were done at the government offices, they had new names on new birth certificates, Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. The next stop was the bank; they opened new accounts in their new names, transferred the money over, and closed the old ones. Rea got a new debit card, attached to the account her Social Security survivor’s benefit would be deposited in, and an investment account that held the proceeds of the lawsuit. They also applied for passports with their new identifies. It took about two days to get everything done, and what was left their lawyer would handle for them.
—
Charles was getting very nervous as he saw the realtor place the “SOLD” sign on the suburban home they had been watching for the past week. In the week since Treasure returned home, she had rarely ventured out, and only in the company of her mother. Now there was more uncertainty.
The three men were watching in shifts; cameras had been placed around the house, and a GPS homing device had been planted in their car when they were at the grocery store. He picked up his laptop and went to his room before opening Facetime and calling his son. “Hey Dad, how’s it going?”
“They’re leaving town,” he said. “The house has been sold, and we can see boxes stacked in the living room. They’ve got a bunch of stuff for sale on Craigslist, priced to sell.”
“Where are they going?”
“I don’t know. I had Billy stop and look at some bedroom furniture she had advertised; he tried to start a conversation with her Mom, but she wasn’t forthcoming with anything. She just said they were downsizing.”
“You know this, but we can’t let them get out of our protection,” he said. “There’s no telling where they might go or who might find them.”
“Relax, Martin. I’m not about to let anything happen to my only granddaughter.” They caught up on some other Pack and Council business, then he hung up. He went out to talk to his men, they needed another way.
“Why don’t we just go up and tell her what she is,” Billy said. “Her wolf will confirm it. She has to be wondering about her Mom and how it all happens, if we tell her we know she will listen.”
“And the first thing she does is go tell her Mom,” Nate replied. “You know the rules, we can’t let humans gain the knowledge of our existence. How would it work if we told her about us and then had to kill her mother to keep the secret? What if she doesn’t believe us? Are we supposed to just shift and let her run off in fear?”
“We need a controlled situation,” Charles said. “Not here, but away from her mother. Preferably on Pack lands where we can freely shift and let her discover her true nature without humans around.”
“How do we do that?”