Chasing Football Dreams (Diner Girl #2)

Chapter Twenty

E liza and I made our usual run at the orphanage—only this time we could afford to give the kids stuffed animals that weren’t given to her by a stalker. The football team held a fundraiser and chirped in on buying clothes, gifts, food, and toiletries. They even came with us in their numbers to the orphanage to share some love and help with the meals.

Now and again, I will catch a few of the squad members looking at me with empathy when they hear and see the conditions of the orphanage. I didn’t plan on showing them to my old room, but the kids had other ideas as they pulled half the squad around the orphanage. They all ended up teasing me about the tire I tied to the tree to practice my throws.

I hate to have my team look at me differently. In the beginning, it was about me being a girl and now it’s seeing my living quarters when I used to live here. The past always had a way of catching up and clinging to a person’s future vision.

Eliza and I were putting the kids to bed while the guys cleaned the kitchen. “I still can’t believe Shane and his wife adopted me and gave me a copy that I am now rightfully their daughter. I am twenty-one years old, and I feel like ten when I always wished to have a family,” Eliza babbled smiling.

While Eliza was living in the fantasy world of getting the family she always wanted, and I was still trying to come to terms with everything. I am happy for Eliza that Angela and Shane were so understanding and took her in because she has always been at my side. We were inseparable from each other and having her as my sister was something I always had and will forever have.

“You don’t seem too excited about all the changes,” Eliza noted following me down the corridor towards the office where we wanted to tell Kelly we were leaving. It was hard facing her when I knew she was part of the scheme that got me kidnapped.

“It feels too good to be true,” I looked up to Shane Martin as my idol—not thinking that the universe would turn a page as horrific as this on me. To be an orphan was already the tough part of my past but to be a victim of kidnapping was something I couldn’t just accept.

“I understand. For seventeen years you were aware you had no family and seventeen later you find you are the daughter of the man you always stalked,”

I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t stalk him,”

We entered the office, expecting to find Kelly but it was empty. Except for images of me as a child lying scattered over the desk. “What the hell?” Eliza exclaimed.

I walked up to the desk, taking a closer look at the photos. They were of me, and it almost seemed they were taken the night I was taken. I was in a room sitting bundled up in a corner, looking terrified. Each image consisted of me until the drop-off point. The orphanage.

“Well, this without a doubt proves that the orphanage had something to do with your kidnapping,” Eliza said with anger.

“Why would someone have these?” I asked.

“As proof,”

“Do you think Kelly didn’t work alone or that she was working for someone?” I asked, picking up the image of me looking straight at the camera. I had no idea what life had in store with me.

We looked at each other when we heard footsteps. “We gotta hide,” I told Eliza hearing the footsteps and voices growing closer.

“The window,” Eliza whispered. We ran for the window and climbed out, ducking down when the door opened. Eliza gestured for me to follow her, but I was stuck in a faze as I watched Candice enter the room with a broody man who looked oddly familiar.

Where have I seen this man before?

“The Martin girl is causing problems,” The man with the familiar spoke. “How did she find out that she is Shane Martin’s daughter? For years we covered up the abduction,”

“It must have been Kelly. She couldn’t stop asking questions and digging,”

“We need to silence her before he silences one of us,”

“We did as he asked. We picked the Martin girl up from the hospital, and made sure to convince her that her parents died in a tragic accident,”

“Until she reconnected with her father and became the new talk of the state with her hidden skills,” He slammed something on the desk.

“Zoey has always been throwing that damn ball and impersonating Shane Martin as if he was her hero. We didn’t think much of it as we believe she would outgrow it,”

I covered Eliza’s mouth when she gasped. At least they didn’t hear it as they continued talking.

“And to think it was all about money that got that girl kidnapped,”

“We have to make sure he doesn’t get caught because that means we will also be caught,”

“I can’t go to prison. What will happen to my daughter?”

I snarled at the audacity of her thinking about her daughter when she was part of the reason I got taken from my mother and father. They raised me on lies—made a fool out of me and had me believing that my life meant nothing.

I never wanted something as bad as pushing harder at life and giving it my all now. I don’t care about the past I’ve lost but I won’t let anyone stand in my way of chasing my dream.

“It wasn’t Kelly,” I heard Eliza whisper next to me.

“She’s here today with her team,” The man noted.

“Yes, she comes here every week with Eliza. They bring the kids some gifts and spend time with them,”

“Can’t we use it to catch her?” My blood turned cold at his question.

“And take her where?”

“Kill her this time. She’s disrupting my life. My wife already suspicious,”

“Zoey,” Eliza touched my shoulder.

To hear how people I didn’t even know wanted to get rid of me terrified and confused me. What have I done to them to deserve this treatment?

“We got to go,” Eliza urged. “Someone is going to see us and alert them,”

I nodded and followed her but stopped. “We need evidence to give to the police,”

“We can’t go back in there while they are there,” Eliza argued.

“I know but we can ask for a diversion,” I suggested, pointing at another window where one of us can get back inside and cause a diversion.

“I will do it. You make sure you get what you are going to need,”

I nodded and tip-toed over to the window with her helping Eliza through and crawling back waiting for her diversion to get back inside. I peeked through the window noticing they were standing with their backs to me.

“Where are you, Eliza?” I muttered watching them gather the photos together and slipping back into the envelope.

My shoulders jerked when I heard the alarm going off before hearing kids screaming. I smiled at the thought of Eliza using all the times I saved her ass as a diversion.

I raised my head to see Candice and the man exiting the office. I only had a few seconds to get the envelope they left behind before they returned and found me.

I paused when is saw Duncan entering the office, his eyes immediately finding me and assuring me that it was safe.

“I am starting to see a whole different Zoey than I met months ago,” He surprisingly noted with a smile walking over to me, snaking an arm around my waist and pressing his lips against mine.