Duncan’s Honor (The Aegis Network: Jacksonville Division #7)

Chapter 8

8

“ Y ou look different.”

Chastity stepped from her mother’s embrace and swallowed. Her mother had always been able to read her emotions and sense the changes her body underwent. Two days before she’d gotten her period for the first time, her mother entered her bedroom with a box of various sanitary women’s products. While her parents were old-fashioned as hell, they did have all the necessary talks with their children, often to the point of embarrassment.

“I can’t put my finger on it, but something has changed,” her mother said, holding Chastity by her biceps, rubbing her soft, motherly hands up and down. “Maybe it’s this man?”

“Enough with pushing Duncan and me, okay?”

“I’m not pushing.” Her mother narrowed her eyes, tilting her head, as if she peered into Chastity’s brain, plucking out the fact she was pregnant. “But you sounded so excited about him when we last spoke,” her mother said as if Duncan wasn’t even standing across the porch.

Chastity stole a glance in his direction. He had shoved his hands into his pockets, his chin lowered, but his gaze was all on her as if he was trying to figure out what her mother had meant.

“Laurie, it’s one thing to make our daughter blush, but something else entirely to make her boyfriend uncomfortable, who happens to be a guest in our home.”

“Like you didn’t just do that by asking his age,” Chastity said.

Her mother kissed Chastity’s cheek. “He’s quite handsome,” she whispered, hopefully so softly that Duncan didn’t hear.

Poor man must feel like a slab of beef at this point.

“I don’t mean to be so forward, but do you mind if I go through Serenity’s room? We want to head over to Joey’s last known address before it gets too dark.” Leave it to Duncan to get right down to business and, thankfully, change the damn subject.

“Not at all,” her father said. “Honey, why don’t we let them search, since we’ve already done so.”

“And you found nothing?” Chastity felt a sudden sense of nausea. She gripped Duncan’s forearm for support. There weren’t too many hiding places in their bedrooms. They had no doors on their closets. Not because of lack of trust; the house had just always been that way. There was only one bathroom upstairs, and all five kids had to share.

Her mother shook her head, sniffling. “I shouldn’t have yelled at her.”

“Ma don’t do that to yourself. Serenity had no right to treat you and Dad like she has been.”

“I don’t know where I went wrong with?—”

“Don’t talk like that.” Instinctively, Chastity covered her stomach. A mother’s role was to love and protect, teach and lead by example. Her parents walked the same line they talked. There was nothing fake about them, and they were always loving and kind, even when they had to discipline their children.

Just a little on the rigid side and overbearing, but thinking about the life growing inside her belly, Chastity could actually understand why.

“You did nothing wrong, and we’ll find Serenity and hopefully talk some sense into her,” Chastity said.

“You’re a good child.” Her mother cupped Chastity’s cheek and gave it a good pat. “It’s getting close to the dinner hour. I’ll go make you some sandwiches for the road. I’ve also made up Manly’s old room for Duncan.”

“Thanks.” Chastity took Duncan by the hand and led him quietly through the foyer, down the hall, and up the one staircase near the kitchen. Their parents had taken down the dated wallpaper and finally painted the walls various earth tones that she’d picked out years ago. Light browns, tans, a russet red in the dining room, a mustard yellow in the kitchen, and as she passed her old bedroom, she had to do a double take.

“What is it?”

“My parents finally painted my room a light green. I’d always wanted a green room instead of the floral wallpaper I’d grown up with.”

“You had a room full of flowers?” He peeked his head into her room. “I have a hard time believing you were a little girl who played with dolls.”

She laughed. “I had dolls, but I didn’t really play with them, unless it was to scare the crap out of my brother Manly. He was scared of his own shadow, and I made one of my dolls into a bad version of Chucky.”

“Wonderful, now I’m going to have nightmares about a crazy doll and that movie about children and some cornfield.” Duncan tugged her hand.

She glanced down at their intertwined fingers and let out a nervous laugh. “I can’t believe you’re afraid of horror movies but handled my parents and their embarrassing questions.” They watched many movies together over the last year, but Duncan was nowhere to be found when anyone picked a horror flick.

“Trust me, I was shaking worse than when we had that fatal car crash last month. Your father scares the shit out of me, and I’m terrified they both hate me, and not just because I’m an old man.”

“You’re not that old.” She laughed. “Right now, they think you’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Maybe, but that could all change in a flash, and then I’ll be running naked through the cornfield while your father hunts me down with a shotgun.”

She patted his shoulder. “You have nothing to worry about.” Only, she had no idea how her parents would take her news.

But she wasn’t going to tell them this visit, and she had to tell Duncan first.

“Where’s your sister’s room?” he asked.

“Next door on the right.” She pushed past him and stepped into Serenity’s room. It looked exactly the same as she remembered. The walls were a pale yellow and the bedspread was white with floral-accented pillow shams. A pink stuffed elephant sat proudly on the bed. Her sister had won that at a local carnival where she had to hit three balloons with a dart from twenty paces away. She’d been only seven and beat out everyone in the family, including their dad, who still swears he didn’t let her win.

Chastity didn’t believe him.

“Serenity didn’t go anywhere overnight without this.” Chastity sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed the elephant. While Serenity didn’t like boyish games, she enjoyed that carnival game because it made her the center of attention for the rest of the night, something Serenity craved all the time.

“She’s seventeen now, and if she ran off with that boy, I doubt she’d be bringing a stuffed animal.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” She and Serenity were like night and day. Where Chastity had always been a tomboy, Serenity was into makeup, hair, and used to sneak regular clothing under her traditional Mennonite dress. It was highly frowned upon for women to wear anything but plain dresses, but like most things, times were changing, and more and more young girls and boys wore more stylish clothes, though still quite modest.

Serenity always tried to push the envelope.

“Mind if I go through her closet?”

“Go right ahead.” Chastity set the elephant on the bed before going through her sister’s drawers. A pang of guilt glided across her heart. It felt like she was breaking some sister code by rifling through her things. Her clothes were that of a typical young Mennonite lady with a few jeans, blouses, and other regular clothing dabbled in.

Satisfied there were no clues in the dresser, Chastity pulled back the quilt and lifted the mattress. “Bingo,” she said, snagging what appeared to be a scrapbook or journal. “Exactly where I hid mine. We always had to make our own beds, so it was the one place I knew my parents would never look.”

“I don’t want to tell you what I hid under there.”

She chuckled. “I can only imagine.” She’ll never forget the first time she’d seen a dirty magazine her first week in firefighting school. Her fellow firefighters hadn’t meant to leave them lying around the break room. She didn’t know who blushed more, her or the young men in the station.

With shaky fingers, she flipped open the book.

Duncan sat next to her. His one hand pressed into the bed behind her back, the other one a little too close to her bare thigh.

The first few pages were from when she was younger, so Chastity flipped to the end, where she used the pages as a journal over a place to display images with crafty sayings and cute paper cutouts. She focused on the page written the day before she left home.

“I really thought he loved me. Honestly, truly loved me. I read through my other entries about him, and it reminds me of how sweet he could be. He promised to take me away from all this. He even said he’d take me to see my sister, Chastity, the wonder daughter. The daughter my parents are proud of, even though she ran off in the middle of the night, defying their wishes.”

Duncan’s fingers curled around her shoulder. “Don’t take that to heart.”

“Kind of hard not to. I’ve always known Serenity was jealous of me, but it’s the same with our brothers. Serenity always felt like the only way to get noticed in this family was to rebel.” Growing up in Chastity and Manly’s shadows couldn't have been easy. The male and female perfect children, only Chastity had to stumble her way back into her parents’ good graces by proving she had the chops and the faith to follow her dreams.

Only what was Serenity’s dream? It seemed Serenity never thought past being the center of attention and that tugged at Chastity’s heartstrings.

“What else does it say?” Duncan asked.

“But Chastity didn’t do it wrong. She’d done everything right until she became a firefighter, which is girl-power badass. I wish I had realized that a long time ago. It might have saved me a broken heart.

Joey doesn’t even know I know yet, but tomorrow, I’m going to confront him and tell him he can go off with one of the other girls he’s been seeing and telling lies to.

Mom and Dad are actually encouraging this law school stuff, and maybe they’re serious about letting me stay on campus. Chastity is right. I have to get my shit together, and it starts with saying goodbye to Joey.

Until the next time…”

“That was the last entry,” Chastity said, closing the book. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“I wish I could lie to you and tell you I felt differently, but it sounds like she had every intention of breaking it off with this Joey guy.”

“And she was going to confront him.” Chastity chomped down on her fingernail. There had been nothing to believe that Joey was violent. All the information they had about his criminal record hadn’t shown any evidence of a temper.

“I need to call Darius and see if we can get a location on Joey. We should leave now,” Duncan said.

She breathed in slowly through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. She repeated that another five times, doing her best to remain calm. Every alarm bell in her head rang at full blast.

Her sister could be dead.

“Chastity?” Duncan tilted her chin up with his thumb and forefinger. “Chastity?”

“What?” She blinked a few times, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. “I’m fine,” she muttered, continuing with her controlled breathing.

“Relax, sweetheart. We’re going to find her.”

“You can’t promise that we’ll find her alive.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Duncan said, cupping her cheeks and lowering his eyes to catch her gaze. “We need to have a little faith in the man upstairs.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could utter a single syllable, he kissed her with his warm, tantalizing lips. He satisfied a thirst that she had deep in her throat. She was going to have to tell him soon about the baby. She had no right to keep that information from him. Whatever happened going forward, he needed to be part of the equation.

Her parents might have gotten over her leaving in the middle of the night, but having a child out of wedlock, with a man who didn’t love her, that made her a harlot.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed from down the hallway, but that didn’t stop Duncan from deepening the kiss, wrapping his arms around her body, drawing her tight.

She pressed her hands against his chest and pulled back just as her father came into her peripheral view, but he stepped back and cleared his throat.

“Duncan,” she whispered.

He took her hands in his and brought her to a standing position. “Let’s go find your sister.”