Whispers in the Dark - Maya Banks [63]
“We just didn’t use them,” she said simply. “Our parents drummed into us from as early as I have memory that we had to keep our secrets. No one outside our family was to ever know.”
Nathan frowned. “That shows remarkable restraint. Kids talk to their friends. Let things slip. Let’s face it, children aren’t very secretive.”
Shea shrugged. “We didn’t have friends. We were homeschooled. Our parents were super careful about who we were exposed to. We were never allowed to have other kids over. At the time, it all seemed so normal. It was our existence. It wasn’t until later that I looked back and realized it was like living in a survivalist family. Deep paranoia. Suspicious of everyone. No social life. One of the biggest fights I had with my parents was when I wanted to go away to college. I thought my father was going to lock me in the basement.”
Nathan’s frown deepened and Shea held her hand up. “I know what you’re thinking. My parents weren’t assholes. To someone else they absolutely would sound like the worst parents ever. They were loving. We had a good childhood. Was it a normal childhood? Well, no, but they did the best they could.”
She looked down at her hands as sadness crept through her chest. “Grace and I never understood. We thought they were too overprotective until the day they were killed. Then we understood that everything they’d done over the years had been absolutely necessary. They died protecting us.”
He reached over to catch her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He waited a moment as though to allow her to gather her emotions and then he pressed on.
“Were your parents ever approached before? Did anyone show up at your house? Anything strange happen or do you ever remember them being afraid, more than usual, I mean?”
“We moved frequently. There was one time in particular, we’d only just moved into a new house in a new state. We’d been there maybe six months? My parents got a phone call and they were so agitated. They tried to hide it from me and Grace, but we could hear them arguing in their bedroom. My mom especially was a mess. She ordered me and Grace not to leave the house, even to go into the yard, and by that weekend, we’d packed and left.”
“You didn’t hear why?”
Shea shook her head. “The official story was that Dad got a better job somewhere else, but we knew that wasn’t true because they didn’t even act like they knew where we were going. Always before when we’d moved, Dad had gone ahead, found us a place and we moved from house to house. This time, we checked into hotels and we just ended up on the Oregon coast. I don’t think it was planned. I think they’d reached the end of their resources or maybe they thought they’d outrun whatever it was that spooked them.”
“How old were you then?”
“I was sixteen. Grace was seventeen. They told us that we had to change our names, at least on paper. They wanted us so used to using those new identities that they wouldn’t allow us to use our real names even in the house with each other.”
“And you didn’t question this?”
His incredulous tone annoyed her.
“Of course we did. We were teenagers. We weren’t stupid little girls anymore who did without questioning. They couldn’t very well feed us a line of bullshit anymore. So they told us the truth. They said that there were people who wanted to exploit my and Grace’s abilities, but Grace’s in particular. My dad told me it was important to protect Grace because she was more fragile. Her ability could kill her.
“We moved into a bigger house on the coast. A fortress really. It had a panic room with an underground escape route that led away from the house. My father made us practice. He timed our escapes. He drilled us over and over on what we were supposed to do if the worst happened. He just never went into what the ‘worst’ was, but we found that out the day they were killed.”
“Where the hell did your parents get the money for a setup like that?” Nathan asked.
“That part I don’t know,” Shea replied. “Before we’d always been on our own. I mean they’d have