Chapter 5

Three years earlier:

"Hey, Mom, I'm home," Cally called as she dropped her backpack on the sofa and followed her nose to the kitchen where her mother was standing in front of the oven.

Stephanie Williams turned to look at her daughter and smiled. "Come over here and give me a hug. I haven't seen you for almost a week."

"A week isn't so long," Cally said. She walked to her mother and wrapped her in a giant hug.

"I know," Stephanie said. "I'm not complaining. You're in your last year at college. I should be grateful I see you as much as I do."

"What are you baking?" Cally asked. "It smells wonderful."

"Pineapple upside-down cake," Stephanie said. "My mother used to make it. I was just remembering how much I loved it, and I decided to make it for you and your boyfriend. When will he be here?"

Cally glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. "He's coming about three. I wanted to get here early, because I have some news to tell you about him."

Stephanie opened the oven door and peered inside. She pulled on an oven mitt and removed the cake, setting it carefully on the countertop.

"Good," Stephanie said. "I want to hear. Maybe by the time we're done talking the cake will be cool enough for us to sample."

"To start with, Ben's not my boyfriend any longer," Cally said.

"Oh no," Stephanie exclaimed. "I've only met him a few times, but I liked him and now you've broken up?" Stephanie reached to take her daughter's hand.

"Not exactly," Cally said. She avoided her mother's handclasp and wiggled her hand in front of her mom's face. "He's not my boyfriend. He's my fiancé!"

There was only a moment's hesitation. "Cally! That's wonderful. He's a lucky young man, and I'm so happy for you." Her mother hugged her tightly.

"You approve then?" Cally asked.

"I do," Stephanie said. "I'm surprised, but I shouldn't be. I sensed this one was different."

"I love him, Mom."

Her mother folded her in her arms for a tight hug. "Tell me your plans," she said, unable to keep the slight tremor from her voice.

"Mom, are you crying?"

"No," Stephanie said as she wiped tears from her eyes with a self-conscious grin. "My little girl is all grown up. It's emotional. But, mostly, it's a happy emotion. Now, tell me your plans!"

"The first thing we have to do is finish school," Cally said. "So we have plenty of time for wedding plans. Next weekend he's taking me to meet his family, and we'll share the news with them. I'm nervous."

"They'll love you," Stephanie said. "How could they not?"

Cally giggled. "Mom, you're a little prejudiced, but Ben says I'll fit right into the family. We're flying, because the trip would be too long to drive for just the weekend. This is a great place to live, but it's remote!"

"It is a little remote," Stephanie said. "That's part of the charm for me. Where is Ben from? Does he have a big family?"

"Just a sister, and a mom and dad. His dad is a cop. My dad was a cop, isn't that right?"

"Yes," Stephanie said. Cally watched as her mother tensed. She was sure her mom was unaware of it, but every time Cally tried to get information about her mother's early years, her mom closed down. She'd never pushed because she didn't want to cause her mom pain. All she knew was that her father was a police detective and he'd died in a car accident. She didn't know how her mother would take the rest of the news, but she was getting ready to find out.

"Mom, Ben plans to become a police officer, like his father."

"It's an honorable profession," Stephanie said.

"It is," Cally agreed. "The thing is, he'd like to move back home after graduation. To maybe work in the same department as his father. What I am trying to say is that after we are married, we're going to be moving. I don't want to leave you alone here, but it's been Ben's dream, and I want him to have his dream."

"Cally, stop!" Stephanie said. "You're acting guilty, like it's some horrible sin for you to move away. I knew this would happen someday. I'm happy for you. I'll miss you, but I've always known the day would come. I just didn't know it was going to come this soon." Stephanie's smile was wry, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. "This is ridiculous!" she said. "No more water works. Tell me about Ben, his family and where you think you'll be spending the rest of your life!"

Cally laughed. "New Jersey! Who knew I would be so excited about moving to Newark, New Jersey!"

Stephanie's body convulsed. Her hand flew out and knocked the cake pan off the counter and both she and Cally looked in stunned silence at the upside-down pineapple upside-down cake lying on the kitchen floor. "Oh no, you can't," Stephanie cried. "Baby, you can't!" And then Stephanie Plum Morelli Williams did something she'd never done in her new life. She slowly slid to the floor in a faint, her body lying across the remains of the cake.

Cally fell to her knees. "Mom!" She lifted her mother's shoulders from the floor and brushed hot and gooey pineapple from her mother's arm. Her mother groaned slightly and Cally tightened her hold. "Mom!" she said again, this time with relief as she realized her mother had fainted but was coming back around.

"I'm okay," Stephanie said weakly. Her body was trembling as she attempted to sit up. Cally lifted her wobbling mother into a sitting position.

"Stay still, Mom. You fainted. I need to check you out and see if you're injured."

"I'm not injured," Stephanie said. She reached to the back of her head and removed a sticky clump of pineapple. "It's been a long time since I rolled in food. I'd forgotten what an unpleasant experience it is."

"Rolled in food? What do you mean? Are you sure you're okay?"

"I think so," Stephanie said. "I've been waiting for this day and dreading it, too. Cally, baby. Call Ben. Tell him not to come over today. There's something I need to talk to you about."

"Mom, Ben is going to be part of the family. Anything you tell me, you can tell him."

Stephanie rolled over to her hands and knees and shakily stood. She remembered the adrenaline dump after a scary situation. She remembered the nausea, and she remembered Ranger helping her through it. If only Ranger were here to help her now. She sobbed. She couldn't hold it back even though it caused Cally to look closely at her.

"I will call Ben and tell him to meet us at the emergency room," Cally said. "I don't think you are all right."

"I'm fine," Stephanie said. "Call Ben and tell him you're cancelling today. I'm going to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago. If you choose to tell Ben, you can, but he won't be hearing any of this from me."

"Mom!" Cally's exasperation made her voice shrill and caused her mother's head to turn sharply back toward her. A piece of pineapple dangled from the end of a curl. This didn't look like the calm, cool and in control mom she'd known and loved all her life. This woman looked a little wild.

"Cally!" Stephanie's voice rang with equal exasperation. "I'm going to go upstairs and take a shower. When I come back down I'm going to tell you all the things you've wondered about your whole life, but never asked. I'm going to tell you about your father, and why you and I live in what you call this nice but remote place. Please call Ben. This is a conversation for you and me only and it's important that we have it now."

Cally's brow furrowed with concern. "All right," she said. She walked to the sofa where she'd carelessly dropped her backpack and pulled her phone out to do her mother's bidding. She wondered what her mother was going to tell her that would impact her new engagement. Because she was certain there was something that would.

Twenty minutes later Stephanie was sitting cross-legged on the sofa looking across the room at her daughter who was sitting on the edge of the raised hearth. Cally didn't look all that happy to have cancelled out on Ben, so she knew she had to tell her daughter the straight story. Something she'd hoped never to have to do. She'd always been good at denial.

"To start with," Stephanie said, "your father was not Joe Williams."

"Wh-What?"

"Your father's real name was Joe Morelli. Everything else I've told you about him is the truth."

"You've never told me anything except that he was a police detective and that we were all in an accident and he died. I was always afraid to ask, because the one time when I asked if I could see a picture of him you completely freaked out. I searched for a police officer who died in a car accident by the name of Joseph Williams and I couldn't find anything."

"You searched?" Stephanie asked. "I had no idea. Where did you search? And how long ago?"

"What's the big deal?" Cally asked. "I searched during one of my high school IT classes, and I searched everything I could find for an officer named Joseph Williams. I found one, but he was in his eighties. I didn't think that was him, and he was still alive in any case."

Stephanie wondered for a moment if her daughter's search could have compromised their safety, but if Cally had searched when she was in high school, they'd have come for her by now if they were going to. She picked up the photo album that she'd brought downstairs with her after her shower. It was the only piece of her former life she'd been able to save. She wasn't supposed to have kept it, but she had insisted she wouldn't comply unless she could take part of her old life with her. Finally, the agent helping her had given in. She wasn't supposed to have talked with her Grandma either, but she'd found a way, and she'd never regretted it. She walked across the room and handed the album to her daughter and then returned to the sofa to continue her story.

"His name was Joe Morelli. He was my husband and your father, and he was a police detective. A good one. His picture is on the first page." She watched as her daughter slowly opened the cover, and Stephanie felt her eyes fill with tears as she watched tears course down her daughter's cheeks.

"He was so handsome," Cally said softly.

"He was," Stephanie agreed. "You're very like him."

"Why have you kept this a secret?" Cally asked. "Why couldn't I have seen this before?"

"Because, baby, I didn't know how to tell you. Your father was murdered. His death was no accident. And the people that wanted him dead were going to come after you and me. I had to disappear, to leave my family and everyone I knew, to keep you safe." The last word came out on a sob and Stephanie wrapped her arms around her middle, willing herself to keep control. She had to get through this.

"You mean like the WITSEC program?" Cally asked.

"That's exactly what I mean," Stephanie told her daughter. "How do you know about WITSEC?"

"Years ago, there was an NCIS episode about it. I watched it with Angie and I told her I thought you and I were in the WITSEC program and that's why we didn't have any family."

"You did what?" Stephanie asked. "You didn't! No one can know."

"Calm down, Mom. I was joking at the time, but for a while I wondered about it, and then I decided I was just being too imaginative. I thought it was just too painful for you to talk about my father."

"When Joe was killed I was injured, and you, fortunately, were not. At that time, I thought it was just a horrible car accident, but this man, Brian Gregg, came to visit me in the hospital and explained what had really happened. He said he thought the man who had killed Joe was in the mob. Joe was killed because he had uncovered something, and the mob thought I also knew what it was. The accident was supposed to kill me, too, and you I suppose. Brian told me even though they succeeded in killing Joe, they wouldn't stop until I was dead, and if they couldn't get me, they'd go after you to draw me out. He assured me they were keeping you in a safe place and you were uninjured. I demanded that he bring you to me, but he said he couldn't take that risk with your life. That's when I realized how truly serious it was. He said I had to let him tell my family I was dead and then he would help us get set up."

"Oh, Mom!"

"I didn't want to. I had a friend. I knew he could keep us safe, so I told Brian I would go to Ranger—Ranger was my friend. He was my mentor when I started working as a bounty hunter and…"

"You were a bounty hunter?" Cally interrupted. She jumped to her feet and Stephanie saw that this last bit of news had completely astonished her daughter.

She couldn't help a small smile. Her life now was so far from what it had once been she sometimes had trouble believing she'd ever lived that life. "I was a bounty hunter. And when I started I needed a mentor. Ranger was my mentor. He was ex-Special Forces and he was Batman. He would have kept us safe. But he was gone. He was in the wind."

"In the wind?"

"That's what we used to say when he would mysteriously disappear. He did secret missions for the government. And he had contacts. He would have helped us. I told Brian that Ranger would protect us. I told him we could live at RangeMan, his security business, until he came back and then he would take care of us. Brian said he'd look into it and arrange the details. Then the next day he came back and said that he had news that Ranger had been killed on his mission. It hadn't been made public yet, but there was no one to help me but Brian. He asked what part of the country I wanted to be relocated to, and I said I didn't care, but that I needed to be by the beach."

"And he moved us here?" Cally asked.

"He did. He gave us a new identity. He told us to keep our first names and he changed the last. He gave us a place to live, a car, and he gave us a generous allowance for the first three years. After that he said I'd have to make my own living. His agency would monitor the situation and contact me if there was any sign we'd been found. Other than that, I would never see him again. He told my family we'd been killed as well in the accident. I hated doing that to them, but I couldn't risk you."

Stephanie buried her head in her hands and there was silence in the room while she struggled to keep control. She lifted her head and continued with her story. "I didn't do exactly as he said, though. I managed to get to a secure phone line and I called my home. I told my grandma. She was the one who answered the phone when I called, and I told her everything I knew as quickly as I could. I'll never forget what she said. She said it was my job to keep you safe, and if she no longer had me, she had the peace of knowing we were safe. She said she would tell my mother and father. They're both gone now too, so we really are alone." Stephanie's control broke and deep painful sobs racked her body.

Cally left her seat on the hearth and went to embrace her mother. Her mom was always so in control. This was a departure, a side of her mother she'd never seen, and it was unsettling.

"You gave up everything? You just walked away?" Cally asked tentatively.

Stephanie looked at her sharply. Had she heard censure in her daughter's voice? She wasn't sure. "I'd lost the two men I loved," she said, not noticing her daughter's raised eyebrows. "Joe was gone, and Ranger was gone. I couldn't lose you. I had to go."

"What about my father's family? Didn't he have family?"

"He did. They, along with the rest of the world, all my friends and my sister—they all thought I was dead." Stephanie reached for the box of tissues on the end table and blew her nose.

Cally stood and started pacing. She whirled and approached her mother with as much compassion as she could, but she couldn't keep the incredulity from her voice.

"I have an aunt? This is completely unbelievable!"

"I haven't seen or talked to my sister in over twenty years," Stephanie said. "It was a risk telling Grandma. I agreed to her telling Mom and Dad, because I knew the pain of us leaving wouldn't be as hard to bear as the pain of my death. Your grandparents adored you. I'm not certain, but I don't think Valerie knows. I don't have any idea where she is, and I still can't risk talking to her. If it was safe, Brian said someone in the agency would let us know. No one ever has."

"This is truly an amazing story," Cally said. "I can't believe that I'm saying this, but I believe you are telling me the truth." She began to realize the monumental sacrifice her mother had made for her.

"I am," Stephanie's temper started to rise. "Why would I make something like this up?"

"I don't know. Why are you telling me this now?" Cally asked. "You said earlier that you knew I'd leave home someday. Get married. Move away. Kids do that."

"Of course I knew it!" Stephanie snapped. "I didn't know you'd fall in love with someone from New Jersey. Any place in the world except that." She drew in a deep breath and said, "I lived the first thirty-five years of my life in New Jersey. Your father was a detective with the Trenton Police Department. That's the place we ran away from. You can't go back!"