Forever Freed: Forever Bluegrass #13 Read online

  Forever Freed

  Forever Bluegrass #13

  Kathleen Brooks

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  An original work of Kathleen Brooks. Forever Freed copyright @ 2020 by Kathleen Brooks

  Kathleen Brooks® and Forever Bluegrass Series® are registered Trademarks of Laurens Publishing, LLC.

  Created with Vellum

  Bluegrass Series

  Bluegrass State of Mind

  Risky Shot

  Dead Heat

  Bluegrass Brothers

  Bluegrass Undercover

  Rising Storm

  Secret Santa: A Bluegrass Series Novella

  Acquiring Trouble

  Relentless Pursuit

  Secrets Collide

  Final Vow

  Bluegrass Singles

  All Hung Up

  Bluegrass Dawn

  The Perfect Gift

  The Keeneston Roses

  Forever Bluegrass Series

  Forever Entangled

  Forever Hidden

  Forever Betrayed

  Forever Driven

  Forever Secret

  Forever Surprised

  Forever Concealed

  Forever Devoted

  Forever Hunted

  Forever Guarded

  Forever Notorious

  Forever Ventured

  Forever Freed

  Forever Saved (coming July/August 2020)

  Shadows Landing Series

  Saving Shadows

  Sunken Shadows

  Lasting Shadows

  Fierce Shadows (coming early May 2020)

  Broken Shadows (coming October 2020)

  Women of Power Series

  Chosen for Power

  Built for Power

  Fashioned for Power

  Destined for Power

  Web of Lies Series

  Whispered Lies

  Rogue Lies

  Shattered Lies

  Moonshine Hollow Series

  Moonshine & Murder

  Moonshine & Malice

  Moonshine & Mayhem

  Contents

  Family Trees for Keeneston

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Also by Kathleen Brooks

  About the Author

  Family Trees for Keeneston

  Davies Family Tree

  Keeneston Friends Family Trees

  Extended Family Tree for Keeneston and Shadows Landing

  1

  Seattle, Washington . . .

  “Jon!” Evie Scott called out as she opened the door to the small apartment she shared with her younger stepbrother. Evie’s mother had died a year ago, leaving her with Jon. Both of their fathers were long gone. Just another in her free-loving mother’s long string of broken marriages and relationships. When Jon’s father left Evie’s mother, the drug addict had left behind his sixteen year old son. Evie’s mom had raised him, or more accurately, Evie had raised him these past seven years. But now it all fell to her.

  Evie had tried to find Jon’s parents when her mom died. She’d found out his mother was in prison and his father had died of an overdose three months after leaving them behind. That was why, at twenty-nine Evie was housing her unemployed twenty-three year old stepbrother who was holding out for an executive job even though he’d never finished college or held a job for longer than three weeks.

  Evie set the groceries down in the galley kitchen and followed the noise. Jon seemed to be making money based on the number of things he bought recently: a large-screen television, a beefed-up computer, and a sound system Evie had already received four noise complains about. But he only became angrier as he bought these things. He was angry at the news, angry at her, angry at the economy . . . he was angry about everything. Everyone was out to get him or destroy him. His social media posts were growing more and more extreme in their negativity and hate.

  Right now, the noise wasn’t his music, though. It was from voices, and a lot of them. Jon had gotten into paid protesting about six months ago and met a whole new group of friends. Protesting what, exactly, she didn’t know. He always seemed to have a new cause. As far as she could figure out, sometimes he was a paid protester and sometimes he wasn’t. Maybe Jon had a protest planning group over tonight, which irritated her since Jon knew she had an interview tomorrow that could lead to a promotion at the insurance company where she worked. She could move up to assistant human resource officer if she nailed the interview. It would bring in an extra two hundred dollars a month, which would be huge since she was supporting herself and Jon.

  “Those assholes think they can tell us what to do while they do whatever they want!” she heard Jon yell before there were cheers. “Who are they to tell us what to do? The assholes here are just an extension of the dicks in government who sit on the money we give them! Why do they get free stuff when we are the ones paying? We deserve everything we want for free.”

  Evie rolled her eyes. Jon had never paid taxes or worked for anything in his life. Evie approached the cracked door ready to tell them to quiet down when Jon continued.

  “And who controls the dicks in the government? The vultures on Wall Street. They want to make everything global. Stop shipping cars overseas when you should be giving one to each citizen first!”

  Evie groaned. What was her stepbrother talking about?

  “We need to be heard and the only way to do that is to show them we aren’t messing around. We don’t need a government, or a banker, or a police officer telling us what we can and cannot do,” Jon continued to the applause of the people in the room.

  “We need to save our country!” a young woman’s voice called out.

  Evie stopped at the door and looked into Jon’s small bedroom. There were at least ten people crowded onto his double bed. The floor couldn’t be seen for all the people crammed into the room. And there, at his desk, stood Jon commanding the room with anarchist talk. This was the first time she’d seen the symbol of the A with a circle around it, but it was hanging on the wall behind him and above a computer screen with a similar symbol on it. Jon wasn’t much taller than Evie, who stood at five feet six inches, but he carried himself as if he were six feet tall. He’d always had charisma. It’s why Evie’s mom had spoiled him so much.

  “What can we do?” a male voice f rom somewhere in the room asked.

  “The government finally gave into our demand for marijuana but only if they take all the money from it. The new pot tax goes into effect tomorrow. I say we show the tax office downtown what we think about them taking our money for a product we deserve for free.” Jon turned and lifted a box from his desk behind him.

  She heard the clinking of glass hitting glass as he opened up the box.

  “You’re going to stop them by getting them drunk?” a woman who looked no more than twenty asked.

  “I was studying history and read that in the seventies our brothers and sisters were successful in disrupting these root causes of oppression with the use of Molotov cocktails.” Jon began to hand out a bottle to everyone in the room along with a strip of fabric. “I’m almost done finding a way for us to buy the heavier-duty stuff. This will have to work.”

  “What kind of stuff?” another voice asked.

  “Explosives. I found a supporter who can build us bombs large enough to facilitate our plan by our target date in three weeks. That will be our grand finale. Until then, I have a list of soft targets: companies that hurt the environment, companies that spend our tax dollars, police and fire departments, and government buildings. We will hit these as we make our way to the finale.”

  Evie couldn’t stand there and listen to him any further. He was talking about killing innocent people. This had to be a joke. Jon wouldn’t know the real world if it bit him in the ass, but here he was advocating for anarchy? Evie shoved the door open, but it hit a person sitting behind it so that the door only opened wide enough for her face to be seen. “Jonathan Ellis, what the hell are you doing?”

  Jon turned his dazzling smile on her, only this time it looked cold. He turned and blocked his computer, but she’d already seen the A symbol for anarchy.

  “Sis. You’re home early.”

  “Jon, you can’t hurt innocent people. You’re just joking, right? This is some online meetup of that video game you play so much. Are you world building?” Evie felt her heart beating hard as she clutched the straps of her old leather backpack purse in her hands.

  “Yeah, we’re world building, sis. We’re starting a whole new world with no one telling us what we can and can’t do. Will you help?” Jon turned to the people sitting in his room. “My sister works at an insurance company, a company that denies claims. That company that doesn’t care about you and me. Do you care about us, sis?”

  Evie stopped breathing when Jon looked back at her with cold, dangerous eyes.

  “What’s happened to you?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I’ve seen the light, dear sister. I’m tired of being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. So, dear sister, are you just going to try to tell me what to do?” Jon took a step closer to the door and Evie instinctively took a step back. “Go get her,” Jon ordered. Evie saw three men stand up and didn’t stick around to see what happened next.

  Evie spun and ran down the hall, past the narrow galley kitchen to the front door. In one motion, she opened the door with her left hand and grabbed her car keys with the right. Then she was racing down the apartment hall screaming as she went. Doors opened and the three men were still behind her. She didn’t dare stop running.

  People were staring, but they weren’t coming out of their apartments to help. It left Evie no choice but to shove the door to the stairwell open and race down the concrete stairs. She kept going until she reached the underground level where her car was parked.

  “Sister!”

  Evie looked over her shoulder, but it wasn’t Jon calling her name. It was one of the three men he’d sent after her. The other two had broken off and were trying to flank her.

  That one quick look was all it took for her to know this wasn’t a game. This was life or death. Her stepbrother had gone mad.

  Evie grabbed the handle of her car and it automatically unlocked with the key in her hand. She had the door open and was about to get in when a hand clamped around her arm. Evie spun around and his fist connected to her face. Pain burst along her cheek, causing tears to stream down her face. Evie didn’t think. She only reacted. She jabbed the key she had clutched in her hand into the man’s face.

  With a sickening sound, the key sunk into the man’s cheek. The man screamed, but Evie screamed louder, yanking the bloody key from his face as he staggered back clutching his cheek. She was in the car, locking the door and starting the engine before a bloody hand smashed against the driver’s door window.

  Evie put the car in reverse without even looking behind her and floored it. She felt her car hit something and heard another scream. She didn’t stop backing up until she had room to pull out. When she was ready to put the car into drive, she was blocked by two men standing shoulder to shoulder. One had a bloody face.

  “We won’t hurt you.”

  She knew better. Evie honked her horn and the man with both cheeks intact pulled out a gun.

  “Get out,” the armed man said.

  Evie slowly reached forward and tapped her display screen on the console. A bird’s-eye view of her car appeared. The shock of what was happening seemed to shut off her brain and now it was only about survival.

  Evie ducked her head at the same time she floored the gas pedal. Bullets were fired and her windshield fractured. She didn’t move her eyes from the camera. She used her left hand to steer as she stayed bent over. She saw the moment the men realized she wasn’t going to stop. The man with the bleeding cheek jumped out of the way, but the man with the gun seemed to believe she was going to blink in this game of chicken. He was wrong.

  He leapt out of the way at the last second and Evie sped down the darkened lanes of the parking garage. She didn’t wait for the gate and broke it off as she sped onto the street. She didn’t stop until she was across town at the police station.

  “I’m telling you, that’s what I heard!” Evie was about to cry. Her face was swollen from the punch. She was shaking from the encounter as she sat at the officer’s desk in the bullpen.

  “We had officers stop at your apartment. There was no blood, no group of people, and no weapons. But I will tell you what there was. There was your brother cooking dinner for you and worried because you hadn’t gotten home yet. He told us about your condition and about how he’s your caretaker. He’s worried about you and will come get you soon.”

  Evie’s whole body froze. “What?”

  The officer looked at her with a little smile and pity in his eyes. “He has your medicine and said these hallucinations occur when you skip your medication.”

  In a split second, her mind computed everything. Jon could charm a snake. In this case, he’d charmed the police. No matter what she said, they wouldn’t believe her. “Oh no. How embarrassing. Thank goodness he’s bringing it. I need to take it with orange juice. Could you get me some?”

  The man smiled at her and nodded. “Of course. I’ll be right back.”

  The second he started walking away, Evie caught the eye of a female officer. “Excuse me. Where’s the restroom?”

  “Down the hall and to the left.”

  “Thank you.” Evie stood up, and even though her body and mind told her to run, she walked calmly down the hall toward the bathroom. However, instead of pushing open the bathroom door, she turned to her right and pushed open the stairwell door. It was crowded with people walking up and down instead of waiting for the slow elevators. It was only one flight until she was walking through the lobby.

  Evie thought she was home free until she saw Jon entering the building. And he wasn’t alone. The man who had shot the gun at her was with him. They didn’t look her way, but she instantly ducked behind a tall man pushing a dolly with large water jugs on it.

  “Domestic violence,” she whispered to the man and then pointed to her black and blue face. He nodded and together they walked from the police station.

  “Want me to walk you to your car, miss?”

  “No, thank you. I’m right there. I appreciate your help.”

  When Evie drove away, she knew she was driving away forever. She didn’t have help coming so it was up to her to help herself. Taking a deep breath, she headed to the bank. She had ten minutes to go through the drive-thru before they closed.

  She was shoving the two thousand dollars she’d drained from her account into her purse when her phone rang. It wasn’t a normal ring. It was the locator ring. They had a GPS tracking app on each phone in case either she or Jon lost their phones. He was tracking her.

  Evie looked around and saw the sign for Interstate 5. She pushed her way through traffic and onto the interstate heading north toward Canada. When she crossed the Ship Canal Bridge, Evie threw the phone from the window and into Lake Union before getting off onto the 522 and heading into the rural parts of Washington State until she got into Route 2. Five hours later she was in Spokane.

  With a dazed look, she got out of her car at the gas station. She filled her tank and walked into the gas station. The woman behind the counter gave her a knowing smile. “Husband?”

  “Brother.”

  Evie pulled out the cash and the woman waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Get someplace safe.”