Birthright: True North, Book One Page 2

A sob ripped through her at the thought, and she barely stifled it with the tissue before making a loud noise. That couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. Sam Campbell was the epitome of honest and open communication. He was also kind and loved her too much to ever do something like that to her. He wouldn’t tell her that kind of lie, would he?

  She hated that she had doubts about him, but reading further articles in other magazines and briefly watching the television only reinforced her doubts. How could the collapse of civilization have been ameliorated after just two decades to the point where there was no evidence that it had occurred? How could people care about things like sports scores and celebrity gossip, or a new way to prepare chicken, if billions had died in such a catastrophe just twenty years ago?

  She was no closer to an answer when Dr. Scott appeared, and she could tell by his grim expression that he had bad news. She clutched the magazine in her hand hard enough to feel the spine digging into her palm, but couldn’t seem to relinquish her hold. “How is he?”

  Dr. Scott sat down beside her, taking her hand in his like they were old friends. She should’ve resented the gesture and the intrusion into her personal space, especially since everyone else around her was making her nervous, but it just felt soothing.

  “Your father had a massive coronary event, miss. I did CPR and attempted resuscitation for forty minutes, but I’m afraid I couldn’t save him.”

  North dissolved in tears as the shock spread through her, and she didn’t resist when the doctor gathered her into his arms to hug her and pat her back as he murmured comforting sounds. She wanted to pull away, to insist he take it back, but in her heart, she knew he was telling her the truth.

  Her father had known he was dying, and he’d even told her that. He’d wanted her to leave him there at the cabin, and her to stay where it was safe, so she couldn’t deny the doctor was telling her the truth. “I’d like to see him.”

  Dr. Scott immediately pulled away, standing up before her as he held out a hand to assist her to her feet. Only then did North realize she still clutched the magazine, and she managed to drop it to take his hands.

  Even in her grief, she didn’t miss the way Liz stared at her as she walked past the sign-in desk, but soon forgot all about that as Dr. Scott led her through a pair of swinging doors and down a hallway that stank of antiseptic. They didn’t go far before he led her into another room, and though she’d requested to see her father’s body, now that the moment was near, she wasn’t certain she could do it. Her feet faltered, and she just stood there for a moment, clinging to Dr. Scott’s hand as she tried to cross the remaining few feet between her and the bed where her father lay. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

  His tone was still soothing. “I’m positive. Do you see that machine right there with the straight line going across it?” At her nod, he said, “It measures his heart rate, and it’s been flat for at least the last twenty minutes. I got it to respond a little bit on the first few attempts at resuscitation, but there was just too much damage.”

  “Did he suffer?”

  Dr. Scott hesitated for a moment before nodding. “I’m certain he was in a fair amount of pain, but that part’s over now. Do you want to see him? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  With a deep breath, North managed to take another step forward, which seemed to have cracked her paralysis. She was finally able to cross the room to his bedside while the doctor followed in her wake. He took up a position right behind her, one of his hands on her shoulder in a bracing fashion as she leaned forward to get a better glimpse at her father’s face.

  He was ashen and waxy, and when she touched him, she knew immediately he was dead. She wouldn’t have had to be told to realize that. A jolt went through he, as she started sobbing again, but this time clutched the lapels of her father’s shirt instead of turning to Dr. Scott. “Oh, Daddy, what am I going to do without you?”

  There was no reply, but she hadn’t expected one. All she found with her face buried against her father’s shirt with the cold comfort of death, and that was no comfort at all.

  With another sob, she wrenched away from him and turned around, once again snuggling against Dr. Scott, who seemed unbothered by the storm of tears. He simply held her while she wept and made no attempt to hurry her along in the process.

  When the tears finally stopped that time, she was certain they were gone, at least for a long time. She didn’t see how she could have any more tears left in her, though there were sure to be additional bouts of crying in the coming days as she buried her father and tried to figure out what to do with her life.

  She didn’t even know if what he’d told her was true, and if she would be safer in the cabin, or if she could leave that place and try to make a new kind of life for herself. It was something she’d never imagined before, and she was afraid to even contemplate the possibility for a moment.

  “Do you have friends or family you can stay with nearby, miss…?”

  “Campbell,” she said absently. “North Campbell. No, I don’t have anyone except my father.”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t seem likely. A pretty woman like you must have a boyfriend?”

  She shook her head, frowning at him. Was he trying to pick her up? It was the most inappropriate time ever, and she opened her mouth to tell him that, but he started speaking again before she could do so.

  “There must be friends or family? Surely, it wasn’t just the two of you?”

  North ran a hand through her wavy brown hair, shoving it off her face. “Can I ask you something weird, Dr. Scott?”

  “Elias, but feel free to call me Eli.” His crooked grin was charming enough to send heat spiraling through her.

  She ignored that reaction. “Did civilization end twenty years ago? Was there a big war that killed a lot of people, and everything descended into chaos?”

  He seemed perplexed by the question. “Not that I know of, and I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have missed. For one thing, I would’ve been thirteen then, and it would’ve seriously bummed me out if I hadn’t had girls around to salivate over.” His brow wrinkled when he frowned. “Why?”

  North hugged herself, rubbing her arms as a chill swept over her. “That’s what my father told me. He said it happened when I was just a baby, and we had to flee the cities to stay alive. He said that’s when my mother died, and that it wasn’t safe to come back. We had to stay in the cabin and avoid evil people.”

  The doctor look genuinely shocked now. “You mean you’ve spent the last twenty years living in a cabin with just your father?” At her nod, he said a smothered curse word. “I’m not sure what your father’s agenda was, but I’m afraid he lied to you, North. That never happened, and while the cities can be dangerous, and I sometimes wonder if there’s any civilization left in ‘civilized’ people, there was no great cataclysm that killed billions and forced people into hiding.”

  North swayed, reaching out to grasp the rail on the bed for support as her head spun. “Why would he lie to me like that? What did he have to gain by keeping me away from the world? I just don’t understand.”

  The doctor put an arm around her back, his hand at her waist. “I don’t understand it either, North, but I’d like to help you. I think you’re a special person, and you’re clearly lost at the moment. My first priority is to find somewhere for you to stay—”

  Before Eli could finish his sentence, the door to the room burst open, and it was chaos. The only one North recognized pouring into the room was Liz, followed by two people wearing uniforms she recognized as belonging to police officers, but had only ever seen in the books her father had used to educate her. There were two other men behind them wearing dark suits, and bringing up the rear was a man and a woman who appeared to be in their mid-forties.

  There was gray throughout their hair, and they looked familiar, though she couldn’t say why. It took her a moment to realize they both had the same eye color as her. The woman had the same purpl
e-blue color as North’s left eye, will the man had the exact same shade of green as her right eye.

  The world was quickly revolving now, and she clung to Dr. Scott even as others tried to pull her away. The older couple pushed past the men in suits and the uniformed officers, and the woman stopped a few feet from North. Her mouth was trembling, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Oh, my god, it is you.”

  “We found her,” said the man at her side with a cry of joy. The couple hugged each other before turning to her, and North took a step back, pressing against the hospital bed where her dead father still lay as they pressed in on her, clearly trying to hug her.

  “I never thought we’d see you again,” said the woman.

  “Finally, we found our baby girl.” The man reached out for her with a trembling hand, brushing against her cheek.

  North instinctively cowered away, feeling the crush of claustrophobia and the inability to breathe overwhelm her.

  “Who are you people? What are you doing to her?” Dr. Scott’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  “She’s our daughter, and kindly step aside,” said the man.

  The words were too much for North to process, and she stopped trying to hang on to reality. Instead, she surrendered to the fuzzy gray warmth that crept over her, needing its security more than anything else at the moment.

  Chapter Two

  When North woke up, Eli stood over her. No, he was crouched down beside her, she realized. She was lying on the floor, and she couldn’t remember why for a moment. “What…?” She trailed off as it all came back, and she closed her eyes for another moment, summoning the courage to open them again, but not finding it until Eli brushed his hand down her cheek.

  “It looks like you have some things to deal with, North. You need to wake up now and face them.” He leaned over her and helped her to her feet. As he was standing beside her, she felt him slide something into her pocket, and he whispered in her ear, “Call me if you need me.”

  “Is she all right, doctor?” asked the same voice from before—the woman claiming to be her mother.

  “I believe so. It was just a shock.”

  “In that case, would you leave us please?” It was clearly a demand and not a question that came from the man claiming to be her father.

  “Of course. If she starts to pass out again, please make sure you catch her and call for help immediately.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” added a voice North didn’t recognize. She turned her head to identify the speaker and found it to be the shorter, chubbier man in the suit standing next to the tall and skinny one, who was clearly a few years older. “Who are these people?” Her voice sounded raspy as she uttered the question, and she wasn’t even certain who she was asking.

  “They’re the detectives in charge of your case, and they brought along a couple of uniformed officers in case Campbell survived.” The man who said he was her father gave her the explanation as he cast a vicious glare at her father’s body, where it lay on the bed.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Of course you can’t. This is clearly the wrong place.” With kindness in her eyes, the older woman put a hand on her arm to draw her forward. “There has to be a better place for this discussion.”

  “What are we doing?” She still felt like she was floating along, allowing the river to guide her. She was completely overwhelmed and close to shutting down emotionally as she walked out with the couple and the other four men in a daze.

  “How about the cafeteria? This young lady could use some coffee to perk her up,” said the tall, thin man in the suit. One of the detectives, North reminded herself.

  “We should just take her home,” said the man beside her, the one who seemed to think he was her father despite the fact that her dad had died that evening.

  “You can’t do that until we’ve had a chance to interview her, Mr. Allis.”

  Now she had a name to put with the couple, or at least a last name. “I really need to get home.” The cabin was suddenly all she wanted, its safety and security, and the ability to lock herself away while she mourned her father’s passing and tried to make sense of her new reality.

  “It’s settled then,” said Mr. Allis. “You can interview her tomorrow, detectives.”

  “She’ll be coming home with us,” said Mrs. Allis.

  North pulled away from the hand on her arm. “No, I won’t. I don’t know you people.”

  The detectives shared a look, and the tall, thin one came closer to her. “I know this is a lot to take in, but we have some things to explain to you, and some questions to ask. Do you feel up to cooperating with us this evening?”

  “Will I get some answers to my own questions?” At his nod, she also nodded. “I guess so then.” She made a point of evading Mrs. Allises hold when she tried to reach for her again, but she felt mean for doing so when she saw the older woman’s hurt expression.

  She followed them to the cafeteria, noticing somewhere along the way they lost the two patrolmen in their uniforms. They must not have been deemed necessary.

  They entered the cafeteria, and it was nearly empty, except for two people at another table on the other side of the room. North followed the detective when he suggested she sit with him, and she didn’t refuse the coffee and juice that the other detective offered her a moment later. She needed something to keep her focused and present. After gulping several sips of the juice, she turned slightly away from the Allises to focus on the detectives. “What’s going on here?”

  “My name is Marv Korman, and this is my partner, Ed Schuessler.”

  “Call me Ed,” said the shorter detective.

  She nodded, but didn’t acknowledge his words otherwise. “Please tell me what’s happening here.”

  “Your case was one of the first Ed and I ever worked together as partners. That was almost twenty-one years ago.”

  “What case?” A feeling of dread crept through her as she asked the question, half-convinced for a moment that she didn’t want the answer.

  “You were kidnapped out of the hospital by your doctor just days after your birth,” said Ed.

  “We trusted that horrible man, and he stole you from us,” wailed Mrs. Allis.

  “Hush now, Carol. You don’t want to frighten her.”

  Carol, formerly Mrs. Allis to her, nodded at the man beside her. “You’re right, Jim.”

  Jim and Carol Allis, who claimed to be her parents. It was preposterous, and she opened her mouth to deny it, but couldn’t find words. The detectives looked so earnest, and her parents—no, they weren’t her parents—appeared so hopeful that she was having a tough time denying the explanation.

  It painted another piece of the picture that provided an all-too-credible reason for why Sam Campbell—her father—would have lied to her about the fall of civilization and the need to stay hidden in their cabin. He wouldn’t have wanted her to run across the wrong person who might recognize her and rip apart his carefully woven deception. “How did you find me?”

  “Your folks are persistent,” said Marv. “They put up new missing person flyers for you everywhere they can think of just about every week. That includes the hospital, and one of the registrars recognized you.”

  North remembered Liz flipping through stacks of papers pinned to the corkboard and now knew what the other woman had been searching for—the flier showing her face that would confirm to Liz that she was a missing person. “This just can’t be true. My father wasn’t the kind of man who would kidnap a helpless infant and steal her from her parents.”

  “I’m certain your father didn’t show you every aspect of his personality,” said Ed in a gentle voice. “He would’ve wanted to keep you docile, so he would have given you the picture you expected.”

  North wasn’t certain about much, but she knew the detective was wrong on that count. Her father might’ve lied to her, and he might have even stolen her from these people, though she didn’t want to contemplate that b
eing true, but he hadn’t pretended to be someone he wasn’t, and he hadn’t made her believe he was a different man, a man she could love and admire, when he wasn’t really like that. “You’re wrong.”

  Ed and Marv shared a look before Ed shrugged.

  Marv said, “We’ll come back to his motivation later than. What can you tell us about where he’s kept you for the last twenty years?”

  “We had a little cabin on a big property. He said it wasn’t safe to go back to the cities, because there was a big war, and civilization collapsed. I thought he was telling me the truth, especially since all the educational materials and books he used to teach me were all created before the year I was born.”

  “What a horrible man,” said Carol Allis in a screech.

  “Did he hurt you?” Jim Allis looked like he would’ve pounded her father if he hadn’t already been dead.

  North frowned at him. “Of course not. Dad loved me.”

  “He’s not your father,” roared Jim. “I am, and he stole you from me.”

  She recoiled at his display of emotion, pulling away from him as far she could and pressing her back into the booth supporting her. Tears swam in her eyes, and she blinked them back.

  “Jim, you’re being too harsh with her. It’s certainly not our baby’s fault.”

  After moment, he exhaled, and his anger had clearly dissipated—or at least had been buried behind a more amicable wall. “To hear you refer to him as your father kills me.”

  North hung her head. “I’m sorry.” She was genuinely sorry for causing them any suffering, but she couldn’t help that in her heart, Sam still felt like her father. She didn’t even know the man who wanted the title.

  “What exactly did Dr. Campbell do with you?” asked Ed.

  She frowned at him. “He taught me how to read and do math and all the things I guess you would expect. He taught me how to survive, I learned some basic first aid, and we spent one whole year learning all about foraging food from the wild.”

  Marv cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s exactly what Ed meant, Nara.”