Page 9 of Rescuing Carolyn

A little while later, I pulled up across the street and a little ways down at a spot that gave me a perfect vantage point of Carolyn’s house.

Whether she liked it or not, I protected my own, which meant my son and my son’s mother. The situation with the robber had me uneasy. Yeah, the guy was out of the picture, but I didn’t consider the case closed yet. Not until we knew for sure that the guy had been working alone. So for now, better safe than sorry. I settled in for the night. I’d never struggled to keep alert while on a mission. That night, my mind churned with thoughts, making it easy to keep my eyes open and my focus sharp. Periodically, I slipped between her property and the neighbors’ to check the back of her house. It remained peaceful.

At dawn, I drove home to grab a few hours of sleep before work.

5

CAROLYN

Ihung up after a thirty-minute conversation with the insurance company. A representative had come the previous evening while Charlotte was at the store, but a million questions remained to be asked about the robber, the damage, and when All That Sparkles could reopen.

“Everything okay?” my mother asked from the office doorway. She and Charlotte had beaten me to the store that morning. They’d been helpful, of course, but their concern felt smothering. I was using up so much energy trying to convince them that I was okay that I barely had the energy to actually be okay. Not to mention, I was running on next to no sleep. When nightmares hadn’t kept me awake, thoughts of Zach had gotten my mind running in circles.

“As okay as it’s going to get today,” I responded.

“You must have been terrified.” My mother stepped closer. “In all the years I owned this store, we were never robbed. I can’t believe this happened.”

“Me either.” And the timing couldn’t be worse. I’d taken out a new loan and refinanced an existing one to cover the remodeling costs. Insurance would pay for the damages, but I was losing money and business with every day the store was closed.

On top of getting the front of the store cleaned up enough to reopen, police tape still stretched across my back door. I didn’t want to think about what had happened in the mantrap. I was leaving Charlotte to deal with having that piece of equipment checked out and recertified. It had saved my life. But I didn’t want to look at it.

“Maybe you should take some time off,” my mother suggested gently.

“Not necessary.” Not possible, actually—not with my financial situation. But if I said that, Mom would just worry. “I’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure her. Apparently, I wasn’t very convincing, because the anxious look on her face just deepened.

“Did you see this?” Charlotte came into the office, her phone clutched in her hand. “I was scrolling through review sites. I’m obsessed with looking at them from that marketing and presentation class I took last fall—but anyway, look.”

I took the phone and held it so Mom could see it, too. A review site on which we’d had a five-star rating for the past two years was suddenly down to two stars, with some scathing comments: “got ripped off here,” “not real diamonds,” “crappy service.”

“What the heck?” I muttered. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough. “It’s like the ones I saw on the Jewel Rater last week. All lousy and not true. I wonder…” I let the word dangle as my mind processed my thoughts.

“What?” Mom asked, studying me.

“Does it feel like someone could be sabotaging us? It just seems like all of this is happening at once.” Okay, maybe it was a stretch to think that there was a connection between bad reviews and an armed robber, but my mind returned to the things the robber had said about this not being what he’d signed up for. Did someone have a plan to damage All That Sparkles? If so, it might make sense that they’d try to attack us from multiple angles.

“Don’t forget about the canceled orders,” Charlotte added, getting onboard with the idea.

“That’s a good point. Those could be connected, too.” Three shipments had been mysteriously canceled or delayed in the past month, and as a result, we’d been unable to fulfill orders on time. We’d compensated the customers, who’d been understanding, but it was bad for business. It could all be a coincidence, but I’d been running the store for years, and had been around it for as long as I could remember, back when it had been Mom’s. I could never remember seeing a string of bad luck like this before. What’s that saying—it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you?

But who could be behind all of this? We competed with the store down the street, which was currently trying to buy us out, but the relationship between the businesses had never been malicious. I didn’t know Drew Castle, the owner of Castle Jewels, all that well, but I knew his family. His wife gave me piano lessons back when I was a kid—and I was on the softball team with his niece when we were in high school. He was a staple in this town, someone I’d known in passing for longer than I could remember. It didn’t seem possible that he’d go after my business like this…but who else would have a motive? “If you two can handle things here, I’m going to the police station. I want to run the idea past them.”

“Do that. And then go home. You need some time off.” My mother pulled my purse from the drawer where I kept it and handed it to me. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” I promised.

“Hey.” Charlotte caught me before I could leave the office. “What about Zach?”

My mother’s eyes widened. She’d loved Zach, had insisted all along that there must be some reason why he hadn’t responded to my messages. “Zach’s home?”

I hadn’t mentioned it because I couldn’t explain how I felt about seeing him again. I needed time to process his return and what it would mean for my life. “He was here yesterday as part of the response team.”

“Austin?” Faith didn’t have to form the full question.

I sighed. “Zach didn’t know he had a son until yesterday.” Mom and Charlotte had been there for me through it all—my pregnancy, the birth, and the first year of Austin’s life. They’d been as upset and disappointed as I was when it appeared that Zach was ignoring my attempts to communicate with him. “Turns out, a friend of his played a prank on him not long after we broke up, and the end result was that he had to get his number changed. He didn’t get any of my messages.”

My mom lit up. “I just knew there had to be some kind of explanation,” she said. “Oh, this is wonderful news! And you say he was part of the response team? So that means he’s left the Navy, right? Does that mean that the two of you?—”

“Mom!” I said, cutting her off. “We’re not back together. We’re just… He was really shocked to find out about Austin, and I was shocked that he was shocked, and we still have a lot to work through. Stuff I was way too tired to get into last night."

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