Lost and Found (Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten Book 2) Read online

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  Lost and Found

  Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten, Book 2

  Lexi Blake

  Lost and Found

  Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten, Book 2

  Lexi Blake

  Published by DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Copyright 2019 DLZ Entertainment LLC

  Edited by Chloe Vale

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-942297-00-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  I wrote this book at a difficult time in my life. Someone once told me that mourning takes at least a full year. I worry that all the stories I tell during this first year after losing my mother will have a hint of the grief I feel. But I hope that each one also has a thread of what I’ve learned in this time. Mourning is a time to reflect, but if you open yourself to the full experience, it can be a time when you discover that love is all around you. My husband has been a rock and my children supportive. My friends drew me close. But someone else showed up, standing at my side and promising to be there for me. When I lost my mom, I found my mother-in-law. We started out rocky, but then sometimes strong females butt heads. She gave birth to the best man I’ve ever known and she loves my kids with a passion. And I realized she loves me, too.

  For what I lost.

  For what I found.

  For Esta.

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  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Author’s Note

  Lost in You, Coming Soon

  Enchanted, Coming Soon

  Discover Lexi Blake writing as Sophie Oak

  About Lexi Blake

  Other Books by Lexi Blake

  Prologue

  Sixteen years before

  Boston, MA

  Becca stared through the window of the hospital room at the woman who’d been her rock all of her life and couldn’t quite get her brain to comprehend what was happening. “I don’t understand.”

  Her father’s hands were shaking slightly as he put them on her shoulders. “I’m sure you understand far better than anyone else your age could. Sweetie, your mom is sick. Have you noticed how she’s been forgetting things? Right before you went to camp there was that day when she couldn’t find her keys. She was panicked, remember? You found them in the freezer. Disturbance in cognitive ability is one of the signs of the disease your mom has.”

  Her mom had laughed it off. She’d also laughed off the incident when she’d completely forgotten where the library was. She’d winked Becca’s way and said she needed more caffeine.

  Now that she looked back, she could see a hundred small signs.

  She hadn’t read anything about degenerative mental diseases. She’d spent her summer studying emerging viruses with students five years older than she was. Most of them completely ignored her. Some of the girls were nice though. None of them could really be considered friends.

  She wanted her mother’s arms around her. How could this be happening? Tears threatened.

  Her father looked down at her and he stopped. “Becca, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well.” He seemed to get choked up for a moment. “I…I don’t know if I should be honest with you or protect you for as long as I can.”

  At least he was feeling something. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

  A woman with dark hair walked up, her eyes wide. Melissa. She’d been with the department for as long as Becca could remember. Melissa babysat when her parents would go out on dates. Her mom would get all dressed up and she would be smiling and happy and her fath
er would promise he wouldn’t even look at his phone. Melissa would watch Disney movies with her and tell her to not do her homework for five freaking minutes.

  “You told her here?” Melissa hissed the question. “We talked about this, Leland.”

  Her father flushed and moved them toward the on-call room. “She came on her own. I didn’t expect her home until tomorrow. She was supposed to go to her grandmother’s for the night but she showed up here.”

  “I took the subway.” She hadn’t wanted to go to her grandmother’s. She’d been away all summer and she’d wanted to see her mom. It had been easy to change her flight to an earlier one because she’d had cash and a sob story and sounded far older than her years. She’d discovered as long as she talked the talk, most people were ready to believe she was at least sixteen. So much of life, she’d learned, was about walking in like she owned the place.

  Her mother had taught her that. Her college professor momma had told her nothing could hold her back.

  If you get to the end of the road, my love, build a new one. It will be hard and many people will try to block you, but you build it so the women who come after you have an easier time. I built part of that road and it will be your time to add to it soon. If we all do it, if we’re brave enough, we can build one to take us all the way home.

  How could she be in a hospital bed?

  Melissa frowned at her dad. “Still, you don’t tell her like that.” She looked back to Becca. “First off, what you did was insanely dangerous. I know you’re crazy smart for your age, but you can’t do that. Anything could have happened to you.”

  It seemed like something horrible had happened and it had nothing to do with the fact that she’d managed to navigate the public transit system. It was easy. There was a map and everything. All she’d had to do was buy a ticket and she’d gotten home. When she’d realized no one was there, she’d walked to the hospital her dad worked at. It was only four blocks away and after having spent an entire summer locked in a classroom, it had felt good to be in the sunshine for a while.

  Now she wished she was still outside, still in that moment before she realized how everything was crashing around her.

  Her father had practically gone white. “God, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  “She’s not an adult, Leland,” Melissa said, though not unkindly. “I know it’s easy to forget because of how smart she is, but to the world outside she’s a kid, and that big brain of hers won’t protect her. And you can’t protect her from this, but you could have eased the blow.”

  She tapped on the on-call room door before entering and leaving them out in the hallway. The door closed behind her and she was alone with her father again.

  Her dad looked hollow. “I didn’t mean to tell you like this. I wanted you to have fun this summer.”

  He knew her well. Most parents wouldn’t think sending her to a university summer camp to learn about emerging viruses would be fun, but her dad got her. So did her mom. They supported her. They gave her what she needed. “How long have you known?”

  His steel gray eyes met hers and she could see the guilt there. “Five years. When she first started to show cognitive decline, I ran a DNA test. She tested positive for the markers and we knew her diagnosis. Melissa has been helping us out at home.”

  The door came open again and a bleary-eyed intern stumbled out, pulling on his shirt. “But my pager didn’t go off.”

  Melissa wasn’t taking no for an answer. “You’re needed in the ER. Better run, buddy.” She reached out and took Becca’s hand. “Come in here. We don’t need an audience.”

  The door closed and the three of them were alone.

  His eyes were steady as he looked down at her. “I didn’t want to interrupt your studies. Neither did your mother. Rebecca, this shouldn’t derail you. God, how can it not derail you? It’s derailing me. I love your mom. I love you, baby. I don’t know how to say it. I want to tell you that she’s sick and she’s going to get better.”

  “But you can’t. She’s got Alzheimer’s. She’s young for it.” She might not have spent much time studying neurological conditions, but she knew this one. She knew the name of the disease that would kill her mother.

  “It’s early onset,” Melissa agreed. “Only about five percent of patients get it this early. Your mom asked me to get some books for you to read. And there are a couple of classes you can take.”

  She would feel better with a book in her hand. Things might make sense if she could understand what was happening in her mom’s head.

  Becca went back over the last few years. How could she have missed it? Melissa would come over and stay the night sometimes when her father was on call. She would explain that she didn’t have anything better to do, and wasn’t it fun to have girl time?

  She’d been making sure her mom didn’t hurt herself.

  “Why is she in the hospital?” It was obvious they’d done a lot to keep this quiet.

  “She took a hard fall down the stairs,” her father explained. “I think she forgot what she was doing and missed a step. They have to replace her hip. The disease has progressed to the dementia stage. It’s not bad yet, but I don’t know what to do. She’ll have to be in assisted living while she’s recovering.”

  Bile threatened to boil over, the taste sickening in her throat. “You want to put her in a nursing home? I’ll take care of her. I’ll come home and do it. I’ve had enough training. What I don’t know, I can learn.”

  She was a prodigy, after all. Oh, her father didn’t use that word around her. He claimed it wasn’t technically what she was. A genius-level IQ didn’t necessarily mean a prodigy. A prodigy was one who excelled in a certain area. Medicine wasn’t normally one of those areas, but she knew she could do it. She could certainly take care of her mother.

  Her father once told her she was like a superhero, that she could be Super Doc if she tried hard enough. Saving lives in a single bound. She had no idea what a single bound had to do with anything, but her dad had been so happy as he’d said it, she’d pretended to understand his aged pop culture references.

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not. You’re scheduled for a second summer session. You’ll be studying neurology. I thought that was apropos, and perhaps maybe it will help you understand what your mother is going through. You leave in two days.”

  “No.” She couldn’t leave.

  His jaw clenched. “I’m going to bring your mother home as soon as I can, but you shouldn’t see her like that.”

  “She’s my mom. I love her. I should see her every way I can.” She stood up to him. They rarely fought, almost never because her father was a softy, but this was one fight she couldn’t lose. “I’ll take the classes here, but I’m staying home. I can help.”

  Melissa was suddenly beside her. “And I’m taking a sabbatical.”

  “We talked about this,” her dad began.

  “Yes, we did. Sonja and I talked about this,” she admitted. “She doesn’t want me to give up my life, but taking care of people is my life. Now I have the chance to take care of one of the finest women I’ve ever met. Do you know the strength she’s given me? She got me through my divorce. She helped me walk away from an abusive bastard and find my strength. Now I’m going to give some of it back to her.”

  Tears rolled down Becca’s cheeks and she took Melissa’s hand. “Me, too. If you send me away, I’ll come back and I’ll be by my mom’s side. I can do everything I need to do from home. You said I could be anything I wanted to be. I want to be a doctor. I want to help people. I’m going to start with my mother because you always said the best medicine is love.”

  Her dad lost it. His clipboard dropped and he hit his knees, no longer able to control his grief.

  Becca moved in, wrapping her arms around him, and oddly found comfort in knowing she could help.

  Thirty minutes later, Melissa guided her to the door of her mom’s room. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”

 
“I think Dad needs you more.” He was currently in the bathroom washing his face and trying to look professional. “Convince him to bring someone else in. He’s too emotional to be on call right now.”

  Melissa nodded. “I will. I’ll order dinner for the two of you and I’ll stay here and watch your mom. Pizza okay?”

  Anything would taste like cardboard. “Sure. Pepperoni and mushrooms, please. And thank you. Thanks for helping me convince him to let me stay.”

  “We’ll get through this.” Her voice had broken but she cleared her throat. “Don’t stay too long. She’s on a lot of pain meds.”

  Becca opened the door and her mother looked up, a smile plastered on her face.

  “Hello,” she said. “You’re young to be a nurse. Are you lost, honey?”

  “Mom?”

  A cloud crossed her mother’s pretty face. “I have a daughter. Her name is Becca but she’s only three. Are you lost? We can call someone to help find your mother.”

  It was already starting. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t. This was her mom. She’d never run from anything in her life. It was time to pay her back.

  “I came to sit with you for a while.” She wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. Should she remind her mother that she was Sonja Walsh? Should she go along with her mom’s memory lapses?

  She would start reading tonight. For now, she would simply sit.

  “That’s lovely,” her mom said with a whisper of a smile. “I’m feeling lonely. I seem to have broken something. The doctors are nice though. I miss my daughter.”

  Becca reached for her hand, emotion choking her. “She misses you, too.”

  “I want her to be happy.” Her mother was staring as though she could see something Becca couldn’t, but her hand clutched hers. “I want her to be so happy. I want her to choose to be happy.”