The Good Race

Chapter 19

NATALIE LOOKED AROUND her house with a heavy heart. She liked Grayson Falls. No, she loved it here. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to spend her life on the run. True, Grayson Falls wasn't one of the options on WITSEC's list to choose from, but she convinced them that it would be just as safe here as any of their other choices. After a thorough investigation, they had agreed. However, they impressed upon her the importance of not telling her long lost family who she was. Natalie had accepted that. She wasn't sure if Jackie and Ryan would be accepting of her as a sister anyway. At least as a friend and co-worker, she could still know them. She hadn't anticipated an investigation into their shared mother.

Natalie had no memory of Daisy Dolan. Apparently, she left her father not long after Natalie was born. Her father had no other children. When Daisy left, she and her father moved in with her grandmother to save on expenses. Her grandmother wasn't much better than her father and Natalie was in and out of foster care. Why her father never just let her go was always a mystery to her. He never missed an opportunity to remind Natalie that she was a burden and she came from an unstable mother who didn't want her. Despite Natalie's many pleas to social services and even judges, she kept having to go back to her father as he always seemed to clean up his act and show some feeling toward her. But inevitably, it wouldn't last and the whole cycle started again.

Natalie worked hard in college and didn't have much time for friends. When she wasn't working, she was in class or studying. She didn't have time for parties. After college, the two men she had dated in her life ended up just like her father—one was even physically abusive. After that second relationship, Natalie figured she just wasn't a good judge of men. She escaped him by signing up as a relief worker in South America. That was when she witnessed the murder committed by Juan Espinoza, a drug kingpin the U.S. Marshall Service was investigating and working to bring down. She doubted the Marshall Service's ability to keep her safe during the trial, but they had. The price on Natalie's head was high and they had smuggled her into the courthouse three days before the trial started and kept her under constant guard. Despite testifying from behind a screen, a long-distance image of her was captured by a reporter outside the courthouse. It was a little blurry, but enough to form a physical description of her.

When the Marshall Service presented her with witness protection, she was too scared not to accept the offer. She was given all new paperwork, a new social security number, birth certificate, passport, new driver's license. She had a new back story for her life. She was now Natalie Shepherd from Reading, Pennsylvania. The Marshall Service even went so far as to keep her there in Reading for six months, so she could explore the town and area and be able to speak with authority about her new hometown if anyone asked about her background.

She had new parents—fictional ones, of course—Douglas and Carol Shepherd. Dad was a lawyer and mom a kindergarten teacher. If anyone asked why she never visited them, she could even say that they died in a car crash a few years ago. She was, of course, an only child.

When she agreed to witness protection, she was taken back to her apartment immediately and permitted to pack one suitcase. Deciding what possessions were most important to her wasn't easy. In the end, she just packed up the clothes and toiletries she would need to get by for a bit. The rest of her belongings were packed up. Anything that could identify her from her previous life was destroyed, everything else eventually made its way to her in Grayson Falls.

She received a stipend from the Marshall Service to help her pay for housing, a car and expenses until she found a job. Natalie was prepared to drive a bit to a hospital in a bigger town for work, but as luck would have it, a position at the Grayson Falls Hospital had opened up. She'd get better pay at a bigger hospital, but she didn't have many expenses, so she decided to stay close to her new home.