The vehicles in the fast lane maneuvered out of the way to make room for Agent Nyler to speed by as Craig watched from the back seat, aching for his son—his completely unexpected son who looked like him, ate oatmeal with raisins, and was turning out to be just as complicated to raise as any other ten-year-old.
Lost in his thoughts, Craig snapped back to the present when Eddie, in the front, twisted backward to face him and Kara. "Hey, I'm…really sorry," he said hesitantly. "I should have sent Zach back to you years ago. I never meant for him to be in a mess like this."
Kara eyed him and bit her upper lip. "Just help us get him back, Eddie."
Eddie met Craig's eyes, imploring, but Craig didn't know what to say. Eddie had a point—he had made his mother's mistake, protecting himself at Zach's expense. Even when he had sent Zach to Craig and Kara, Eddie had put Zach at risk to keep himself hidden.
Perhaps sensing the tone of Craig's thoughts, Eddie dropped his gaze and turned back to stare at the road ahead.
"How many other…er, embryos has your father grown in his artificial womb?" Kara asked in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the road noise and the siren.
Eddie didn't look back at her. "He's tried several, I think. I don't know how long they lived. All I know is that Zach was the only one who made it all the way, or even close."
Craig felt his stomach twist at the thought of Dr. Lerwick growing human embryos—and losing them—for his research. He swallowed hard, trying to fend off the sudden sense of revulsion. Those embryos could have been children like Zach. "Does he not feel anything for them?" he voiced. "Are they nothing to him? Just experiments, research tools?"
"That's about it, yeah," Eddie responded bluntly, drawing Agent Nyler's eyes. "He figures they're worth it in exchange for the children who will be born later." Eddie shifted to look back at Craig again and frowned. "I've never helped him with that—never, I swear. All I've ever done is watch over Zach. For me, it was all about taking care of Zach."
"What if your mother had been wrong?" Kara asked, changing the subject. "What if Craig and I had been mean to Zach? You took a big risk, Eddie, sending him to us when you didn't even know us."
"Oh, I knew you," he returned. "I watched you for weeks before I sent him to you. I saw the nursery where you work. I found out about the baseball fields that Craig and his partner fix up for Little League games. I even sent an anonymous letter to the Mariners about them. One time I went to your church and found out the preacher is your brother. I wasn't going to send the kid to people who weren't good people." He paused, considering. "And my mother was right. You're good parents. You should have had him from the beginning."
With that, they continued on in silence for several more minutes. Agent Nyler steered them off the freeway and west into Edmonds. A series of stoplights and turns brought them into a friendly-looking neighborhood where school zone signs warned motorists to slow down when children were present.
Nyler turned left into a long, narrow driveway that passed under several tall trees and dead-ended at a quintet of houses, two on either side and one where the pavement ran out. Police cars had already packed the little available space around one of the houses to the left, small and plain white with a tiny patch of yard and a high, wooden fence. A pair of cars—one unmarked, the other marked "FBI"—swung in behind Agent Nyler's vehicle.
As Nyler stepped out of the car, a compact police officer about Craig's age dressed in a shirt and tie hurried up to meet him. Eddie, Kara, and Craig stepped out with Nyler.
"I have six officers ready," the compact man reported. "This is your case—you make the call."
"Thanks, Mike," Agent Nyler nodded, puffing out his cheeks as he considered the house. "Anybody home?"
"Doesn't look like it, but we didn't take any chances. I have eyes all the way around."
"Good," Agent Nyler said. "We'll need to be careful. If anyone is inside, they may have the boy with them. Let's go in."
"Don't you need a search warrant?" Eddie advised.
"Not if we have reason to believe there could be an abducted child in there," Nyler answered. "You're my reason."
The FBI agents arrayed themselves among the Edmonds officers. Agent Nyler stepped up onto the front porch and tried the door. It was locked. "Kick it in," he ordered one particularly large agent.
"Woah!" Eddie blurted, stepping boldly between the large agent and the door. "There's no need to get violent." He drew a pair of thin gloves, clean and black, from the pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled them deftly onto his hands. He then brought out the tools he had used to pick the lock to Mr. Lopez's office last night. "May I?" he requested with a look at Agent Nyler.
"What's with the gloves?" Mike asked.
"Sweaty hands make for sloppy work," Eddie replied, "and leave fingerprints. Something my father taught me."
With a gesture toward the door, Nyler gave Eddie permission. "But then get out of the way quick," he warned.
Eddie inserted his tools. Five seconds later, the door popped open. He stepped back.
Agent Nyler bellowed, "FBI!" and the FBI agents and police officers rushed inside, weapons at the ready. Mike hung back, standing where—it seemed to Craig—he could step in front of Craig, Kara, and Eddie should they try to enter. He had taken responsibility for keeping them out of the way, and out of harm's way.
"Kitchen is clear!" came a call from inside. Similar calls sounded from each room of the small house. With the last one, Agent Nyler returned to the front and put away his firearm.
"Not here," he told Craig and Kara grimly. They accepted the news with weary nods. "But," the agent continued, "come see this."
They followed him into the house, through the living room, and down a short hall. He brought them into a bedroom, and Craig's breath caught at the sight.
"Oh!" Kara exclaimed. "Craig, that's his—No wonder he liked our guest bed so much." She stepped to the one piece of furniture in the room—a narrow, black cot set against the wall. With one hand, she pressed on it, pursing her lips disapprovingly. A pair of thick blankets lay jumbled at the head of the cot.
Eddie snorted. "My father never even got him a real bed."
Craig peeked into the closet. Clothes were stacked neatly on the floor—a couple of pairs of jeans, a T-shirt, underwear, and socks. Zach's old jacket lay askew beside them. Kara joined Craig there, and he put a hand on her back. "When he left his stuff behind, he wasn't leaving much."
"No." She turned back to the room. "Books." They were piled into four small towers in one corner. "There's his radio…" It was beside the books, with earbuds still plugged into it.
Several papers were taped to the wall. A few were pictures he had drawn, perhaps at school; one was a single-page story he had written about a school where the children never had to go inside. And one—
"Kara!" Craig motioned her over to him. "Look…"
Kara closed her mouth and swallowed as she examined it, a large heart in red crayon and filled on the inside with pink. Over the pink, in pencil, he had written, "Happy Valentine's Day to my mom Kara and my dad Craig. I wish I could meet you. I hope you like me." It was dated February 14 of this year.
Craig frowned and ran a hand through his hair. Then, without a word, he pulled the heart gently from the wall and handed it to Kara. Agent Nyler, watching, did nothing to stop them.
Craig waved a hand around the room. "Can we take these things home for Zach? Except the cot. I don't think he'll want that."
"We need to leave it here for now," Nyler answered. "Once we catch this guy, I'll see what we can do."
He turned to face Eddie. "You opened that door like a pro. I wonder if you can open something more complicated."
"Like what?" Eddie inquired cautiously.
Agent Nyler indicated the hall with his thumb. "There's a safe in the other bedroom. I'd be curious to see what's inside."
"Why don't you open it yourself?"
Nyler grunted. "I'm not sure we could do it without an expert here. Besides, we can enter and look for a missing boy, but the law doesn't permit us to search the house for whatever we can find."
"But you just asked me to—"
"No, I didn't."
Eddie barked a laugh. "You want me to break into it for you? Because you want to know what's inside or so you can arrest me?"
Nyler chuckled. "Tell you what. You help me find Zach alive and well, and I'll put in a nice word for you with the prosecutor's office. He happens to be an old college buddy of mine."
"Hmm," Eddie mused, rubbing his chin with a hand. "If the prosecutor's your friend, then I want complete immunity. And in exchange…" He leaned close to Agent Nyler and spoke in a low voice. "You remember that break-in at Hugh McWrait's store a few months ago? The one where nothing was taken?"
"Nothing McWrait would talk about, anyway—yeah. You know something about that?"
Eddie grinned openly. "Some papers were taken. There's a safe hidden behind a picture on the wall in the office. If you're looking for some dirt on McWrait…"
Nyler looked interested. "Where do you have these papers?"
"I didn't say I have any papers," Eddie responded. "But maybe we can work something out. By the way, don't you have an undercover agent who goes by the street name of Albert K.?"
This question clearly caught Nyler by surprise. "I don't keep track of all of our undercover agents. Why?"
"I'll bet you don't," Eddie said wryly, still keeping his voice down. FBI agents and police officers stepped past the room every few seconds, searching for clues that might lead them to Zach. "He's a double-agent. Some photographs have been taken that you might find interesting."
"I don't suppose you'd have access to these photographs," Nyler suggested.
"I'm just saying they're out there. And the lady he brought in a couple of days ago—he framed her, just so you know. I'd love to see what you and I and your friend the prosecutor can work out." He stepped into the hallway. "In the meantime, I'll just go look around in the next room."
Agent Nyler watched him move into the other bedroom and reached a hand up to scratch behind his ear. "Bentley," he spoke quietly as the agent strode past the door, "get me Luke Terry on the phone as quickly as you can."
"The prosecutor?" she asked. "Why?"
"Our boy Eddie is more than he appears. I need to find out how much he knows."
Agent Bentley raised both eyebrows and activated her phone as she returned to the living room.
Nyler glanced toward Craig and Kara. "I hope the two of you didn't know anything about Eddie's…other line of work."
Craig quickly shook his head. "We only knew him from Zach's school—well, and he's helped out with my Little League team a few times. He's a good first base coach."
"I don't know if you should let him be around the kids anymore, Craig," Kara said, her voice troubled.
Craig puffed out his cheeks. Who exactly was Eddie? "He brought Zach back to us," he reminded Kara. "He didn't have to."
In reply, Kara put a fist to her mouth and gazed around the room again—this room that had been Zach's before he came to the parents he had always hoped to meet someday.
Eddie returned a few moments later. "You don't know these were in the safe," he said to Agent Nyler with a wry smile, leafing through a small stack of papers in one black-gloved hand. "They're disappointing, actually. Just legal papers—the rental agreement on the house, another for the apartment, his car registration…"
Agent Nyler's head snapped up to look Eddie in the eye. "Car registration? I thought you said he always rents a car."
"Every time. He hates to pay for long-term parking, so he leaves his car here when he's away. But then he rents a car and drives around the house and the apartment to make sure no one's waiting for him when he comes home. I told you he's a genius. Paranoid, too—with good reason." Eddie was grinning. "Here," he said, handing Nyler a strip of paper marked with Eddie's own handwriting, "I copied the description and registration down for you. You got it from the Department of Licensing."
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten," Agent Nyler said, narrowing his eyes at Eddie. "How did you get the safe open?"
Eddie shrugged. "Electronic code lock. I broke the code."
Nyler raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Mike!" He turned and hurried into the living room, where Craig heard him instructing the other agents and officers to notify local jurisdictions to watch for Dr. Lerwick's car, a silver, two-door Volkswagen GTI.
Craig leaned toward Eddie. "You broke the code?"
"On the fourth try," Eddie grinned wryly. "Zero-four-zero-three—Zach's birthday. Greatest day of my father's life, from his point of view."
"So obviously you're not just a night custodian at the school."
Eddie dropped the grin and shifted awkwardly. He glanced at Kara, who glared at him, then lowered his eyes to the floor. "My father trained me to be a thief, spy, forger—well, just the basics of forgery, mostly signatures and such. I'm kind of like Robin Hood—steal from the rich and give to the poor. I don't keep much of it for myself, actually. I live on what the school pays me, for the most part." He grinned again at that, but sobered when Craig's serious demeanor didn't budge. "Look, I only rob people who deserve it anyway," he justified himself.
Kara stepped up to him and stared at him with her head tipped to the side. "Did you forge our signatures on Zach's forms for school, Eddie?"
"Frequently," he returned. "Craig's is a little tough, but I'm really good at yours. I had to learn how to change the angle, since you're left-handed…"
He glanced around and spotted a sheet of paper serving as a bookmark in one of Zach's old books. He tugged it out and set it atop the book, then bent over it with a pen from his pocket. Concentrating, he wrote, then straightened and handed the paper to Kara.
Her mouth hung open as she examined the loopy writing. "Wow," she admired. She showed it to Craig. "That's…my signature, all right."
"You've signed a lot of Zach's forms without knowing it," Eddie chuckled. "Nothing bad, though—only normal stuff like permission slips and report cards."
"I never saw his report card until last June."
Eddie frowned again and shuffled his feet. "I know—sorry."
Kara gave him another stern look and stepped past him to the hall.
"The Valentine's heart that Zach made for you and Kara," Eddie told Craig softly after a moment's silence, "he showed it to me that day at school. That's when I knew I had to send him home. My father told him you were dead, but he never quite gave up hoping you were alive."
Craig met Eddie's eyes and drew in a deep breath. His throat tightened up, so he simply nodded his appreciation and left it at that.
Agent Nyler's voice resounded through the house. "We're done here. Let's go!"
Agents and officers streamed out to their vehicles and began to depart. "Mike," Agent Nyler called, grabbing the other man's attention, "have this house watched, would you? Lerwick doesn't know we've been here. He may return."
"You bet," Mike answered. "If he shows up, I'll bring him to meet you."
Agent Nyler followed Craig, Kara, and Eddie to his car. He stopped Eddie there with a hand and spoke softly. "I just spoke to my friend the prosecutor. He's willing to make a deal, depending on how well you cooperate and what information you have for us. But only if we get the boy back alive and well. You give me your information on McWrait, and if it's something we can act on, that will help your cause, too. McWrait's a big fish; we've been trying to hook him a long time."
"And Albert K.?" Eddie asked.
Agent Nyler glanced around to make sure no one but the four of them was within earshot. "That's between you and me for the moment. If you're right about him—well, let's just say that would strengthen our relationship a great deal."
Eddie raised one eyebrow. "Strengthen?"
"If yo
u're right. But it'll take a lot to convince me."
Eddie considered for a moment, then met Nyler's eyes again. "My car's parked on Queen Anne Hill. The pictures are hidden inside it."
Agent Nyler moved to get into the car. "Then let's go see them."
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 99