by M. S. Parker
After a moment of silence, Adare spoke, “I had a cousin who was killed in a hit and run when we were kids. They caught the woman the next street over when she ran her car up onto the sidewalk and into a lamppost. Her blood alcohol was three times the legal limit, and she’d lost her license for drunk driving three weeks before. She was convicted and sent to jail, but it didn’t bring back my cousin.”
She didn’t explain why she shared the story, but I didn’t need her to. I understood it completely. Just because we’d gotten justice, closure even, didn’t make the hurt or anger any less. In a way that we wouldn’t have wished on anyone, we understood each other.
Another few seconds passed before she broke the silence again, this time bringing attention back to work. “I’ve got an assignment for you.”
I managed a partial smile. A distraction sounded good right about now.
Five
I’d always had a decent sense of direction, so after being in Fort Collins for nearly two months, I knew my way around pretty well.
But I hadn’t been to this particular area before. It was outside the central part of Fort Collins, but still part of the city. This was the place where the wealthiest inhabitants lived, including the Archers. After Adare told me that Jenna Archer had called to hire the firm, I’d taken a couple hours to do some basic research on the couple.
Damn.
Jenna Rose Lang Archer had hit the news four years ago when she’d gone on record as being a victim of childhood sexual abuse and an unwilling participant in more child pornography films than I even wanted to think about. There weren’t a lot of details about her life or about the criminal proceedings that had led to the takedown of an unknown but vast number of people, but the interview she’d finally given two years after the fact had been enough for me to know she had overcome shit a hell of a lot more devastating than what I’d been through, and that was saying something.
The other thing I’d learned was that she’d married Rylan Archer, billionaire software designer and the owner of Archer Enterprises. For years, he’d been one of the most sought-after bachelors in the country. He and Jenna had been married for three years. I’d managed to find a single picture of their wedding, and it had been the official publicity shot they’d released themselves. I had a feeling that Jenna’s computer skills had more to do with that than any scruples on the part of the media. The fact that there wasn’t much in the way of links to any of the videos or pictures that had been taken of her as a kid told me that she’d done some serious computer magic. Not that I’d dug very deep. That wasn’t my job.
I had no idea what my job was. Jenna hadn’t told Adare, but the Archer name afforded some leeway when it came to things like this.
The address took me to an absolutely gorgeous house, the sort of place I’d be completely uncomfortable because I’d be worried about tracking dirt on the carpet.
When I knocked on the door, I half-expected a butler to answer, but it was a boy. Skinny, but in that way that kids had when they hit a growth spurt. He had a mop of dark, curly hair and a suspicious-looking scowl.
“What do you want?”
“Um, is your, um your…Mrs. Archer here?” I had to be at the wrong house. This kid was easily ten or so. Way too old to be the child of Jenna and Rylan Archer.
“Jenna!” he yelled over his shoulder but didn’t move.
“You aren’t supposed to be up.” A woman’s voice came from behind him, and a moment later, she appeared.
She was shorter than me, with shoulder-length ebony hair, pale gray eyes, and one of those scary ‘mom’ faces even though I knew she was only a few years older than me. She wore jeans and a plain cotton shirt with three-quarter sleeves, neither of which were the sort of ragged chic that some rich people wore to try to convince themselves that they were down-to-earth. Her earrings were plain, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. This wasn’t a woman who’d married into money and flaunted it.
“Get back to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed.” The boy’s tone was belligerent. “I’m not a little kid.”
She didn’t even blink. “You know the rules, Jeremiah. You stayed home from school. Unless I have to take you to the doctor, you have to stay in bed.”
“I hate you.” He stomped back into the house.
She held up a finger, listening for something. She must have heard it because she turned to me with a smile. “You’re from Burkart Investigations?”
I held out my hand. “Rona Quick.”
“Jenna Archer.” She shook my hand, then stepped aside to let me in. “Come on in. Don’t mind Jeremiah. He’s been testing some boundaries lately.”
“You have a beautiful home,” I said as I followed her farther into the house.
“Thank you,” she said.
We stopped in the kitchen, and she gestured to one of the chairs at the island in the center of the room. I sat down, and she went to the fridge.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” I set my purse on the table and took out a notepad and pen.
She sat down across from me, a bottle of water between her hands. A glance down revealed a wicked looking scar on the inside of her left arm, nearly from wrist to elbow. When I looked back up, she was watching me.
“I tried to kill myself,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was eight, and my life was fucked to hell.” She shrugged. “It’s better now.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I was here to talk about whatever she’d hired the firm for, not her personal demons.
“Ask it,” she said, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “It’ll probably connect to why you’re here in the first place.”
“You have enough money to get the scar fixed even if insurance won’t cover it,” I pointed out.
“So why haven’t I?” She finished my question.
I nodded.
“Valid question.” She took a drink of water before answering. “I see my scars as proof that I survived some very hellish circumstances.”
She brushed her fingers over her cheek where I noticed another scar, though this one was fainter. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if she hadn’t drawn attention to it.
“I like that,” I said. I tugged at my shirt, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I’ll take some water, if the offer still stands.”
“It does.” She got another bottle of water and handed it to me. “How much do you know about me?”
“Basically, what a quick internet search could tell me,” I said. “And I have a feeling you know exactly what that would turn up.”
“I do.” She gave me an approving nod. “Between the trial and marrying Rylan, I knew people would be looking into me. I had to leave enough of the truth to satisfy most people.”
I made an educated guess. “But I need to know more than that for whatever it is you want me to do.”
“You do.” Her smile faltered. “Will you be able to handle it? Listening to me tell you some pretty dark shit?”
In the back of my head, I heard the scratch-scratch scratching of a branch against aluminum siding.
“I can handle it.”
“Then here it goes.” She let out a slow breath and nodded. “My mom doesn’t deserve to even be called a human, she was that horrible. She’d had an awful childhood too, but I can say with some authority that people can get beyond it and not treat their kids like shit.”
I really hoped that was true.
“She was born Anna Newbury, but I knew her as Helen Kingston. She was twenty-three when I was born, but I wasn’t her only kid. Just the only one she kept. As far as her official record shows, she had ten others. One died of SIDS, and the last one was stillborn. The rest went into the system.” She went to take another drink and realized the bottle was empty. “I don’t know why she kept me.” She glanced at me, a bitter smile on her face. “I mean, I know why she did it. I just don’t know why I was the one she picked. I’ve made my peace with it. More or less.”<
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I hadn’t been through the same things she had, but I could see a kindred spirit in her, someone I might actually be able to talk to who’d understand some of what I was going through. Maybe once this case was done, I could try it. Right now, I had to be professional.
“That’s actually why I decided that it was time.” She suddenly looked nervous. “I’m at a good place now, about what I’ve been through, about who I am. I’d thought for a while that I’d found a healthy place, but after everything that happened four years ago, I knew I still had shit I had to deal with before Rylan and I even considered adopting.”
Now the angry boy made sense. Him calling her by her first name. His age.
“We have a daughter too,” she said with a smile. “Diana. She and Jeremiah are brother and sister. We didn’t want to break them up. Not with everything they’d been through.”
At that moment, I made a promise to myself that the next time I was feeling down about things I’d experienced, I’d remember this discussion to keep things in perspective.
“Anyway.” She ran a hand through her hair and leaned back. “They’re the reason I want to do it. If there’s any way I can have a relationship with my brothers and sisters, I want it. And if they’re the sort of people my kids can be around, I want them to have that too.”
“You hired me to find your siblings?” I considered her for a moment, and then asked, “Why a PI rather than tracking them down online?”
“I spend enough time on the computer as it is,” she said with a smile. “If I tried tracking them down like that, I’d get caught up, neglect things around here. If you get to a point where you need my help, I’ll do it, but I want you to do the heavy lifting.”
I nodded. “All right. I’d like to take some notes on what you know.”
“No need,” she said. “I’ve got everything I know printed out. It should give you some places to start.”
And that was it. I had a new case to work.
Six
I spent the rest of yesterday going over all the paperwork Jenna had given me, making notes and plans of action. This wouldn’t be a one and done sort of case, and Jenna understood that. She’d reassured me that I could submit hours each week for payment, but that if another case came in, I could set hers aside. That was good, considering the enormity of what she was asking me to do.
Eight kids of varying ages, the oldest of whom Jenna believed was in his mid-thirties while the youngest would still be a child. Unknown birthdates as well as adoption dates, if they’d been adopted at all. Since the chances were that they’d been taken before they were more than a few years old, the chances of adoption were high, but not guaranteed. Unknown gender for the younger kids and only her mother’s word regarding the gender of the older kids. Two birth states – the older ones in Florida and the younger in Wyoming.
Adare had let me have the big whiteboard so I could put everything up to see it all at once, and I had a feeling that before this case was over, I was going to run out of space.
Once I’d organized everything, I was ready to begin. Since the case four years ago had been held here in Fort Collins, that was as good a place as any to start. Granted, that case had primarily been against Christophe Constantine, a pedophile who’d become obsessed with Jenna before the two of them had actually met, but he’d been connected to Helen Kingston.
With so many questions regarding where Anna Newbury had been born, when she changed her name, and what she’d been doing during the years prior to Jenna’s birth, I needed to come at things from a different angle. Rather than starting at the beginning and working my way forward, I was going to start at the end.
Which was how I found myself entering hour number three in a dusty, mildew infested basement room at the Fort Collins courthouse.
I sneezed for what felt like the hundredth time and cursed under my breath. This was so unfair. Ninety-eight percent of the courthouse was modern, clean, and bright. The other two percent was the dingy corner where the things I wanted were being kept.
I put my hands on the small of my back and bent backward, giving a sigh of relief as my spine stretched. I didn’t necessarily mind paperwork, but it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world.
As I gave my eyes a bit of a break, I ran through what I’d learned so far.
Helen Kingston had been only one of Anna Newbury’s many aliases. When it came to her ‘work,’ she’d gone by the name Helena King. In witness protection, her name had been Marcy Wakefield. After her arrest four years ago, her WITSEC identity had been compromised, so it had been included in the official record. She’d declined a new one, which meant that her name in the prison system had been Anna Newbury.
She’d also revealed a handful of other aliases. Crystal Troy. Ann Montgomery. Jasmine Sands. She’d used those names the times she’d been arrested for solicitation or drug possession in Florida. I doubted they were the only ones, but they would be a good place to start if her other names didn’t turn up anything.
There was a good chance that I’d have to go to Florida to try to find Jenna’s older siblings, but Helen / Ann had been put into her new life in Cheyenne, Wyoming, not that far from where we were now. It explained how she’d connected with Christophe, and how she’d gotten to Jenna before her handlers had known she skipped town. It was a good bet that the kids she’d had in WITSEC had been placed nearby and a much higher possibility that they were still in the same place compared to the older siblings.
I sneezed again and glared at the dusty files I’d been searching through. I’d come here assuming that I’d either be turned away, sent to the US Marshal service for answers, or shown to a computer where I could find court transcripts and allocutions. Instead, a rather perky paralegal had brought me down here with the explanation that the information I wanted was of such a sensitive nature that my access had to be restricted to solely what was available in hard copy.
Then she’d left me there. I’d heard her whistling as she made her way back to the stairs, the sound fading as she got farther away. I didn’t know what other sorts of offices or storage rooms were down here, but in the past two hours, I hadn’t seen or heard anyone else.
I made a mental note to make sure I left a good half hour before the building closed, or I could end up getting locked in. I doubted anyone checked down here very often.
I picked up my notepad and fanned my face. It might’ve been fall outside, but down here, it was sweltering. One would think that a basement would lean more toward the cooler end of the temperature range, and that was true in the hallway, but this particular room seemed to be situated right next to the boiler room…and had a connecting vent.
Between the heat and the dust, I was a mess by the time I finally packed it in. I’d gotten some good information, but I’d completely exhausted this particular source. After a shower, food, and some perspective, I’d sit down with my information and tweak my game plan for tomorrow.
All of those plans, however, went right out the window when I reached the top of my stairs. Leaning against the railing was a familiar figure with that same cocky grin that I both loved and hated.
I didn’t even try to hide my surprise. “Clay? What are you doing here?”
He pushed himself off the railing, sticking his hands in his pockets as he moved to the side to let me through. “Isn’t it obvious? I came for you.”
I really hoped he didn’t mean that like it sounded.
I doubted orange jumpsuits would be my best look.
Seven
When he didn’t automatically start reading me my rights, I took that as a good sign and opened the door.
“Come in,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t betray how nervous I felt. Just because he hadn’t arrested me yet didn’t mean he wasn’t there because someone at the FBI had changed their mind about pressing charges.
“Nice place,” Clay said as he followed me inside. “Much better than the dorms at Quantico.”
I set down my papers and turned to give him a
hard look. “Why are you here, Clay?” I held up a hand when he opened his mouth. I needed to clarify before he said something that made me want to smack him. “And don’t tell me you came for me unless you want to explain exactly what you mean by that.”
He looked puzzled, but not guilty, which I took as another good sign. I wasn’t going to be completely at ease, though, until I heard the whole story.
“The last time I saw you, you were being escorted off campus with all of your things. I tried contacting you, but you wouldn’t respond. You disappeared without an explanation.”
Now I was the one feeling guilty. “I got kicked out.”
“Fuck,” he said in a long, low voice. “What the hell, Rona?”
“How much did Anton tell you about our family? About why I was living with him?”
“He didn’t. But I don’t see the connection.”
I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. I didn’t want to have this conversation. “If I tell you that I lied about something on my application, something from my past, but that I didn’t want to talk about it, would you accept that?”
He closed the distance between us and took my hand, squeezing it. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
I made myself meet his gaze, even as the emotion I saw there made me uncomfortable. “Not this. Not now.”
I saw a flash of hurt, but it was gone almost faster than I registered it. He released my hand and wrapped his arms around me. “Okay then.”
“Okay?”
He nodded, then bent his head and brushed his lips across mine. “Okay. No more questions. As long as you know you can come to me if you need to.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I doubted I’d ever want to tell him what had happened in any more detail than I just had. I liked him, I really did, but it wasn’t going to happen.