Best Left Unfinished
Page 26
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Katherine had known back in the days when she was still trying to find whatever information she could to add to the Chad Wiltshire puzzle that she was learning and employing a skill at which she was never going to demonstrate brilliance.
She knew that there were people with equipment that could have found the things that she was looking for with the ease with which everyone else checked their email. She knew that there were other people (either naturally gifted or with practiced flair) who could have used her own, not so stellar equipment and coaxed the requisite knowledge out of it with little to no trouble.
Caleb didn’t have access to that type of equipment or to those types of people. Caleb had her, and she had determination and a willingness to learn. It didn’t seem like much to move forward with, but they made it work.
The had gotten every bit of information and detail that they could out of Caleb’s parents (who were, as Katherine had predicted, cautious and concerned but more than willing to help in whatever way that they could). The Klausens were willing to help as well (but had little to add to the previous knowledge base that they had shared as neither Drake nor David wanted to grill their parents for any further information that might have been gleaned from them).
Trying to find Serena Holmes (which had seemed the only logical course of action as all paper trail avenues seemed to have gone up in smoke -- literally in a few cases) was not at the top of Katherine’s list of jobs that she had done well. She had the strangest sense of being watched the entire time that she was looking (which was bizarre and uncomfortable and reminded her for reasons that she couldn’t explain of when her younger self had been stalked by Chad Wiltshire). She kept looking anyway; she had promised Caleb her help.
When the woman who had facilitated both Caleb’s and David’s adoptions was finally more than a vapor trail, Katherine had the decided impression that someone had let her find the right places in which to look. She and Caleb made the trip to see her in person knowing that people who changed their names and went to all that trouble of hiding weren’t likely to spill their guts when confronted with a phone call. Katherine wasn’t entirely sure that such a person would be likely to do much talking when their well-guarded privacy was compromised in person either, but Caleb needed to try (and there was his pleading look to consider -- she certainly had enough difficulty not agreeing to what he wanted when he decided to use it).
It hadn’t gone well (if well was defined by the gaining of information that they had not previously possessed). It hadn’t really gone badly either. The start followed by the careful, studying stare that the woman had given when Caleb offered his name was enough of a confirmation that they had, in fact, found the person that they wanted to be talking to, but Katherine was convinced (even if Caleb hadn’t wanted to admit it) that the woman really didn’t have anything truly useful to tell them.
She could have, Katherine felt, provided them with the name of the person (and Katherine knew that it had been one person by the way that the other woman talked) who had brought Caleb and the others like him (others plural, they had both noticed in confirmation of what they, Drake, and David had all thought) to her, but Katherine suspected that her meager information gathering skills would run into a solid brick wall if she did any digging in that direction.
They were still short on answers and long on questions (and Caleb was hovering on the edge of deciding that his personal quest was going nowhere and not worth the time and effort that Katherine was putting into it) when her paranoia about being watched proved to be well-founded.
Dr. Randall Sutton had come sweeping into Caleb’s life (and David’s as well) with an eerie knowledge of both men that made it clear that he could give the both of them any answers that they would care to hear. Katherine didn’t care for the way that it illustrated that there had, in fact, been someone watching for the signs of anyone doing the digging that she had been doing for Caleb. It was a confirmation of the fear of discovery that had been instilled in the Twists and the Klausens (and she highly suspected in all of the others) who had adopted children via New Beginnings at around the same time.
Dr. Sutton played things close to the vest -- he doled out information in dribbles that never really answered anything but were pretty much guaranteed to keep Caleb coming back to try to find out more. He didn’t want to talk to Caleb’s parents; he didn’t want to talk to Katherine (although she caught him watching her upon occasion in a manner that made her skin feel like some sort of insect had taken to walking across it). He also didn’t want to give Caleb any real answers until Caleb agreed to come on a “fact finding” trip with him to meet “others who understand your questions because they’ve asked them all themselves.”
Nobody was very happy about it, but Caleb went. They didn’t hear anything from him for three long, difficult weeks.