by Jae
He remembered other fistfights and visits to the principal’s office. At some point, Rue had stopped being his champion and had started shouting at him instead of the other kid’s parents.
Greg frowned.
Danny took the notepad from him and scribbled, “My mother never beat me.”
Greg nodded. “My old lady never beat me either, but she also didn’t stop my father. Guess she was just glad that it was me, not her who got the beating for a change.”
Danny stared at the page Greg held out for him to read.
“So what did your folks do?” Greg asked, pointing at Danny.
“My mother wants to send me to one of those schools where they brainwash kids,” Danny wrote onto the pad.
Greg’s mouth opened into a laugh. “Really? Why? What did you do?”
Writing it down solidified the guilt Danny already felt. He cramped his fingers around the pen. “I stole her keys and let my friends smoke dope in her sawmill. And I wrecked the outside mirror of her car.” By now, Rue was probably angry enough to send him to some military boot camp.
A stream of air brushed Danny’s cheek as Greg whistled through the gap between his teeth. “Man!” Greg painted a large exclamation mark onto the notepad. “My father would have killed me if I touched his keys or even breathed on his car!” The expression in his eyes made Danny think he wasn’t exaggerating.
Geez! Compared to Greg’s old man, Rue’s practically parent-of-the-year. Rue had a temper, and a few times, he had made her so angry that she shouted at him, even though he couldn’t hear it, but she had never lifted a hand against him.
“How long have you lived on the street?” Danny wrote and turned the notepad so Greg could see his question.
Greg held up one hand, all finger extended.
“Five months?” Danny wrote.
Greg shook his head.
Five years? Danny stared at the taller boy. Greg couldn’t be older than sixteen or seventeen. If Greg made it on the streets for five years, I can stay for a few days, until Paula is back. Right?
“It’s not so bad,” Greg said, moving his lips carefully. “I know how to take care of myself.”
Oh, yeah. Danny eyed the gap where one of Greg’s front teeth was missing. Looks like it.
Greg reached for the notepad again. “Been in a scuffle or two. I whooped some asses, so now even the older guys leave me alone.” He pointed at a homeless guy collecting empty bottles at the entrance of the park. “He’s deaf too.”
Danny turned so the older man could see his hands and then signed a quick, “Hi, how are you?”
The homeless guy paused with a bottle in his hand and stared but didn’t answer.
Guess he doesn’t talk to just anyone. Danny shrugged and turned back to Greg.
“Don’t bother,” Greg wrote onto the notepad. “I don’t think he knows sign language. His parents kept him locked up at home like an animal.”
No sign language… Danny couldn’t imagine. Guess compared to him, I didn’t have it so bad after all.
Greg motioned for Danny to follow him. His hand extended, palm up, he approached the passing-by people. “Sir, could you spare some change for food for my deaf friend and me?”
Most people just kept on walking as if they were as deaf as Danny. One man stopped, looked at them, and said something that looked like, “Get a job, young man.” But a few fished in their pockets and dropped coins into Greg’s hand or the baseball cap until Danny had two dollars and six cents.
Greg’s fingers curled around the coins in his hand. Instead of looking for the next passerby to ask for some change, he gaped at something behind Danny.
Frowning, Danny turned.
A man in a white apron stood in the doorway of a restaurant. He shouted something and waved his fist at them, trying to shoo them away.
Greg stood his ground and shouted back.
The restaurant owner stepped onto the sidewalk, his head lowered like a charging bull.
When Greg grabbed his arm, Danny noticed that another man was moving toward them too, this one in a black uniform.
Shit! A cop!
Greg shouted something—probably “run!”—and then did exactly that.
Before Danny really understood why he was running, his legs were carrying him down the street.
Chapter 29
Kelsey sent a prayer of thanks to the Great Hunter. So far, entering the cavernous subway system hadn’t been necessary. They stood in front of a subway station, and Rue held up Danny’s photo to a never-ending stream of New Yorkers, who hurried past with a shake of their heads.
Rue was showing the photo to a group of Japanese tourists.
One of the tourists started thumbing through a dictionary and showed her a word.
“Not deft. He’s deaf.” Rue pointed to her ears. “He can’t hear. Have you seen him?” When her phone rang, she glanced at the display and shook her head. “Unknown caller. It’s not the police. Can you take this, please? I don’t want to let them,” she nodded at the tourists, “get away before they tell me if they’ve seen Danny.”
Kelsey took the phone and lifted it to her ear while keeping her gaze on the masses of people, hoping to get a glimpse of Danny. “Yes?”
The sound of breathing came from the other end of the line, but no one spoke.
“Hello?” Kelsey said.
“Who is this?” a female voice asked.
Kelsey wanted to know the same thing. “Kelsey Forrester,” she said, remembering at the last second to use her fake last name. She hesitated. “A friend of Rue’s.”
“Friend,” the woman repeated.
“Yes.” What else am I supposed to say? Hello, I’m a shape-shifter who wants to kidnap Danny as soon as we find him? “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Paula Lehane,” the woman said.
The name hung between them for a moment.
In the awkward silence, Kelsey glanced at Rue, but she was still busy with the tourists. Now three of the Japanese men were leafing through their dictionaries.
“Are you...?” The woman paused.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s not important right now. Have you found Danny? Is he with you?”
Kelsey lowered her gaze to the clumps of chewing gum at her feet. “No. We’re still searching for him.”
Paula groaned as if something were causing her physical pain.
“I’m sorry,” Kelsey said. “We’re doing everything we can to find him.”
Finally, Rue got her answer—a regretful no—from the tourists and turned to Kelsey. “Who is it?”
Kelsey covered the cell phone with one hand and whispered, “Paula.”
“Let me talk to her.” Rue took the phone. “Paula? It’s Rue. Where are you?”
“Still in Bangkok,” Paula said. “What’s going on, Rue? Why is Danny running around New York instead of texting you to come get him?”
Rue turned her back toward Kelsey as if that would give her some privacy, but with her Wrasa hearing, Kelsey still heard every word. “He probably thinks I’m still angry with him, and he doesn’t want to be the first to give in. You know how proud and stubborn he is.”
“Oh, yeah.” Paula snorted. “Like mother, like son. It’s a wonder you two stubborn mules haven’t killed each other yet without me there to intervene.”
“We’re doing just fine without you.” Cold anger crept into Rue’s voice.
“Then why did Danny run away?” Paula asked, her tone accusing. “Did you yell at him again?”
“You would have yelled too. Danny stole my keys and took his friends to smoke pot in the sawmill. They were damn lucky the whole place didn’t burn down.”
“Jesus, Rue!” Paula breathed deeply. “I’ll see if I can change flights. I still have a follow-up interview to do, but I’ll call the station and—”
“No,” Rue said. “No, don’t change flights. There’s nothing you could do here that we or the police aren’t doing already. Listen, don’t
worry. You know our son. I bet he’s sitting in some hotel right now, watching movies and eating junk food.”
They both laughed, but it was the nervous laughter of people trying to reassure each other, not a sound of joy. Despite Rue’s words, the tension never left her slender frame and her fingers were wrapped around the cell phone more tightly than necessary. “We’ll find him,” Rue said hoarsely. “I promise.” She ended the call and stood staring at the phone for a few moments.
Kelsey stepped up to her and gently touched her elbow. “Why don’t you want Paula to come home and help with the search?”
Rue put the phone away and looked up. “It’s a twenty-four-hour flight from Bangkok to New York. By the time she’s here, I hope we’ll have found Danny.”
There was more that she wasn’t saying. Kelsey could smell Rue’s fear. “Are you afraid Paula will try to fight for custody if she realizes how bad the situation is?”
“Bullshit.” Rue let out a growl worthy of a wolf-shifter. “Paula is traveling all over the world. She doesn’t want custody.” Her voice shook. She turned away and started showing around the picture of Danny again.
None of the street vendors or pedestrians had seen him.
Rue bit her lip. Her shoulders slumped as if she realized what a hopeless endeavor finding a missing boy in a big city like New York was, especially if the boy didn’t want to be found.
With every hour Kelsey spent with her, she found it harder to believe that Rue would end up trying to kill Danny.
After a moment, Rue straightened and held up Danny’s photo again. “Has anyone seen this boy?” she called, her voice hoarse with emotions and the strain of calling out to New Yorkers and tourists for hours.
“Rue...”
When Rue turned around, Kelsey noticed that she was touching Rue’s back. She quickly withdrew her hand. In Rue’s eyes, she saw the same bone-deep exhaustion she herself felt. “Why don’t we take a break?” Kelsey said. “We’ve been standing here for six hours without eating or sitting down even for a minute.”
Rue hesitated. Her feet had to hurt just as much as Kelsey’s did, but she refused to give up the search for Danny.
“Maybe we could go to the coffeehouse over there.” Kelsey pointed to her right. “We’d still be able to see the street and the people passing by. We can keep an eye out for Danny while we eat.”
“All right.”
Once they were in the coffeehouse, Rue sipped her gourmet coffee without seeming to taste it, her gaze still on the people passing by. “You know, before we adopted Danny, I was afraid of this,” she murmured when she set her heavy porcelain mug onto the polished teak table.
“Of what?” Kelsey asked, her voice equally low. She sensed that this—Rue admitting her fears—was a rare thing.
“Of losing him at the mall, of making a mistake that would prove that I’m a terrible mother...” Rue stared off into space.
“Why would you think that about yourself?”
“I never saw myself as the maternal type.” Rue wove her fingers around the mug as if needing to hold on to something. “I grew up as an only child, raised by my grandfather. He was an honorable, hard-working man, but he didn’t know how to deal with a little girl.”
In her mind’s eye, Kelsey saw the blond girl and the old man from the photo in Rue’s office, his age-spotted hands guiding hers as they worked on a piece of furniture together, bonding over their love for wood, but never openly expressing their feelings.
“I thought that I was the same. That there was no room for a child in my life.”
“What happened to change that?” Kelsey asked.
A slight smile settled on Rue’s lips. “Danny,” she said. “Back when we were still living in Oregon, Paula was working on a story about the foster system. That’s how she met Danny. She got it into her head that since we had a solid relationship and both made enough money, we could give him a good life.”
“And you?” Kelsey took a sip of her tea. “You didn’t think so?”
“I was scared shitless,” Rue said, then stopped and blinked, apparently surprised at her open confession. “I dragged my feet but finally agreed to let him stay with us for a while to see if it worked out before we decided on an adoption. I still remember the first time Paula left me alone with Danny to go on an assignment.”
She’s exhausted and desperate, Kelsey realized. Her defenses are down. Her fingers itched, this time not with the need to shift, but the urge to touch and reassure Rue in her moment of weakness.
Then Rue let out a self-deprecating laugh, and the vulnerable light in her eyes disappeared.
Kelsey instantly missed it. “What happened?” she asked to keep Rue talking.
“I took Danny to work with me, and we spent the day in the forest evaluating trees. I thought Danny, who was just seven then, would be bored to tears.”
Kelsey knew better. After living with various foster families for years, accompanying Rue to the forest must have been like coming home for Danny. “He loved it,” she said.
“Yeah. I taught him to tell an alder from an elm and a beech from an oak, just like my grandfather had taught me. And then I spent a week in bed because I caught chickenpox from Danny.”
“Ouch.” Kelsey chuckled. Chickenpox was the only common human children’s illness that Wrasa could get too. Her father had once caught it. Like most nataks, he made for a very bad patient, growling about being restricted to bed, and she wondered if Rue was the same. “But you still adopted him.”
“After what he had already been through in his short life, I just couldn’t bear to reject him too,” Rue said.
“Reject him too,” Kelsey mumbled, more to herself than to Rue. She still couldn’t imagine a Wrasa parent relinquishing his or her child.
Rue’s eyes glinted like ice. “Yes. He was found when he wasn’t even six months old. His parents just abandoned him. They left him on a riverbank like a piece of garbage.” Rue gulped down the last of her coffee as if she needed to get rid of a bitter taste in her mouth. “It was a cool night in November. He was drenched to the bone and could have died of hypothermia if he hadn’t been found in time.”
The words hit Kelsey like an electric shock. At the banks of a river. A cool night in November. A noise started up in her ears, sounding like the roar of a river. Oh, Great Hunter. A riverbank in November... She shook her head to clear it and get rid of the roaring. No, don’t let yourself think like that. It has to be just a cruel coincidence. Remember, Little Franklin drowned with his parents.
But she couldn’t get rid of the thought. She needed to make sure. “Riverbank?” she asked, heart pounding. “What river was it?”
The ringing of a phone on the table almost made Kelsey fall off her chair.
Her hand brushed Rue’s as both of them reached for their phones at the same time. “It’s mine,” Kelsey said quickly and pressed the phone to her ear. “Yes?”
“We’re in New York now,” Griffin said, not bothering to identify herself, “so you’ve got backup if you need it. We already started searching for the boy. Your report said he smells of peanuts, right?”
“Right,” Kelsey said. He smells of peanuts, just like Garrick. Was that really just a weird coincidence?
“We thought we could do this the old-fashioned way,” Griffin said, “but there are too many things that smell of peanut in this damn city.”
“I know,” Kelsey said. With the myriad of odors wafting in the air, even a Wrasa’s nose wouldn’t be of much use in the search.
“I’ll try to get my paws on surveillance tapes from subway stations around the TV station, but I can’t make any promises,” Griffin said. “Since this is not official Saru business, my contacts might be reluctant to help.”
Kelsey clenched her fingers around the phone. So basically, she was still on her own. “I understand.”
“If you find the boy before we do, let me know and we’ll help get him away from that woman,” Griffin said.
Kelsey’s
gaze flickered up and studied Rue, who was again watching the people on the street. Just a few days ago, Kelsey had shared Griffin’s determination to remove Danny from Rue’s care. But now she was starting to have trouble seeing Rue as the ruthless monster from Jorie’s dream. Just find Danny. Then you can deal with the rest. “I’ll let you know,” she said to Griffin.
“All right. Until later, then.”
A second before Griffin could end the call, Kelsey gave in to her impulse. “Wait!”
“What?”
“Remember that document you wanted to send me?” Kelsey said, very aware that Rue could hear every word she said. “Could you read it to me, please?”
“The boy’s birth certificate?”
“Yes.”
Paper rustled on the other end of the line, and Kelsey held her breath. Breathe, dammit! Whatever you’re waiting for is not what Griffin will say. Little Franklin died along with Garrick and Sabrina, you know that. She told herself not to get her hopes up, but still her heart was racing.
“Let’s see. His full name is Daniel Moses Harding.”
Moses? As a child, she had read the Bible, fascinated with the lore of human religion. The First Law forbade the Wrasa to write down their legends and mythologies, so Kelsey had read about human religions instead. Wasn’t Moses the prophet who was rescued from the River Nile as a baby?
“He was found on November 4, 1998, just outside of Florence,” Griffin said. “That’s in...”
The roaring in her ears was back, and Kelsey stopped listening. She knew where Florence was—she had grown up in that town. She would also never forget the date Griffin had mentioned. On that day, her life had changed forever.
How is that possible? I saw the bodies. Little Franklin is dead. Fourteen years ago, she had stood by her brother’s and her sister-in-law’s pyres. She had watched the small, carefully wrapped body in Sabrina’s arms go up in flames. Could it all be just one big coincidence? What were the chances of another six-month-old Syak baby boy being by the river just outside of Florence on that night?