Together Again (Never Too Late Book 5)

by Aiden Bates

  Merab nodded, slowly. "I don't know how to feel about this."

  "There is no right way to feel about this." Pat met her eyes. "You'll probably go through a lot of different thoughts and emotions, and they'll all be real and valid. Did you have a happy childhood?"

  Merab nodded. "I never even suspected that something was wrong."

  "Then she did something right. And when I saw you with your siblings up there, you were amazing. So, she raised you to be a good, strong woman and a leader. That's two things." Elias put a hand on Merab's back. "You'll have time to sort through everything. For now, you're probably pretty eager to put on something that isn't scrubs."

  Merab gave half a grin. It was a start.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elias kind of enjoyed taking Merab shopping. It didn't solve all of her problems. It didn't solve most of her problems. All that it did was to give her a few things of her own. Nothing could come out of the house in Granville, except in evidence bags, so there was nothing that Merab didn't need.

  Shopping with her gave them a chance to get to know the girl in a somewhat more normal context, not that any of this was normal for her. She'd never been around so many people before. She'd been off the farm with Nixon, but she hadn't spoken to anyone. She flinched when the salespeople spoke to her, and she tried to hide behind Pat when they tried to touch her.

  Of course, Zavia Nixon had been raised in an ultra-religious environment, and some of that had carried over into how she'd raised the children she abducted. Merab insisted on only buying "girl's clothes," due to the sin in dressing like a man. She didn't want to dress in ways that she considered immodest, either, which threw the sales clerks for a loop. They were used to dressing girls her age in tight jeans and short skirts.

  Eventually, though, they got her outfitted in some pretty clothes that she felt comfortable wearing. They brought her back to Framingham, and Pat introduced her around, while Elias called Dagmar and updated her. "I know that I told you I'd call you right away, but Pat got shot and we got caught up in dealing with that situation."

  "He got shot?" she squawked. "I didn't think it would get quite that far, from what you said."

  "One of the kids spooked when he saw the ambulances. Pat's trying to get the charges dismissed. It looks like he's going to be fine." Elias caught her up and rubbed at his stomach, which was rebelling against him. "It's a scary situation. Some of those kids aren't ever going to get fully over this," he told her.

  "Well, hopefully they'll get every resource possible from the state. We'll reach out to all of our donors for a fundraiser; I can't imagine that all of those families are going to be able to afford long-term medical expenses." She sighed. "The counselors are on their way to you now. They'll be staying at the same hotel as the families. Do you want me to start calling the families now and letting them know?"

  "I don't think so." Elias slumped in his seat. "We need to get DNA on all of these kids. Nixon seems to have given them all Biblical names, and of course they don't remember what their parents called them. We have to find a way to match them up, and we don't… there aren't enough kids to match with every family on the list. I don't want a family to come all that way only to turn around and go home empty handed, you know?"

  "Oh, God." Dagmar sounded nauseous at the thought. Elias thought he could sympathize. "Good plan."

  "The good news is that we're pretty sure that Asra Randall is the one we're putting up, and she's already shown an interest in finding out more. I doubt it'll always go this smoothly, but it's a start." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's going to be a long haul from here on out. I'm glad I've got Pat with me."

  "I'm glad you do too." Her voice softened.

  "I'm glad you do three." Pat dropped a kiss on his cheek as he and Merab returned to the conference room. "Langer's omega, the lawyer guy, is going to take Zavia's case."

  Ryan looked up. "That's… that's huge, actually."

  Elias glanced at Merab, who shrugged her shoulders. "Don't ask me," she said. "I don't know who that is."

  Pat sat down in his usual chair, and gestured toward the rest of them. As Merab sat down nearby, he explained. "Doug Morrison is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country. I don't want to talk down to you, Merab, but I don't know how much you've learned about the criminal justice system. I know you didn't go to school, so I don't know how much your mom taught you."

  Elias winced. Everything in the world would be new to her, and the rest of the kids. "I know there are police, but they can't do much."

  Ryan gave a bitter laugh. "It sure does feel like it sometimes. Okay. Let's say that a crime is committed. Okay? Like, say, someone kidnapping little kids."

  Merab shuddered. "Okay. I don't like to think of it that way, but go on."

  "Well, here's the thing, Merab." Elias inched closer to Pat. It made him feel a little better. "It is a crime, and it actually has some pretty stiff penalties. Most of the time, guys like Pat and like Ryan, they find people and put them away for a really long time for stuff like that."

  Merab went gray.

  "That's most of the time." Elias reached over Pat to put a hand on Merab's. "The thing is, most of the time, people who do that have some pretty bad motives. Your mom, on the other hand, she's sick. We're not kidding when we tell you that we care about her too, and we want to help her."

  "So, usually when someone gets caught committing a crime, they go to trial." Pat cleared his throat. "There's a prosecutor, who tries to prove that the person did the crime, and a defense attorney, who tries to prove that the person might not have done the crime. This is kind of a birds-eye level view here.

  "There's a third option. Your mom did it, but she wasn't in her right mind when she did it. So, what Morrison's going to do is he's going to pursue an insanity defense. That's very hard to prove, but I think that it's the right way to go here. That way, your mom gets the help she desperately needs." Pat bowed his head for a moment.

  "The system failed your mom, Merab." Ryan blew out a sigh. "It failed her a bunch of times. I'm glad that Doug is willing to help out. I don't want the system to fail her again."

  "Will I be allowed to see her?" Merab bit her lip, eyes shining.

  "I don't know." Elias squeezed her hand. "I'd like to hope so. It depends on her diagnosis and her treatment. Do you want to?"

  Merab nodded. "I know she's not my real—not my birth mother. I know she did something bad. I know that my birth mother would have been happy to be the one who took care of my skinned knees and taught me to read and to cook, but… but Mom is the one who did all of those things, and I can't forget that, you know?"

  "I know." Elias smiled at her. "I do know. We'll see what the doctors say."

  The labs got busy testing DNA just as soon as they could. Merab was the first one to get hers tested, naturally. She closed her eyes and shuddered, but she let them swab her cheek. "I'm not sure how any of this works, but I want to know the truth."

  It would take two days before the results came back, which gave them the weekend. Under other circumstances, that would be just perfect. They could spend the time getting to know her and helping her to adjust to the outside world. As it was, though, they had too much else to do.

  Elias was exhausted by mid-day on Saturday. He figured that it was a direct result of the huge workload that he'd taken on. After all, coordinating the family arrivals with counselors and DNA testing all fell to him first and foremost. Pat helped. The rest of Cold Case got pressed into service, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but they helped.

  And once they'd been pressed into service, and Elias showed himself to still be exhausted, Pat went and had a word with Langer. Langer made a call, and the next thing that Elias knew a whole team of lawyers and lawyer-adjacent people showed up at the hotel. They took over a conference room, to the consternation of hotel management, and started quietly organizing families and services.

  It boggled his mind, just how helpful everyone was. Elias was stil
l in charge; they might be lawyers and office managers and lawyers' wives and husbands, but they still needed direction. Elias didn't have to do everything himself, though. "Where did all of these people come from?" he whispered to Pat.

  "They work for Morrison's firm. They heard what happened and wanted to help." He shrugged, and then he winced. "Remind me not to do that anymore. Anyway, I figure we've got a lot of people to get through, and a lot of hands to hold. And they're going to have a lot of questions, too. We can't answer all of them. Some of their kids were legally declared dead, for crying out loud. I know how to read someone their Miranda rights. The intricacies of estate law are a little beyond me."

  "I'm not sure that a whole lot's beyond you." Elias rested his head against Pat.

  Some of the families were furious that they couldn't see their children right away. "Where is my David?" screamed a grandmother, waving a picture of an infant in a christening gown. The baby looked no different than any other white baby in a christening gown. "Why won't you take me to him now?"

  Pat stood and blocked the old woman from getting too close to Elias, which just made Elias smile. "It's okay, Pat. Ma'am, why don't you have a seat here and tell me who you're looking for?"

  "Who's your goon?" She scowled over at Pat.

  "He's my alpha, and he's one of the detectives working on this case. We can't take you to David right now, ma'am, because we don't know which one David is." Elias took the photo from her gently. "We can't even be sure that David is one of the children who was taken. Pat, does this look like one of the babies in the file to you?"

  Pat took the picture and studied it for a second. "David Korhonen, taken at three months from a waiting room at a doctor's office in Scituate thirteen years ago. Am I right?"

  The grandmother squinted at him. "You couldn't have said that a minute ago?"

  Elias bit back on a sharp retort. "Ma'am, there are a few reasons that we can't take you to him right away. First of all, the children who were found all have diphtheria, and all have to be quarantined. Second, David doesn't know he's David."

  "What are you talking about?" The old woman pulled herself up to her full height, which didn't quite reach five feet. "Of course he does."

  "No. The person who took him didn't know his name and raised him as her own. She gave them all new names. So, we can't just stick our head into the quarantine unit and shout for David because you'll get someone back who isn't your David." Elias closed his eyes against a wave of nausea. "That's why we need DNA from the families. It's the only way that we're going to match the right children with the right people."

  "Harrumph." The woman crossed her arms over her chest. "You know, his mother died. His father took off, and no one's heard from him since. Couldn't handle a missing kid and a wife with cancer, especially not when he blamed her for the baby being taken." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's not like the son of a bitch could stay home and watch his own kid while she went to the doctor."

  Pat rested his good hand on the nasty woman's shoulder. "Doctors are collecting their DNA already. We've collected yours, right?"

  The woman nodded, shoulders rounded. "David's the only person I have left in the world." She turned her face into Pat's arm and cried. "I know they said not to come yet, not to get my hopes up, but he has to be here. He just has to be."

  "I can't give you false hope." Elias put a hand on her shoulder, even as Pat squatted down so the grandmother could cry into his chest. "There aren't as many kids as there are families whose abductions fit the profile. And, ma'am, those kids are sick. Some of them are going to have life-long problems from this disease. But if he is there, we're going to give you the resources you need to connect with him. That's part of my whole job here."

  Some families were angry, like David Korhonen's grandmother. Some were just desperate. Others had already decided that the outcome was going to be positive, no matter how hard the others tried to counsel them not to get their hopes up. Elias thought he could see their faces cracking, under the weight of their smiles.

  There among them all, though, were the Randalls. Elias didn't need to see their ID to know who they were. He recognized Merab in her mother's face. He made sure that Pat had taken Merab out of the room for a walk before he approached them. "I'm so glad you're here."

  Both Randalls shook his hand. "We're pleased to meet you." Mrs. Randall gave him a gracious smile, but her huge eyes showed that she was anything but calm. "I've been hearing from so many people that their kids are sick, and they don't know who's who. What's really going on?"

  "Maybe we could speak privately?" Elias grimaced.

  The Randalls agreed to go and speak in their room. Once they were up there, Elias locked the door behind them. "Look. I shouldn't say anything yet, because the DNA results haven't come back, but Asra is the only child who fits the age and race for this particular child." He explained about how the names had been handled. "She's staying with us for now, because she's said she's comfortable with my alpha."

  Mr. Randall shook his head. "Wait, why is Asra comfortable with your alpha?"

  "He's a detective. She helped him to find where they were all being kept, and he kept them all alive when one of them shot him out of fear. It was a thing. She thinks of the rest of them as her brothers and sisters." He tried to meet their eyes. "She understands that she has birth parents. And she understands, intellectually anyway, that you didn't hurt her, that Zavia Nixon was disturbed. She still has to come to terms with the rest of it.

  "I don't know you well. But I think you've got a lot to be proud of. She keeps those kids calm. You should see them with her. They're sick, they're terrified, but they calm down with her, and she just has such a way with them. I think you'll be impressed by her." He smiled. "I honestly can't wait for you to meet her. She's so smart. She's smart, and she's good. She risked everything she knew to do the right thing."

  Mrs. Randall choked off a sob and buried her face in her husband's shoulder. Mr. Randall's eyes shone as his tears reflected the light, but he held Elias' eyes. "Thank you for letting us know that."

  Elias took his leave and left the Randall's to sort out their feelings in private. He had plenty of other families to talk to whose news wouldn't be so pleasant.

  ***

  The next few days passed in a blur to Pat. There was the never-ending whirl of activity. He was constantly running between headquarters and Mass. General, and the hotel near Mass. General where the families stayed. The pall of anxiety overlaid all of the adults on the case. There was the anxiety of the parents, of course. Whose children hadn't made it? Whose children hadn't actually been taken by Nixon at all?

  Then there was the anxiety over the children's health. They had a scare on Sunday night when one of the children—Philetus, age seven, who might have originally been known as Tristan Pawlitzki—slipped into cardiac arrest. The team at Mass. General was able to get his heart re-started, but it had been a very close call. The poor kid wasn't responding well to the antitoxin, although they hoped that changing his antibiotics might help. They were going to have to keep a close eye on him, but they couldn't do any of the tests or procedures for heart failure until he recovered from the diphtheria and started to get some strength back.

  The boy's birth parents couldn't go and be with him, because he didn't know them and because he was quarantined. Zavia Nixon couldn't go and sit with him, because she was sitting in a quarantine unit in the Longwood Medical Area trying to recover some sense of sanity. Merab and Pat could go and sit with him, though, and they did that. It gave him some comfort, which helped him to respond.

  Merab prayed with him. Pat had never been religious; neither of his parents had been believers, and he simply hadn't been raised in it. He respected that faith was an important part of these kids' lives, however, and he wasn't about to put it down. He followed Merab's cues and bowed his head when she did, and murmured "amen" when Philetus tried to.

  Afterward, when they left the hospital, Merab thanked him. "I th
ink he needed that. I know I needed that."

  "I'm glad that I could help." He grinned at her and guided her toward a lunch place. "I figure you don't want to head back to the hotel quite yet."

  “That obvious?" They took a seat and she looked out the window. "Everything in Boston is so overwhelming. I'm used to trees and crops. Everything is probably rotting on the vines."

  "Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the local units had taken the crops for themselves, at least the stuff that they could use. And I know that your livestock was brought to a sanctuary. So, they'll live long, healthy lives." He tried to smile, but it wasn't easy. "I can't imagine that's what you want to hear."

  She hung her head. "It feels like it's wrong to want to go back."

  Pat bit his cheek. "You want to know something?"

  She nodded.

  "I grew up in East Boston. It was kind of—well, not a great neighborhood. I guess you could call it a slum, or my part was anyway. Everyone was poor, but we were all poor, you know? And I don't go back, for a few reasons. I moved away when I was eighteen and I've never gone back, not even as a cop, but you know what?" He leaned forward and toyed with his straw. "Sometimes I still want to. Sometimes I miss it." He sat up. "It's all I knew, after we came here. Even the parts that weren't so good, they're what I know."