He reintroduced me to his scary friend. “This is Officer Ryan Gibson. Feel free to call us Austin and Ryan, if it’d make you more comfortable.”
Ryan lifted a hand in a half-wave, then returned his hands to his keyboard.
“Why am I here?”
“I need you to sign this.” Austin handed me a single sheet of paper.
“What is it?” I asked as I started reading.
“It’s a standard non-disclosure agreement. We all signed them,” John answered.
When I signed my name at the bottom, I barely recognized the chicken scratch as my signature.
Austin handed the paper to Ryan, trading it for a stack of photos.
He placed them on the table in front of me. One was the old, worn photo he’d shown me at Grannie’s. The others were formal photos of two people: my parents.
“As you know, we suspect these two people are your parents.”
My trembling right hand slowly reached out to touch the photo of my parents holding a baby.Holding me.
“Who are they?” I asked, my shaking finger tracing their faces.
“Travis and Melissa Singer.”
I didn’t mean their names, since he’d told me earlier. I wanted to know who they were in the bigger scheme of things.
Criminals.
Heroes.
Maybe they were two normal people with a string of bad luck.
“They’re CIA officers; they went MIA not long after this picture was taken.”
My parents were CIA? Missing in action? My heart raced in anticipation—had Austin found them?
“Where are they now?”
Why’d they get rid of me?
Why was there no record of my birth?
How’d Austin find me?
And why was he even looking?
“I’m sorry, Nina, but they’re dead.”
Dead?
I’d just learned they existed and now I’d never get to meet them.
Had he known all along?
Probably.
Austin placed a box of tissues and a bottle of water next to the photos.
