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FOUR
Decima
Blaze still seemedcheerful when I returned to the apartment, led by Julius, but he mustn’t have had any exciting news, because he nudged his laptop aside and asked, “Find out anything interesting?”
I scratched my hairline, which was still a bit itchy from the wig, and frowned. “They were gone.”
Garrison’s head snapped up from where he’d been flicking through his phone in the kitchen area while waiting for the kettle to boil, and Talon set down his knitting. “Gone?” the bigger man repeated with a frown.
“Vanished from the face of the Earth. The guy at the bakery hadn’t shown up for his shift in at least a couple of days, and the other woman’s shop was all closed up.” A frown of my own tugged at my lips. “I don’t like it.”
A laugh tumbled out of Blaze. When I narrowed my eyes at him, not understanding how the situation was funny in any way, he waved his hand. “The bakery, huh? One of your sources works there?”
“Yeah, so what?”
The words had barely left my mouth when I realized the tidbit of information I’d revealed. It hadn’t been that long ago when I’d been hiding as much as I possibly could from them.
Garrison had arched his eyebrows, his tone more sardonic than Blaze’s. “It wasn’t the chocolate chip cookies you wanted out of that place after all.”
I rolled my eyes. They knew I’d lied about a hell of a lot of other things. This one wasn’t a big deal.
“It was at least as much for the cookies,” I retorted. “I know you thought they were amazing too. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My contact there is gone, and anything he could have told me is gone with him. And I have no idea what happened to him or my other contact.”
Julius ran his hand along his chin. “It could be that once you’d made contact with them, the household called them in to find out what they knew about you.”
“Maybe.” But how long would that have taken? Why wouldn’t they be back sooner?
I shoved those uncomfortable questions aside and focused on Blaze. “I’ve got nothing. Did you come up with anything here?”
“You mean did his fancy app come up with anything,” Garrison remarked.
Both Blaze and I ignored him. Blaze looked back at the computer and made a face. “We might need to move on to plan B.”
My heart sank. “The program’s gone through all the missing kid reports and didn’t get a single match?”
“Well…” He pulled the laptop back to him and started clicking on files. Talon came over and Julius drew closer as I did for a better look. Garrison, being his typical nonchalant self, stayed where he was like he didn’t give a shit, but his gaze lingered on us anyway.
“These are the sorts of things I got in the loose matches,” Blaze said, motioning to the screen.
I snorted at the first one. “The household didn’t change my ethnicity.”
One girl in the image—young, no more than two years old—did have gray eyes and black hair like mine, but the shape of her features marked her as clearly East Asian in heritage. I guessed mine weren’t that different, but they were different enough to set our ancestors continents apart.
“Yeah, I know.” Blaze clicked open another, which showed a girl whose eyes, nose, and chin mimicked my toddler self so closely I could see how the software might have picked up on the similarity… but her wavy hair was bright red, and freckles dappled her cheeks. “And this obviously isn’t you either, unless they managed to inject permanent dye receptacles right into your hair follicles.”
I stared at him for a second. “That’s not actually possible, right?”
He chuckled. “No, thank God, or my job would be a lot harder. Anyway, the others are all like this—specific details that make it clear they’re not you—and there were no exact matches. I did end up connecting one missing toddler to her adult self living out in Des Moines… I’m not sure she has any idea her dad stole her away from her mom after they separated… I sent a tip with the information to the police department who handled the original case so hopefully they can finally set things straight.”
He grinned with satisfaction at the victory that had nothing to do with our original mission. It was hard to feel too frustrated about it in the face of his delight at solving some problem, even if it hadn’t been ours. He hadn’t needed to go to the trouble—he could have shuffled aside that case and moved on—but it’d mattered to him to give the woman and her mother some peace.
There was a lot more to Blaze than the incisive hacker and gleeful backup shooter, wasn’t there? As he tapped away at his keyboard to bring up whatever he wanted to show me next, I couldn’t help noticing the way his head tilted to the side and his bright brown eyes sharpened with concentration. The late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the apartment’s tall windows highlighted the planes of his smoothly handsome face and the light red hair that fell nearly to his shoulders.
Before, his regular flirting and gestures of affection had put me so on guard that I hadn’t really appreciated how attractive he was. But when he was caught up in a puzzle, eagerly putting the pieces together, there was no denying he had a certain appeal.
Maybe I should give kindness another chance.
The thought provoked a memory of honeyed words and a vicious smile that sent a shiver through me. Thankfully, Blaze redirected my thoughts.
