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Parents—deceased.
Living family—two brothers, Anthony and Timothy Murillo, ages at the time, twenty-six and twenty-seven.
From there, it was sightings, possible sightings and where family and friends thought she might be going.
Though, just sayin’, but at the time I’d asked for the information from her family and friends, none of them besides Lisbeth, who’d said she was her best friend, had been willing to give me anything.
From the very beginning, I’d always been somewhat skeptical about this case, but with the contract in favor of Lisbeth and Farrell, I’d given it my all and tried to locate her.
However, once I had located her—which, at this point, I might never locate her—I would need the whole story before I’d give her up.
Especially now that I was no longer so black and white when it came to following the rules.
In my opinion, rules were meant to be broken.
Though, I wasn’t sure I’d have had the same mindset when I’d first gotten the case.
I would’ve listened to her side of the story, though.
I flipped to the next page, expecting to find nothing past it like I always did, and felt my stomach bottom out.
It was a live birth certificate.
One that I’d most certainly never seen before.
Julie Murillo. Date of birth was left blank. White. Mother: Lacy Murillo. Father: Kobe Sano.
I felt my stomach sink as I read that last part.
What in the actual fuck?
“What?” I croaked.
She wasn’t mine.
“She’s not yours,” Folsom answered. “There’s one more page.”
It was a hospital report in Kilgore, Texas. One for a mother and a child.
Something sparkled to life in my mind, and a realization started to dawn.
The child. The one I’d helped to deliver the day before I’d gone to prison for way too many years of my life…it’d been her. The one that I’d been looking for. The unsolvable case. Right there all along.
I’d found her? All this time, and I’d been that close?
Just as I’d made that discovery, Folsom hissed from my side and then said, “Julie Payne, no ma’am!”
I jerked my head up to see JP on the top of the monkey bars, frozen and seconds away from jumping off the edge.
My heart beat a little bit faster to see her that far off the ground.
“Ahh, but Mom!” JP cried. “I just want to jump from here to there!”
“There” was a swath of silk that was hanging from a tree. It was about six feet away, and there was no way she’d be able to make it from the monkey bars to the silk without getting unbearably close to the ground.
Then, like a shot through the heart, I made the connection there, too.
The iPad started to slip from my fingers, but showing she was a mother and had eyes everywhere, Folsom caught the tablet before it could fall even an inch.
