Mystery Child. Shirlee McCoy

      She hadn’t thought. Not about that, and Agent Spellings hadn’t mentioned it. She’d been too busy asking questions about Tabitha’s life. Questions Quinn hadn’t been able to answer.

      “I guess it is.”

      “It makes me think that someone besides Tabitha knew her plans.”

      “No way. She was scared out of her mind. She wouldn’t have told anyone anything.”

      “Not a friend? A lover?”

      She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”

      “You’re not sure, Quinn. We both know it.” He said it kindly, but she heard the accusation in his words the same way she’d heard them in Agent Spellings’.

      “You’re right. I’m not. My sister and I hadn’t spoken in years. I sent her Christmas cards and birthday cards and hoped they’d be forwarded to whatever place she’d moved to. I never got anything in response. I didn’t even know if she had my address. Then, she showed up on my doorstep, terrified. Was I supposed to turn her away?”

      “No. You weren’t,” he said simply. “She was terrified of her husband, right?”

      “Yes. She said he would be following her, trying to get her back. She also said he wouldn’t care about Jubilee.”

      “I guess that wasn’t the truth.”

      “There were a lot of things she said that weren’t the truth.” She didn’t want to discuss them, though. Not until she could wrap her mind around what her sister had done. Taken a child that wasn’t hers or her husbands? If that were the truth, how had Jubilee ended up in Las Vegas with them?

      “Have you seen Jubilee?” She changed the subject, because that was easier than discussing her sister’s mistakes.

      “She’s back in one of the bedrooms with a couple of CPS workers. I tried to get in, but it was a no-go. They’ve got her guarded tighter than Fort Knox.”

      “When will her father be here?”

      “Boone? Not for another twenty-something hours. If he’s her father. We haven’t established that yet. I’m hoping you can help me out, though.”

      “How?”

      “I heard a couple of the CPS workers talking about a birth certificate. Have you seen it?” There was no emotion in his voice, none on his face, but she could feel the energy in him, could sense his tension.

      This was what he’d come into the kitchen to find out, and she had no reason to keep the truth from him. “Yes. It was in the envelope my sister gave me.”

      He stilled, his dark eyes spearing into hers. “You got a good look at it?”

      “I saw her father’s name and her mother’s.”

      “And?”

      “Your friend was listed as her biological father. Which matches with what my sister told me.” The one truth among the many lies.

      “You don’t seem happy about it.”

      “I’m not happy about any of this. The FBI seems to think Tabitha has been keeping a missing child for years. She may end up in jail and poor Jubilee—”

      “Will be back with her father. Where she belongs.”

      “It is a rough thing for a child to be pulled away from everything she knows.”

      “It is just as rough a thing for a man to be without his child for five years,” he responded.

      “If she’s his child.” But, she really didn’t doubt that Jubilee was.

      “I saw her when we walked in the house. She looks just like him. A prettier, younger, cuter version, but just like him.” He grabbed a mug from a small stack near the coffeemaker. Small scars crisscrossed his knuckles, thin white lines against his tan skin. They were nothing like the scar on his face. That one was thick and jagged, stretching from the corner of his eye to his jaw.

      “And there’s the birth certificate,” she said more to herself than to him. How had Tabitha gotten her hands on it? If Jubilee wasn’t Daniel Boone Anderson’s child, why had Tabitha asked her to bring the little girl to him?

      “There’s that, too. Wonder where your sister got it.” His voice had gone quiet, his eyes suddenly cold and hard.

      “I don’t know.”

      “I may just have to see if I can find her. Boone deserves the truth.”

      “So does everyone else, but you’re just going to have to join the crowd of people hoping to get it, because I have nothing else to offer.”

      “Except that you’re the one person your sister has contacted since she left Las Vegas.”

      “There’s that,” she murmured, grabbing a clean coffee cup and filling it with hot liquid. She took a sip. It tasted like sawdust and disappointment.

      * * *

      This was what Malone had been hoping to hear. A birth certificate with Boone’s name on it. It was the kind of thing that he’d been looking for. Not just a red-haired child with freckles and blue eyes. A document that linked that child with Boone.

      He needed to track down Special Agent Spellings and confirm that the birth certificate was legit, then he’d call Chance. His boss had left DC nearly three hours ago. He’d be arriving soon, but this wasn’t the kind of news that Malone wanted to hold on to. The sooner they could confirm the birth certificate, the sooner they could start the process of petitioning CPS to run DNA tests. Five years was a long time to wait to be reunited with a loved one. He didn’t want Boone to have to wait even an hour longer.

      Once he got the information about the birth certificate, he was going to do a little digging, see if he could figure out where Tabitha had gone. He wanted to talk to her.

      So did a host of other people. Quinn was right about that. She was wrong about her sister, though. Tabitha had known exactly what she was getting Quinn into.

      He was pretty certain that Quinn realized it now.

      Too little, too late.

      She was staring into her coffee cup as if she could find the mysteries of the universe in it, the bright pink hand-printed shirt peeking out from beneath her sweatshirt again.

      She didn’t look angry. She looked...sad.

      That bothered Malone more than he wanted it to.

      A simple mission. In. Out. Back to his vacation. Only it wasn’t going to turn out that way. He set his mug down, took Quinn’s.

      “You were right,” he said, placing it next to his.

      “About what?”

      “Everything is going to be okay.”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      “Sure you did. You said it to Jubilee.”

      She frowned, her smooth skin and large gray eyes making her look years younger than she was. She could have passed for a teenager, but he knew she’d been widowed for several years. He’d have liked to know more.

      Like why a woman as smart as she seemed to be would believe the lies her sister had told her.

      “I guess I did.” She offered a half smile and sighed. “I probably knew Tabitha wasn’t telling me the entire truth, but I never would have imagined that she had a child who wasn’t hers.”

      “We could all be mistaken. That’s a possibility.”

      “No. It’s not. I got a good look at the birth certificate. It was an original,” she responded.

      “Did you see the baby’s name?”

      “Kendal Grace Anderson.”