I was grateful for the work Jenna had given me. Without it, I would’ve gone crazy.

I spent Sunday putting together all the information I’d gathered when looking for Meka, including my less-than-orthodox ‘interview’ with Meka’s ex-boyfriend Shawn. I doubted I had much of anything that the FBI didn’t already have, but I figured if I gave it to Jenna, she could determine whether or not to pass the information along.

It might also give her somewhere to look that she hadn’t thought of yet. With Shawn’s age, I had no doubt his social media accounts would provide a plethora of information. Whether or not any of it would be useful was anybody’s guess.

I’d taken her the information first thing this morning, then headed up to Cheyenne. The US Marshals hadn’t been too keen on talking to me over the phone, but that didn’t mean an in-person visit would yield the same results. During the hour drive, I called Clay – hands-free of course – to ask for a name. That name was the reason I’d been sitting outside an apartment building since noon.

Clay hadn’t been able to tell me much, and I hadn’t pressed him to give me anything but the name and where I could find him. I didn’t want to risk my friend’s career, but part of being in any sort of investigative field often meant calling in favors. Considering the help I’d be giving Jenna – and through her, Clay and his partner – I didn’t feel overly guilty for the request.

I’d done a little general internet searching while I waited, which had given me a wedding announcement from twenty-seven years ago and not much else. The fact that it was a Monday and I was sitting in front of an apartment instead of going into the local law enforcement office made me think that maybe Harry Franklin had retired.

Clay had sent over a picture, so when the silver-haired man in a cheap suit came out of the building, I recognized him. He looked a few years older than the picture, but still in his mid to late fifties, which meant it hadn’t been too long since he’d been with the Marshal service.

I hurried after him, careful to keep back a few feet until he ducked into a diner. I didn’t want a big public confrontation, but I didn’t want to corner him somewhere we’d be completely alone either. I doubted Clay would give me the name of someone who’d be a danger to me, but people did strange things when they felt threatened, and I had no way of knowing if asking about Jenna’s mother would come across as a threat.

He settled into a booth at the back of the diner and ordered some coffee. I waited until the waitress left before I slid into the empty space across from him.

“Mr. Franklin?”

The look he gave me was shrewd, careful. He knew I wasn’t here to sell him life insurance or whatever sort of things salespeople sold face-to-face. Straightforward would be the best approach, I decided on the spot. I just hoped my gut was right about that.

“My name’s Rona Quick, and I’m a private investigator.”

He stiffened but didn’t leave or tell me to get lost. Instead, he sipped his coffee and waited.

“I was hired to look into a woman who went by the name Helen Kingston, though you’d know her as Anna Newbury or Marcy Wakefield.”

His lips pressed together in a thin line, all pretense of casual vanishing. “Miss Quick, I’m going to advise you to walk out of here and forget those names. You tell whoever hired you that looking for that woman is pointless.”

I folded my hands in front of me, giving him my best polite smile. I paused to let the returning waitress take our orders and then vanish into the kitchen. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Franklin. I know that Marcy was the alias Anna was given when she entered WITSEC thirteen years ago. Before that, she’d used the names Helen Kingston and Helena King. When she was arrested years ago on multiple charges of child pornography – among other things – she gave up names in order to stay out of prison.”

“You shouldn’t know any of that,” he said.

I shrugged. “Probably not, but it became pretty common knowledge down in Fort Collins when Marcy came after one of her many children. Specifically, the daughter who was responsible for her first arrest. After that, she didn’t get any plea deals. She’s in prison for a long time.”

He took another drink of his coffee. “Then you should know that you need to contact the Department of Corrections to find her.”

“You misunderstand,” I said. “I’m not looking for her, but rather for the children she had while she was in WITSEC.”

The coffee cup clattered as he set it back on the saucer, a little liquid slopping over the top.

“That woman ruined my career when she took off,” he said. “Why should I get involved in anything to do with her?”

A few pieces fell into place, enough for me to feel comfortable making a logical leap. “Because you’re the Marshal who made a formal request for the higher-ups to do something about the fact that a known child abuser kept having kids.”

“Where did you hear that?” he asked, just sharply enough for me to know that my hunch was right on target.

“You had to have read her file.” I kept going without answering his question. “You knew what she’d done to the one daughter she hadn’t given away. When did you first find out that she was pregnant?”

He didn’t say anything at first, but I allowed the silence to keep growing. It was his move now. If I had to push more, I would, but it would be best if this was his choice.

Finally, he relented. “Three weeks after she arrived here, I found a pregnancy test in her bathroom. It wasn’t until later that I realized she’d left it there on purpose. I was hard on her when we first met, and I think she’d thought that knowing she was pregnant would soften me up.”

“But it didn’t.”

He shook his head. “But she used it to manipulate me for more lax monitoring. All she’d had to do was make a casual comment about knowing people who’d love a baby, and I was picturing all of the crime scene photos from her file.”

I muttered a curse. It shouldn’t have surprised me, not when I knew what she’d done to Jenna, but I could apparently still be shocked by how much of a monster Helen was.

He lifted his mug but didn’t take a sip. “I talked her into putting the baby up for adoption.”

“I spoke with a social worker who confirmed as much,” I said. “But I’d never be able to get details without a warrant.”

“Why do you want details?” His guard came up again. “Are the children’s fathers coming forward?”

I debated for a moment, then answered, “No, their sister. Half-sister. The one Helen kept.”

“She wants to find the kids?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“My client would like to have the opportunity to get to know as many of her siblings as she can. She’d like a relationship with them if at all possible but will settle for the knowledge that they’re safe.”

The waitress returned with our food, and we both fell silent as we ate. The fact that Harry blamed Marcy for his ‘retirement’ could’ve made him bitter and unwilling to help. Instead, I was getting the impression that he wanted to do whatever possible to make sure that Marcy’s kids didn’t suffer any more ill effects from their mother’s choices. His reluctance to talk was because he wanted to protect them, not himself.

“I checked up on the kids she had while in the program,” he finally admitted. “The first couple years anyway. I wanted to make sure they were being treated well.”

My heart picked up speed. “Does that mean you know where they are?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, kid. I know a few things here and there, but I don’t have an address for any of them. I paid a social worker to give me what she could without getting herself into too much trouble. Not much, but enough to know that the kids were okay.”

I pulled out my notebook and pen, my meal forgotten. “All right. What can you tell me?”

As I drove back to Fort Collins, I vacillated between frustration and satisfaction. My trip hadn’t been useless. I’d gotten information that I couldn’t have found anywhere else, and I was confident that I’d be able to use it to find Jenna’s brothers and sister. It wasn’t the lack of even more details that had me frowning.

Harry had taken the brunt of the responsibility for Helen’s escape, but in my opinion, it had been the justice system as a whole that had failed Jenna. Helen might have given the names of some men who’d raped Jenna and those who’d been involved in the recordings she’d helped make, but I couldn’t understand how anyone had been okay with making a deal with her, let alone letting her be the one to decide whether or not to keep the children who’d been born while she was in WITSEC.

Three children for certain, but one of the new things I’d learned today made me think that there might be a fourth out there.

Helen’s appearance in Fort Collins wasn’t the first time she’d slipped Marshal custody. Eight years ago, Harry had caught Helen hiding a third pregnancy. She’d been furious enough that he’d suspected she was up to no good. His suspicions had been confirmed when she’d taken off a few weeks later. He’d been embarrassed enough by her getting past him that he’d looked for her himself rather than telling his superiors that he’d lost her. Two weeks later, she’d returned, no longer pregnant. She told him that she’d taken a trip with a couple friends and had forgotten to tell him. While on the trip, she’d gone into labor. The baby had been stillborn.

Worried about his job, he’d let the matter go, but he hadn’t ever really been able to forget. Even now, he suspected that the baby hadn’t died, but hadn’t done anything about it. He’d been too much of a fucking coward then, and he was still one now. My original thought that he’d been protecting the kids had only been partially right. Covering his own ass had been more important than doing the right thing. If Clay hadn’t given me Harry’s name, I doubted he would’ve told anyone the whole story.

Yet another reason I hadn’t been able to thoroughly enjoy the fact that I’d gotten a good lead on the other kids.

I just needed to remember to take things one step at a time. I’d do everything in my power to find every one of the kids, but it was going to be a long process. I couldn’t let myself get discouraged, or I’d never get through it.

I’d found her. At least, I was fairly certain that I had.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at my computer screen, reviewing the facts that Harry and twelve hours of research had brought me. I’d worked until the early hours of the morning, managed a couple hours of restless sleep, and then got up just after sunrise to continue working.

The girl had turned thirteen on August seventeenth. The name Marcy Wakefield was on the birth certificate, and the father had been listed as unknown. While the father’s race hadn’t been recorded either, Harry had been present when the girl had been handed over to Child and Family Services, and he’d been able to tell me that whoever the man was, he’d given his daughter milk chocolate skin and raven-black curls.

Harry had also told me that the girl had been named Stacey, and shortly before the adoption proceedings were concluded, her family told the social worker that they would be moving to Loveland, Colorado after everything was finalized. That had been the last he’d heard other than a general report the following year that she was doing well.

That information had been enough for me to find Stacey Johnson, daughter of Elliot and Roberta Johnson, a resident of a city less than thirty miles south of where her sister had been living for years. She was an eighth-grader in the local high school and had started an anti-bullying campaign that was now in its second year.

Those particular details had been revealed by something so technologically simple that I hadn’t needed to contact Jenna to do her hacking thing. I’d done a social media search. It’d taken a while to weed through all the possibilities, but it’d been worth it. Once I’d gotten everyone’s names, it’d been relatively simple to find an address.

Scarily simple, actually.

I was suddenly grateful that I’d never gotten into the whole social media thing. It would’ve been far too easy for reporters to track me down here.

I printed out the page and then looked at the time. Mid-afternoon. I was already exhausted, but I wouldn’t be able to rest if I knew I had this information here and Jenna had waited for years for it.

I texted her first to see if it’d be okay if I came by, and as soon as she said yes, I was in my car. I told myself I was doing this because I wanted her to know as soon as possible. It had nothing to do with the fact that it’d been three days since Jalen had told me to leave his house and he hadn’t made an attempt to contact me at all.

I supposed I could have reached out to him first, but considering that he’d chosen his wife over me, I felt I was justified in wanting him to come to me.

But that wasn’t why I was going to Jenna now.

And at some point today, I might actually believe it.

Jenna looked surprisingly calm when she opened the door, but once we were seated in the kitchen, I noticed that she kept fiddling with her sleeve. Specifically, the part covering her scar. The scar she’d gotten when she tried to kill herself as a child.

Was she wondering if I was going to give her bad news? Tell her that the people who’d adopted one of her sisters had done the same sort of awful things that she’d had done to her?

I’d had some really shitty stuff happen to me in my life, but even knowing the little bit that I did about what’d happened to her made my own background almost happy by comparison. At least I had twelve years of great family memories.

“I have some information for you,” I said. “Do you want me to tell you or do you want to read yourself?”

“Tell me.” She stared at her hands. “I’m not sure I could absorb it if I had to read it.”

I gave her everything I had, keeping things simple. I didn’t slow things down, but I didn’t try to rush through it either. She needed me to be solid if things hit her hard.

For the first time, I wondered if I should have waited for Rylan to be here to help her through it, but I knew I had to trust that she would’ve said something if she needed his presence.

When I finished, I leaned back in my chair and waited for her to process. I’d never done this before, been there for a friend. Not because I wouldn’t have wanted to be there for someone, but because I’d never had a friend like this. Clay had been the closest thing, but we’d never really talked about anything personal. Asking about his past had always felt dishonest to me, considering I didn’t want him to ask about mine.

I could do it now, I realized. I could ask him whatever I wanted because he already knew all the worst parts of my life.

“Stacey,” Jenna said finally. “I have a sister named Stacey.”

“I’m going to keep looking for the others,” I said. “When you’re ready, we’ll talk about the direction you want to take with each of them.”

“Does she know she’s adopted?”

“I don’t know. She actually resembles her mother – the woman who adopted her, I mean. She doesn’t look anything like Helen.”

“That’s a relief,” Jenna said. “I’m bracing myself to see a picture of one of them and see our mother looking back at me.”

I went on my phone and pulled up the picture I’d downloaded. “Here.”

Jenna stared down at the screen. “Those are her parents?” She smiled softly. “You’re right. She looks like her mom, only a bit darker. Same nose and chin.”

“Everything I’ve found on them so far has been great. A real solid family. I’ll take a closer look at them in real life, but it’s promising.”

“I’d like to meet her,” Jenna said suddenly. “Do you think her parents would let me?”

The hope in her eyes twisted my heart. I knew what it was like to want something so badly that it hurt.

“I don’t know. Do you want me to talk to them on your behalf?”

“I think that’d be best,” she said. “Don’t you? They don’t know that the name on Stacey’s birth certificate is fake. If I go, there will be questions, and I don’t think that’s the best way for me to introduce myself.”

“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll call them in a bit and set up a time to meet. I’ll let you know as soon as I get things scheduled.”

“Thank you.” She got up and got us both a bottle of beer. When she sat back down, she gave me a searching look. “Now, what’s wrong?”

I almost spit out my beer. “Excuse me?”

“You were very professional,” she said with a half-smile, “but I’ve gotten to know you over the last couple weeks, and I can see past that smile. What’s wrong?”

I swallowed hard at the lump that suddenly formed in my throat. I’d spent so much of my life having to do things alone. With Jenna, I’d never need to worry that she’d be freaked out by anything she learned about me, and she’d never push when I wasn’t ready to talk.

Unless pushing was exactly what I needed.

“Talk to me.”

“Jalen.” I took a long drink. “The short version is that we were together, his wife came over, and he told me to leave. He picked her over me and hasn’t called me for three days.”

Jenna shook her head. “Men can be such idiots.”

“Amen to that,” I muttered.

“Piece of advice from someone who fought against love.” She leaned forward. “Take it easy on him. It’s as hard for him as it is for you.”