I would’ve preferred to stay at the Archer house for a couple hours, get a list of things to do from Jenna, then go out and do them, but that wasn’t really my call to make. Jenna had come back to the kitchen shortly after Clay left, but she hadn’t asked where and why he’d gone. I knew some of her reasoning had to do with the fact that she’d just gotten off the phone with her sister, but I was also pretty sure that she knew I didn’t want to talk about what was going on with Clay and me. I returned the favor and didn’t press her about the phone call.

I’d gone back to the office then. Jenna had needed time to process her conversation with Stacey. Even if it’d been about something simple, the sheer strangeness of talking to a sibling she’d only ever imagined meeting had to have been jarring at the very least. Knowing her personality, she probably processed best by working, but she didn’t need me hovering over her, impatiently waiting for her to find something for me to do. I told her that I’d be there if she needed to talk, and then I’d gone home.

I might not have had an FBI case to work on, but I did have a case. Yes, I wanted to save those people who’d been left behind at the auction, but there wasn’t anything I could do yet. I had my own part to play, and I’d play it when I had the information I needed. Until then, I’d do the job I’d been hired to do and find Jenna’s siblings.

A little over eight years ago, Jenna’s mother had been pregnant with her last child. According to all the reports, that child had been stillborn. However, my conversation with Harry Franklin, a former US Marshal who’d been working on Helen Kingston’s case, made me believe that might not have been the case.

Unlike Stacey and the other kids who’d been removed from Helen’s custody, I wasn’t going to be dealing with sealed adoption records and things like that. If Helen had indeed given birth to that last child while she was missing from Marshal custody, she wouldn’t have handed it over to Child and Family Services in whatever state she’d ended up in back then. If she’d just wanted to give the baby up, she would’ve just stayed where she was. She’d left for a specific reason, and I was certain it had been to sell her child.

I just really hoped she hadn’t sold the baby to the sort of people she’d been involved with before. Not only would that make it nearly impossible to find the child, but the thought of the life that kid would’ve led...it made me sick. It was sad that the best option to hope for was that she’d sold the baby on the black market to a couple who’d desperately wanted a child, but to whom traditional methods hadn’t been an option.

Whoever she sold the baby to wouldn’t have been able to just magically have a child appear without certain information. Birth certificate, social security number, all that sort of thing. They would’ve needed to find that information somewhere, and it wouldn’t have been legal.

Finding places where the parents could’ve bought those documents would’ve been a lot easier if I’d had Jenna’s help, but I hadn’t been hired to only do the easy things. I would do everything I could on my own and only involve her as a last resort.

It was time to get to work.

I hadn’t made a whole lot of positive progress by the time I was ready to call it a day, but I’d been able to eliminate some of the non-possibilities. If I didn’t catch a lucky break, who knew how long it would take me to find a missing eight-year-old in a country of billions. Still, I was feeling pretty good about the way things had gone, especially considering it had felt like a normal day for the first time in a long time.

And then I saw Jalen waiting in front of my door and, for a moment, I thought things were going to end on a positive note. Then I saw the tight expression on his face, and I sighed.

“Come on in,” I said as I unlocked the door. “You’ve got to be freezing your ass off out here.”

“I haven’t been waiting long,” he said quietly as he followed me inside. “I didn’t want to interrupt your first official day back at work. But it doesn’t look like I interrupted anything since you weren’t at your office.”

“I was there earlier.” I kicked the snow from my boots, then tugged them off. “While I’m waiting for Jenna to delegate, I’m working on her case, and I needed to do some things outside of the office.”

“Where?”

I tossed a look over my shoulder. “What?”

“Where did you have to go?”

I frowned at him, caught off-guard by how flat the question had come out. “A few different places. Are you okay?”

He stared at me. “No, Rona, I’m not okay. I came here to see you because I wanted to make sure that you weren’t wearing yourself out.” He ran his hand over his jaw, scrubbing his palm against his stubble. “But you weren’t here, taking it easy. Of course not. You were out there. By yourself. Maggie said you didn’t even tell her where you were going.”

I’d been grateful when I found out that Maggie Carlyle, the woman I hired to be my receptionist, had come into the office even while I was gone. She’d been on time, had kept everything organized and neat. And there was no reason at all that I should be annoyed that she told Jalen she didn’t know where I was.

Except I was, and that just made me more pissed at Jalen for making me feel that way.

“It’s my job, Jalen,” I snapped.

“A dangerous job. You never should’ve been out there alone.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I trained with the FBI, then with Adare. I’ve been alone since my uncle died. I can take care of myself.”

“Clearly, you can’t.”

I glared at him. “Dammit, Jalen! I wasn’t working when those guys grabbed me.”

“Don’t remind me.” The pain in his eyes was only matched by the guilt. “You made me promise to stay safe and not do anything stupid, but you apparently don’t need to give me the same courtesy.”

“That’s different.”

“How?” His voice rose.

“I’m not a parent. You have to think about your baby.”

He cursed, his eyes flashing. “We don’t know that it’s my baby. And it doesn’t matter. Serge is still out there.”

My skin crawled just hearing the bastard’s name, which turned my anger up another level. “I know that! I know he’s out there, but I’m not going to let him keep me from doing my job.” I took a step toward Jalen, needing him to see. Needing him to understand. “When things get tough, I run. I leave before people can leave me. Not this time. This is my life, J.”

“And you’re my life.” He put his hands on either side of my face. “Don’t you understand that? You’re everything to me, and I can’t lose you.”

All my anger fell away when I saw the truth on his face. He wasn’t trying to be petty, or even pulling some man versus woman thing. He wanted to take care of me because I was important to him. It was one thing to hear him say that he loved me, and it was something else entirely to see it play out.

“All right,” I said, forcing my muscles to relax. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

He crushed me to his chest and kissed the top of my head. “Please do. Otherwise, I might be forced to put myself in danger again, and we both know you’ll be pissed if I do that.”

I chuckled, and when he joined me, the knot in my chest vanished with my anger. Things were going to be okay. We were going to be okay.