Rain Shadow 5

by Tess Oliver

  “You have two minutes,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  With all I had to say, two minutes seemed impossible. I decided to start at the beginning and hoped my story would intrigue him enough to give me more time. “Several months ago, you might have read in the paper about a DEA agent’s remains being found. He’d been killed in an undercover operation.”

  His brow tipped up, which was to be expected. “I read something about it.”

  “Well, two agents were involved in the operation. The dead man was my partner. I was the second agent. Our covers had been blown, and the men we were trying to catch tortured us and— my partner was killed.”

  “I’m sorry. But I still can’t imagine what this has to do with me.”

  His impatient tone was making it harder. I had so much to tell him, but I feared he wouldn’t stay to listen much longer. “My captors left me out in the desert to die. A young woman was out riding her horse and she found me. She took me to her grandfather’s compound, a remote, walled in section of land beneath the rain shadow of the mountains off Highway 50.” My throat had gone dry. “The girl’s grandfather was Dreygon Sharpe, the president of the Bedlam Motorcycle Club. You may or may not have heard of them.”

  “They are pretty notorious in these parts. I’ve heard of them.” Some of his impatience had been replaced by interest.

  “Sharpe had been living out there, off the grid, for years. He had two daughters. One of them had problems with mental illness. Schizophrenia, possibly, but she was never taken to a professional for help. After a year or so away, she arrived one day with a baby girl.” His shoulders straightened at the phrase ‘baby girl’, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “That baby is now twenty-two years old, and as you might have guessed, she is the girl who found me in the desert. Her name is Evangeline.”

  He got up. This conversation was upsetting him, and it was obvious he didn’t want to hear more.

  I stepped toward him. “Please, just let me finish. I know you’ve been to hell and back, but let me finish.”

  His body was rigid beneath the white lab coat. “No, let me finish this now,” he said, and this time there was a waver in his voice. “Nine times. Nine times, that is how many times we were given hope that our baby had been found. Every time, it turned out to be false, and every time, my wife and I relived the heartbreak.”

  “I understand—”

  He released a harsh laugh. “No, that’s just it. You don’t. No one does unless they’ve lived it. Our world came apart that day, and it never came back together. We both threw ourselves into our work, and we never started a family again.”

  I was losing him fast. “She has teal-blue eyes, and she wants to be a doctor,” I blurted, deciding to get out all the information I could before he ushered me through the door.

  “Those are some vague clues, Barringer.”

  It was hard to think, and I searched for the important stuff in my muddled brain. “Evangeline used to have a birthmark on her shoulder that was shaped like a star, but when she was a baby, her mother and grandfather purposely burned it. The distinguishing birthmark was covered by a scar.”

  He sat back against the desk. My last declaration had knocked the wind from him. He shook his head. “If it’s covered than how do you know it was shaped like a star?” He got up to show me to the door.

  “Evangeline’s mother had an unusual habit,” I said quickly as he reached for the doorknob. “She liked to chew on orange peels.”

  He stopped, and instead of opening the door, he braced his hands against it for support. He stared down at the tile floor.

  “Dreygon Sharpe has lived off the grid all this time. No one goes into that compound without his permission. He took care to never let the girl out in public much. She had a secluded life, but she is the most amazing person I’ve ever met.” He still hadn’t turned to face me, but it seemed I had his undivided attention now. I pulled out my phone and pulled up the picture of Angel riding her horse. “She is extremely smart and obsessed with medicine and becoming a doctor, almost as if it is in her blood.”

  He turned around. He was a good degree paler.

  “Sir, maybe you should sit down.”

  He shook his head. I lifted my phone. He pulled glasses out of his pocket with a shaky hand. He stared at the picture for a long moment. “She’s a beautiful girl, but still, this is all too farfetched.”

  “I agree. But I had someone check into a birth certificate for Evangeline Sharpe and none existed.”

  “Did this girl come up with this outlandish theory? Maybe she just wants away from that dangerous grandfather.”

  “Yes, she does want to be free of him, but she has no idea I’m here. I have not had the courage to bring this up to her yet. I know the evidence is scant, but I think it’s compelling enough to at least consider this a possibility. Wouldn’t you want to know if your daughter was still alive?”

  “That’s a stupid question. Of course, I want to know.” There was a tentative knock on his door. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he scolded. Footsteps retreated.

  He took a deep breath and leaned against the front of his desk again. It was obvious he was debating whether or not to give this any credence. He straightened and walked around to the other side of the desk. He quickly scribbled down a name on a piece of paper. “Take the girl to this medical laboratory and ask for this technician. The lab is inside County Hospital. Tell her you need to have Buccal cells swabbed from the inside of the cheek for a paternity test. I’ll call the technician and give her the heads up. I’ll go over there on my lunch break and have a sample taken as well.” He spoke quickly, almost as if he feared he would change his mind if he didn’t get the information out fast enough.

  I took the paper from him. His expression had hardened again. “You need to understand that this is very difficult for me. I refuse to let myself even think that this could be my daughter. I can’t suffer that disappointment again, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least try this.”

  “Thank you.” I turned to leave.

  “And not one damn word about this to my wife, do you understand?”

  I faced him again.

  “If you so much as approach her, I’ll have your badge.”

  “I thought Dr. Haberwood was out of state.”

  “We reunited two years ago. Marilyn is a surgeon at County Hospital. We’d broken up at one point but then realized we had one huge thing in common. We’d both been devastated by the loss of a baby. We needed each other.”

  I nodded. “Good bye, Dr. Palmer.” I walked out. It felt as if I’d had all the energy sucked out of me. It had been harder than I’d thought, but now I had something much harder to do.

  Chapter 11

  Angel

  I was carrying out the tray I’d assembled with the first aid items I needed to take care of Cash when Luke pulled into the driveway. With nothing better to do, and quietly going out of his mind with boredom, Jericho had fallen asleep on the chair in Cash’s room. The house was quiet.

  Luke walked inside. My heart did its usual flutter dance, a unique heartbeat that occurred whenever Luke was near. I’d only known him for several months, but it felt as if we’d been connected forever.

  I placed the tray on the kitchen counter. “What’s wrong? You look a little off kilter.”

  He smiled at my unique wording and then lumbered across the room and wrapped his arms around me.

  “If it’s muffins you’re after, I don’t have any.”

  He squeezed me harder. “No, my cinnamon girl, it’s not a muffin I’m after.”

  I peered up at him. “Cinnamon girl, there’s a song about that. My grandfather used to play it all the time through those lousy speakers. I mean Dreygon. I’m still having a hard time coming to grips with the idea that I have no relatives.” The m
uscles in his back tensed beneath my fingers at those last words. “Luke? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” His arms tightened as if he had no intention of ever letting go. “I just needed to hold you.”

  I lowered my face to his shoulder. “Lucky for you, I could stand in these arms all day.” Something wasn’t right. I lifted my head. “But, unfortunately for you, I can tell when something has upset you, and this is not a regular holding session. What’s wrong?”

  He sighed, and the sound of it reminded me of someone releasing the cap on a shaken soda bottle. It was the distinctive sound of pressure being released. Whatever he’d been keeping from me was about to be set free, and from the look on his face, it was big.

  Now a healthy dose of alarm shot through me. “You’re scaring me.”

  He shook his head. “No, don’t be scared.” He took my hand. I followed him in silence as we trudged down the hall to the office. He shut the door once we were inside.

  “Should I get the sticky notes?” I asked, hoping to lighten the mood and shake whatever it was that had hold of him.

  He smiled. “No, not this time.” He walked over to the desk and motioned for me to sit in the chair. The manila folder I’d often caught him browsing through sat in the center of the desk.

  He leaned down next to me. “Remember when I told you about the cases that my dad never solved?”

  I glanced over at the cork board on the wall. Some of the papers and pictures were missing. “I remember. What happened to the pink push pins?”

  He opened the folder. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “That was the case with the missing baby girl, right?” I was even more baffled than I’d been when he’d first walked me down the hall to the office. “Did they find her?”

  He stared down at the floor. “Maybe.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? How old would she be?” I knew that the case had been important to his dad, and that it had been hard on him to never solve it. Still, I had no idea why it was having such a profound effect on Luke.

  “She’d be twenty-two.” His long, black lashes lifted up, and he looked over at me. “The same age as you.”

  I nodded. “Wow, that’s a long time to be separated from the parents.” I went along with the conversation because, for whatever reason, this was obviously important to him.

  He flipped open to the pages of notes. “The baby was born with a birthmark on her shoulder that was shaped like a star.”

  I glanced down at the highlighted sentence that discussed the birthmark, and a faint, but unexplained, shiver ran down my spine. “Luke, you’ve got to tell me what this about. This mysterious conversation we’re having is kind of freaking me out.”

  His Adam’s apple moved up and down with a hard swallow. He looked into my eyes. It seemed the bandage was about to come off. “Angel, I think there’s a chance that you are the Starlight Baby.”

  I stared up at him and then an unexpected laugh shot past my lips. But there was no humor in Luke’s face.

  “As much as you want me not to be part of Dreygon Sharpe’s family, I hate to tell you but he’s my grandfather. Believe me, there have been many times when I too have wished that it wasn’t true, but that can’t be changed.” I stood. “I’m sorry. If it’s too much for you to accept then I can leave. But don’t start coming up with wild theories.”

  He took hold of my wrist. “Shit, Angel, is that why you think I’m doing this? I just spent the morning telling a man who is a complete stranger that I may have located his long lost daughter. Do you really think I’m doing this to find a fast way to disconnect you from Dreygon?”

  I pulled my hand away. “You told the father that I might be his daughter? Are you fucking nuts?”

  “There was only one piece of evidence at the crime scene.” He reached for a piece of paper, but I was done with this insanity. He held it up, but I pushed it out of my face. “It was an orange peel with teeth marks,” he said sharply. “The person who slipped into the baby’s nursery that night was chewing an orange peel.”

  Like a small kid, I covered my ears. I didn’t want to hear more. Luke kept talking. Now that he’d started this, there was no way to stop, even if the whole damn thing might tear us apart. All I could think was that he didn’t want the real me. He wanted to invent a new version, a version of a girl who should never have been part of Dreygon’s grungy world.

  “I had someone in the county office check for your birth certificate. She couldn’t find it.”

  His words were muffled by the hands pressed against my ears, but they were loud enough to hear. I lowered my arms and stared at him as if I were looking at a complete stranger. Just minutes before I was having to consciously slow my heart rate because the man I’d become so completely attached to had walked into the house. Now I didn’t even know him.

  “You have people checking up on me behind my back?” The words squeaked out. “Did you check to see if I had a fucking police record too?” I spun around, but he grabbed my arm. I smacked his hand away.

  “It’s a wild fucking theory, Angel, I know. But so far I’ve found nothing to disprove it.” Luke’s face looked tight with despair. He’d talked himself into this, and now that he’d brought it up, there was no taking any of it back.

  Tears clouded my eyes, and I was pissed that, as usual, I was crying at the worst possible time. “Except for one major flaw in your hypothesis— I am Angelica Sharpe’s daughter and Dreygon Sharpe’s granddaughter. And I’m sorry if that is too irksome for you to accept, Luke.” I flew out of the office and nearly smacked into Jericho as he stepped out of Cash’s room.

  “What’s wrong, Evie?”

  “Not now, Richo,” I sobbed. I got to the bedroom and shut the door behind me. It took me a few minutes to stop the tears and catch my breath. I went into the bathroom to wash my face. I stared into the mirror. My eyes were puffy and my nose was red. I wasn’t sure what had me more terrified— the thought that Luke couldn’t accept who I really was, or that the whole fucking thing might be possible. I hadn’t let on to him that it seemed weirdly plausible, mostly because I hadn’t even let myself think it. Now, I felt myself coming apart at the mere thought of it.

  My hands shook almost uncontrollably as I pulled off my t-shirt. I twisted my shoulder to look at the burn scar. It was in a place where I hardly ever saw it, and I rarely thought of it. I remembered back to one of the last conversations I’d had with Aunt Gracie, my aunt, the woman who had helped raise me from infancy. I’d grown up believing that Gracie had scarred me because she’d been jealous of me garnering so much of my mom’s attention. I’d heard stories of the birthmark. When Gracie had insisted that my mother and grandfather had burned me, it’d thrown me completely. There had been no explanation for why they would do such an atrocious thing, and I figured I would never know. But I knew one thing for sure, Gracie never lied. What if they’d been covering up a birthmark that could distinguish me from other babies? What if my whole fucking life had been a farce? I dropped down to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest. It was all too overwhelming to believe.

  Chapter 12

  Angel

  Somewhere amidst a mosaic of odd dreams about orange peel pancakes, star-shaped flames and baby cribs, I heard the door to the bedroom open and shut. I snuggled tighter beneath the quilt, completely sure that I wasn’t ready to talk to Luke, but equally sure that I wanted to be in his arms. The bed shifted as he sat down. I stayed cradled in my blanket cocoon. My head throbbed as I pressed it deeper into my pillow.

  “I know the evidence is thin, but the things that line up are so unusual, it made me think that it might be possible. All along it has seemed that we were meant to find each other, and when I started piecing this together—” He paused. “First I thought that I was losing my mind, but then the more I found out, the less farfetched it s
eemed. Yeah, it’s fucking nuts to even consider, but I think to ignore the coincidences would be fucking nuts too. This would explain what Gunner knew that got him killed. This would explain Dreygon’s insane need to keep control of you. He has slipped through every net thrown at him, but there would be no way to slip through this one.”

  I closed my eyes and listened to his reasons, trying hard to come up with arguments but failing miserably in my attempts. I still couldn’t bring myself to pull my face from the covers.

  “Angel, if for one second you think I’m doing this because I don’t want to accept who you really are and where you grew up— then you mustn’t have noticed how I have to catch my breath every time you walk into a room. You mustn’t have noticed that when we stand in a crowd of people, you’re the only person I see. You mustn’t have noticed that my whole life circles around you now. I’d throw myself in front of a fucking train if it meant keeping you out of harm’s way. I thought that had been clear but obviously not. It took every ounce of courage I had to bring this up to you. I knew you’d be upset and angry, but never did I expect you to think that my motive had been to wipe away who you are. You couldn’t be more wrong. I fell madly in love with you right in the center of that gritty world. I knew that I was crazy about you even before I could remember my own name.”

  I pushed down the cover and turned to face him. “Maybe we’re both crazy then.” He reached over and pushed a long strand of hair off my face. “They would have to perform a paternity test. It would be the only way to know for sure.” I sat up, and my head spun from crying and thinking and wondering. “They swab the inside of the cheek for—”

  “Buccal cells,” Luke finished. “I know, because the man I talked to his morning told me. He’s a doctor.”

  My throat thickened, and I closed my eyes.

  “Both parents of the Starlight Baby are doctors,” he said.

  I swayed a bit and he pulled me into his arms and held me. His chin rubbed the top of my head as he spoke. “Angel, whatever way this turns out, you’ll stay with me, won’t you?”