by Brenna Lyons
“I’m sure they did,” she lied.
“The newest word I just got is that you were taken into protective custody against your wishes. You have a death wish? I hear that Griffin is after you, and you want to stay on the streets?”
“Who’s Griffin?”
“Yeah, right. Whatever, sweetheart. You’re not afraid of Griffin. I get it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know Griffin, and the only people I have to fear are the ones who dragged me here.”
“Look, I know you think you’re hot shit, but don’t bite the hand that’s keeping you alive.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “What gave you that idea?”
“I’ve seen your file, the parts of it that aren’t classified that is.”
“What does it say?”
“It’s your file,” he snapped at her.
“If it was my file, I’d have some clue what you were talking about. Since it’s obviously not my file, you’ll have to tell me.”
He shot her a look of pure exasperation. “Your name is Sarah Anne Adams, right?”
“Adams? Anne?”
He nodded.
Sarah started laughing. “Oh, that’s rich. I can’t believe they had the balls to pull this one off.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Go on, please. This is the best laugh I’ve had in a week.”
“What’s to say? I wondered, though—What really happened with your grandfather? The study was inconclusive.”
He pushed the door to the courtyard open, and Sarah brushed past him into the enclosed play area and garden. She didn’t answer. Sarah couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer. She walked to the swing set and sank into one of the black, flexible swings.
The guard followed her. “You still claim it’s not your file?”
“It’s not, but now I know whose file it is.”
“Really? Whose?”
“What’s your name?”
“Boyonton.”
“A first name go with that?”
He darkened in fury. “Why do you need to know that?”
“I don’t. It’s simple, Mr. Boyonton. A name for a name. I’m stuck here, anyway. You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you what file to search for. The choice is yours. Oh, and even the woman whose file they sacked was never a renegade.”
“If you’re not a renegade— If you really don’t know who Griffin is— Why are you here?”
“I told you that a long time ago. What you believe is your own choice.”
She watched Boyonton wander away to one of the metal benches to study her. Sarah started the swing moving, drinking in the warm air and sunshine.
*
Bill Boyonton sighed. He wished he had more to report, but Sarah Adams was the most closed-mouthed woman he’d ever met. He started reporting on her the first night. Her initial report said that she was a renegade who could bring down Griffin. Every report since then stated the same. But, Sarah claimed she didn’t know anything about Griffin.
She wasn’t the typical detainee. Who gets brought to Clinton as a prisoner but has everything but the keys to the front door after meeting with Baker? Sarah came out with more freedom than she went in with, and Baker had a cow about her treatment before he was out of D.C. Why would Baker take an interest, and who was keeping him informed on her? What kind of prisoner does Baker meet with personally, for that matter? It had never happened in the ten years that Bill had worked the floor. What did Sarah have on Baker? Whatever it was, it was powerful.
Bill wished he knew more about this Jonas guy. Whatever Sarah had on Baker seemed tied up in him somehow. Jonas was the reason she ate like she did. Bill had seen pregnant talent at Clinton, even prisoners, and they all ate the same caf fare as everyone else, except for Sarah Adams. Jonas was the reason Baker came to see her. Jonas was some badass Sarah seemed to feel Bill would regret meeting, but Jonas wasn’t a renegade. At least, Sarah claimed he wasn’t.
It was time to get to work. Bill used no talent. It would tip someone off, even if he only used passive talent. A few of the keepers could spot that. He pushed a string of thoughts into an unshielded portion of his mind. To any talent scanning him, it would look like Bill was simply considering everything he knew about Sarah Adams without drawing any conclusions about what he had seen and heard. To Paul Griffin, wherever he was hidden away, it would be a comprehensive report to be picked from his mind with no talent from Bill.
Bill knew it would be Griffin this time. After Sarah’s outlay of talent when she was released from iso, Deb Tyler had told him she was calling in Griffin. If Sarah was contacting someone, at least part of what he knew was true. Whether her conversation was personal correspondence or a report about Griffin remained to be seen, but Griffin would want to be in on anything that might compromise him personally.
Griffin’s presence brushed over Bill’s mind. Bill didn’t balk at it. That was the way the system ran.
“Tell her your name, Boyonton. We have to know what Baker is up to. Play her game as long as it’s safe.” Griffin’s mind didn’t recede, but he seemed distracted. “Ask her if Jonas is DoPT.” Griffin left his mind before Bill could give himself away with his surprise.
He pulled his shield tight. Bill knew Griffin was ex-DoPT, and he knew why Griffin left. Did this Jonas guy learn what Griffin had? If so, why use Sarah against him? Who was Sarah to him? Was she his sister? Maybe his wife? She was too old to be someone’s daughter, if he was talent. No, Jonas had something else on Baker. If he had what Griffin had, Baker would kill him outright, not use a hostage against him.
Bill surveyed Sarah, as she left the swing and ambled over the grounds. Either she was very important or Jonas was. Sarah seemed to think Jonas was the important one, but Bill wasn’t so sure about that. After all, he heard they were sending some hotshot doctor from Portsmouth to deliver her baby rather than letting the doctor on staff handle her.
Sarah broke his train of thought by announcing that she wanted to return to her room. Bill waved her toward the door. He considered the best way to approach the subject with her. In the end, he launched right in.
“Tell me about Jonas.”
She eyed him warily. “It’s probably better if you don’t know.”
“I caught the fact that he’s talent. You claim he’s not a renegade. Is he DoPT?”
Sarah looked away without answering, and the blush didn’t tell him anything definitive.
Bill sighed. She was hard to get information out of. “Is Jonas your husband?”
She looked back to him, and her eyes narrowed. “Yes. He is.”
Time to try and back her into an answer. “So, I’m wondering—How does a former renegade end up with a DoPT agent? How does a relationship like that make it past the keepers? Or were you on a tracking job with him that got—physical after hours?”
Sarah turned on him, exuding fury from every pore. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a renegade.” She turned on her heel and stalked back to her room.
Bill caught the door, as Sarah tried to slam it in his face. He leaned so close to her that he could feel the heat of her breath on his cheek. Her eyes widened in fear, and Bill softened. This was a hard-boiled powerhouse renegade? Highly unlikely.
He nodded. “Bill,” he whispered. “My name is Bill.”
Sarah seemed to have trouble breathing. She nodded. “Look for the file on Katheryn Anne Randall,” she whispered back.
Bill moved his hand in a daze as Sarah closed the door between them. Randall? She was probably a DoPT wife, but she knew Randalls? Of everything he’d heard so far, that made the least amount of sense.
*
Bill stared at the computer screen, rubbing his aching neck. Much of Katheryn Randall’s file was court sealed under the 2015 decision, but the remaining portion was enough. From the stats sheet, he could tell Katheryn’s file had been altered for Sarah.
He grumbled to himself. “Katheryn Anne Randall, born Katheryn Anne Adams, but maiden name is O’Han
lon? Skipped that on the changeover. Father was a Pittsburgh police officer and mother was an office worker for the City of Pittsburgh. Check and check. Same date of birth save the year. Same city of birth. Same list of talents? No way.”
He closed the file and sat staring at the wall. How would Sarah know what file to look for? How would she know Katheryn Randall at all? On a hunch, he cross-referenced Katheryn Randall to Sarah as a wildcard in the DoPT database. There were no matches. He tried with Kyle Thompson. No matches were found. He punched in Randall and Thompson as line item searches. The family group files came up. He tried cross-referencing Sarah against Alexander and then against Steven Randall. None of them brought up a file for her. He tried cross-referencing Sarah Anne Adams to first Randall and then Thompson. Still, nothing matched up.
How did she escape the roundup? Well, she might not have, though the academy rules seemed to surprise her. Sarah might have met the Randalls in one of the academies. She’d be about Steven or Alexander’s age.
If so, she had a file somewhere, but her fingerprint on intake brought up the Adams file. Even passive talents capable of being keepers had files with fact sheets unless they were closet talents who managed to duck the witch-hunts. Passive talents weren’t seized in the roundups, but they had files. Sarah had a file. He was sure she had a file, but how could he find it?
He glanced at his watch and shook his head. It was dinnertime, and he only got Patterson to cover for him that long. Bill pushed off of the chair and wound his way through the corridors that would take him to Sarah’s room, stopping to get her tray from Fuller’s personal cook.
From the smell of it, Sarah was having Italian tonight. Bill’s mouth watered. The students and guards were having gorilla head, a crude military name used for decades to describe the piles of roast beef with gravy that barely qualified as food.
That should have been his first clue that Sarah had something big on Baker. Word was that when Fuller gave his daily update stating that Sarah wasn’t eating the caf food, Baker’s office ordered Fuller to have his staff provide for her and even submitted menus for her. He furrowed his brow. From the shit that came down, he could only assume Fuller hadn’t made a point of telling Baker that Sarah was being kept in iso.
He nodded to Patterson, and the young man knocked on the door. One of the safety precautions was that Sarah could never eat in the caf with the students or prisoners if she had special food. Somehow, Bill didn’t think Sarah would balk at that.
Patterson opened the door for him when she called out and disappeared to dinner without a word. Bill put her tray on the bedside table and headed for the door. He heard her sharp intake of breath when he closed it and sat in the chair across from her.
Sarah looked at him with frightened eyes, and Bill was struck again by how unlikely it was that she was the woman her file attested. Even if Sarah feared restraint in the iso tank, she wouldn’t fear Bill, not if she was what that file said she was.
“Who are you, Sarah? How did you know Katheryn Randall’s file was the one they changed for you?”
“Katie. She prefers to be called Katie. And Alexander is Alex.”
“How do you know them?”
“Did you research her like a good operative?” A strained smile pulled at her lips.
“Of course. I cross-referenced all the Randalls and Kyle Thompson for anyone named Sarah.”
“And?”
“Unless it’s in the court sealed portions, there’s no connection.”
“What does that tell you?” she prodded.
“I don’t know. You might have met them in the roundups, which would be impossible for me to trace. You might have met them in Pittsburgh, which would be even more impossible to trace.”
Sarah looked crushed, as if his determination that tracing her was hopeless ended some chance for her.
“I should have found you,” he guessed. “The cross-reference should have shown me a file that’s not there.”
“Did you read her fact sheet? Did you read it carefully?” Her eyes were pink with tears.
“I searched all of them with a fine tooth comb. History, family, talents, hobbies. What should I have found, Sarah?”
She didn’t answer. She curled away from him on the bed.
“Who are you, Sarah?”
“I don’t exist. He erased me.”
“Jonas?” Why would a DoPT operative delete a file? How would he? The interlocks were supposed to prevent that.
“No. Not Jonas.”
Bill could tell she was done answering questions for now. He headed for the door, as Sarah wiped tears from her cheeks.
“Please eat, Sarah.”
He heard an answer that sounded vaguely like an affirmative as he closed the door.
Bill hit the panel for full lockdown. Since Sarah was the only talent in Max-Sec, lockdown came after dinner unless she decided to make a request for him to take her somewhere else in the building after that. Bill felt a pang of regret for her situation, but aside from her walk, it seemed Sarah never asked for anything.
He was halfway to the caf when a sick certainty sent him back to his quarters. Jonas didn’t erase her file. No DoPT operative had that kind of clearance, but Baker would. He wasn’t supposed to have it, but he had it. That was part of what Griffin had on him. Did Baker erase her? If he had, how could Bill prove it?
DoPT files were out, but he could still access public records. Bill accessed the cross-reference for the Randalls and Thompson again and pulled up the family files. Alex and Steven were close to her age. She mentioned Alex by name. She didn’t mention Steven. Did people call him Steven, or didn’t she know him well enough to know?
He tried Alex first. There was no police record and the minimum of school records. He huffed as he clicked on the birth record. Sometimes the birth stats that states kept had useful information. Bill scrolled down the screen, scanning all of the junk information on the page.
“Mother maiden, Katheryn Anne O’Hanlon. Father, Keith Alexander Randall. Date, time, doctor, hospital, length, weight—General information. Who the hell cares that she had an epidural? Family stats.”
Bill froze and read the line three times before he whispered it aloud. “Family placement, third. Alex was the third baby Katie had, not the second.” He opened Katie’s file in a separate frame and checked the stats sheet again. “Children, two. Steven and Alexander.”
His heart started pounding. He pulled up Steven’s birth record and scrolled down to the family placement block. Was the missing child younger or older than Steven? Younger was unlikely. The boys were only twenty-one months apart. Katie would literally have had three belly-to-belly pregnancies. Still, Katie and Keith married while she was pregnant with Steven. But, babies were tracked by their mothers on birth records, not fathers. There was no saying the missing child was Keith’s.
Bill stared at the block in shock. “First.” When was she born? If the missing baby is Sarah, when was she born? Sometime between September and January would be Katie’s only possible window to have another child and still be pregnant in time to have Alex. But how do I proceed from here? Without an exact date, it could take hours to find her.
He scanned his eyes over Steven’s birth record while he considered ways to minimize his search. He stopped and stared at the General Information section. “Premature, six weeks. Explanation, delta.” Bill scrolled down to the key. “Delta, multiple birth.” He forced his breathing to normalize as he scrolled back up to the General Information section again. There was an X in the box for multiple birth and a notation. “One of two. Twins. She had twins.” Steven and Sarah. It even sounds like a pair of twins.
His hands shook as Bill ordered a search for a birth record in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for Sarah Randall on January fifth, 2003. The certificate came up with little more than a minute of delay. Bill groaned as he pressed the print button. There it was. “Sarah Angelique Randall. Mother maiden, Katheryn Anne O’Hanlon. Father, Keith Alexander Randall. Two o
f two in a multiple birth.”
Bill closed down the files and folded the printout into the pants pocket of his beige uniform with the navy blue Clinton logo. He forced himself to walk back to Sarah’s room. Running would draw attention.
He disengaged the lockdown panel with his card key and knocked at her door. He heard her voice and let himself in. Bill crossed to the bed and picked up her tray. “Come on. It’s a beautiful night. Let’s eat in the garden.” Where no one can hear us.
“I’m not very hungry, Bill.”
Bill sighed and leaned his face down close to her ear. “Come with me, Ms. Randall. You are Sarah Angelique Randall, aren’t you?” he whispered.
She turned her tear-stained face to him with wide, hopeful eyes. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
He smiled in triumph. “Then come with me.”
Chapter Eight
Sarah fought her terror back, keeping it carefully masked from Steven. She wasn’t sure what she was doing. Getting Bill involved seemed like a good idea at the time, but she wasn’t so sure anymore. Every ounce of her being told Sarah that she needed an ally. Her gut instincts told her she could trust Bill Boyonton. Still, she was scared to tell him anything else. Even if she did, what could he do but get himself in serious trouble with Baker?
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Bill was slightly taller than Steven but a few inches shorter than Jonas was. His hair was dishwater blond like Aunt Carol’s, but his eyes were so dark they were almost black. Bill usually seemed serious, bordering on grim, but he occasionally broke into an engaging smile and irreverent wit that made him seem personable. When he showed concern, it seemed completely genuine.
Sarah sighed as Bill opened the door and preceded him out into the cool night. She took a seat on one of the benches and Bill set the tray between them.
“Eat something while we talk,” he ordered.
“Tell me how you figured it out, first.”
Bill handed her a folded sheet of paper, and Sarah took it with shaking fingers. She stifled a sob at the sight of her birth record.
