A Touch of the Beast by Linda Winstead Jones

Author:Linda Winstead Jones
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-09-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

It was after three in the morning. Everyone in Sheryl’s house was asleep but Hawk. Even Bruce slept on his perch. The house had surely never been this quiet. The only sound was the shuffle of papers as Hawk flipped carefully through yet another file. The dates were all wrong, so he didn’t pay much attention to the faded words.

What if he didn’t find anything? What if the woman in the pharmacy had been a quack, nothing more than a crazy old woman, just as Cassie had suggested? His trip here had been wasted.

Hawk thought about the woman sleeping in the bed down the hall. No, his time here had not been wasted.

He reached into the box that sat in the middle of the spare room carpet and pulled out another file. He placed it on the floor in front of him and opened it to a page that looked like all the others. Names that meant nothing. Dates that couldn’t have had anything to do with his conception or birth. He rubbed his eyes, beyond tired but also unwilling to give up.

“What are you doing?” He turned to watch Sheryl enter the room. She wasn’t wearing anything but his shirt. She’d probably grabbed it from the floor by the bed, just as he’d snagged his jeans as he’d left her there sleeping.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

“I’ll help.” She yawned as she took another file from the box and sat on the floor a few feet away with her back against the narrow bed and the file in her lap.

“You have to work in the morning.”

She closed the file and placed her hands over the stained manila folder. “I am trying to be nice,” she said. “Even though I know the sooner you find what you came here for, the sooner you’ll leave. Selfishly, I almost hope you never find it. If I didn’t like you so much, I would hide the real documents and stuff these folders with something absolutely worthless, like my own files.”

“The constant mention of fleas would probably give you away.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I’m no master criminal. I don’t think ahead.”

She reopened the folder on her lap and began to leaf through the pages. Since she’d helped him organize the pages he was interested in, she knew what to look for. She knew the dates, the names that had popped up so many times, the mention of difficulties with various pregnancies.

Hawk opened his own file and began again. There was only one box left. One unopened box that might contain answers hidden for almost thirty years. There was nothing of interest in this folder.

When he reached into the box for another file, two photos fell from between the other pages. Different in size as well as finish, they slipped away and drifted to the floor. One landed by Hawk’s knee, the other close to Sheryl’s thigh. They both lifted their photos at the same time.

“My keen detecting skills tell me this is a snapshot of a bunch of geeks celebrating Christmas,” Sheryl said.

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