Page 51 of Fresh Old Bounties

My mouth opened and closed. “Secret baby?”

“He had no living relatives. I checked.”

Weird, but I’d have to ask about that later because he finally pulled out a thin folder and handed it to me.

“What is this?” I took the folder from him.

He didn’t answer. He simply sat so rigidly I’d break a finger if I tried to poke him.

Unease running down my spine, I placed the folder on my knees and opened it.

Grandma’s smiling face looked back at me.

THIRTEEN

My heart stopped beating. For a few moments, my body reeled in confusion, unsure of what it should concentrate on. Restarting the beating of my heart? Inflating my lungs? Shocking my neurons back into continuing their job of bringing information back and forth?

Then, at least, it settled on my limbs, and with excruciating slowness, I reached out to touch the Grandma’s headshot pinned to the inside of the folder’s cover.

“What…?” I heard myself say in a whisper of a voice, half shock, half wonder.

All those hazy memories of Grandma took shape in sudden, stark relief, the blurred edges reforming and filling in with the image in front of my eyes. The idea of her, for so long a dimming memory, returned in full force, filling my chest with so much yearning it began to hurt in earnest.

My gaze unwillingly abandoned her image to rest on the other contents of the folder. A couple of pages and a few more photographs. I browsed through these, enthralled.

Grandma putting a grocery bag into an old blue car I’d completely forgotten about until now. Grandma coming out of a drugstore dressed in a green cardigan over a flowing black dress. Grandma talking with another woman, a big smile on her face.

I moved the photographs aside and read the first paper—a form with Grandma’s name and date of birth, address, and a few other personal details. The second page contained a detailed list of Grandma’s usual haunts annotated with times of visits—grocery store, drugstore, library, community center, florist, and so on. The kind of thing someone who was following someone else would make notes about.

Realization set in.

“Ian?”

“Yes.” His voice was cold and hard and like he was bracing himself for something to break on it.

“Why did your ex-partner have a file on my grandma?”

“I don’t know.”

I glanced at him sharply. His expression was set in stone, his gaze focused ahead rather than on me or the folder on my knees.

“Grandma would never hurt anyone. Why would a bounty hunter have a file on her?” My voice increased in pitch. “Why was he following her? She wasn’t a criminal. She’d never do something bad enough to get a bounty hunter involved!”

I stopped, trying to calm my breathing.

Ian looked at me then, his lips firming even more—something I would’ve thought impossible—before answering. “Not all people chased by bounty hunters are bad people.”

Returning my attention to the folder, I flipped through the papers and the photographs, my hands shaking ever so slightly. “Why is there so little information?” I scanned the initial page again in case I’d missed something the first time around. “Why doesn’t it say why he was following her?” I pointed at the box. “Is there more in there?”

Ian held me in place before I lunged for the box. “This is all there is.”

“How do you know?” I demanded, trying to shake off his hold on my arm.

“I’ve been through all the files. Trust me, this is all there is.”

“How can I trust you? You waited until now to tell me about Grandma’s file!”

He flinched, and I regretted my harsh words immediately. That Ian operated on a need-to-know basis was something I’d understood from the very beginning. Being mad at him for it now was quite stupid.

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