Page 17 of The Last Close Call

“The investigation. Me and my team.”

“I see. Well, my suggestion would be to locate the birth mother. I have no idea what her current address is, but I could find out. You could, too, obviously, and probably a lot faster, given your resources.”

He stared at the name on the sticky note, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Maybe the name had some meaning to him. Was it possible he’d come across it during his investigation? Rowan didn’t see how. But if there was one thing she’d learned through years of genealogy work, it was that coincidences—sometimes truly bizarre ones—happened a lot.

He looked at her. “Why purple?”

“What?”

“The note here.” He gestured to the board. “All your other sticky notes are blue or pink or orange.”

“Oh.”

Her cheeks warmed as she realized her mistake. She hadn’t expected him to pick up on that detail. Then again, he was a detective, trained to look for patterns. And exceptions to patterns.

“No big reason,” she said. “The name is important, you know? The culmination of my research, so I wanted to emphasize it.”

That explanation was true, as far as it went. What she’d left out was that purple was her favorite color, and she was superstitious. She used purple to reward herself when she unlocked a mystery.

Rowan glanced at him, and he was watching her closely with those sharp brown eyes.

She cleared her throat. “What?”

“Nothing.”

He knew she’d left something out, but he let it go.

He turned to the whiteboard again. “You’re right. It shouldn’t take me long to track this woman down.”

“What will you do when you find her?”

“Assuming she’s alive, go talk to her.”

Rowan had figured he would say that. “You know, you want to be careful there.”

“Careful of what?”

Oscar walked over, purring, and rubbed against Rowan’s leg. She picked him up and stroked his head.

“Just... adoption situations can be sensitive.”

The side of Jack’s mouth curved up. “I think I can handle it.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I’ve been doing interviews awhile.”

“Yeah? So have I.” She set Oscar down and folded her arms over her chest, mirroring his stance. “In particular, I’ve done a lot of interviews with women who gave a child up for adoption.”

He looked genuinely surprised. “Why?”

“Because of my work. I’m a search angel.”

“A who?”

“A search angel.” She gestured at the wings above her computer. “Only the ‘angel’ part doesn’t really apply to me because I’m not a volunteer. I do it for money. I have a business helping adoptees identify and connect with their biological families.”

His eyebrows arched, and she realized this was news to him. She would have thought that as a detective, he would have vetted her background beyond whatever Ric Santos had told him.

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