Page 85 of Fool Me Twice

“What?” Hart asked again, snapping his head up to look at them. They all shook their heads, clearly just as confused as he was.

“They still have nothing on it,” Black said. “PUMA has been digging with all their resources, but it’s like not a single one of those people have ever existed.”

“Well, clearly they have!” Hart said, slamming his palm on the desk, making Black startle and stare at him. The following silence allowed the echo of his outburst to ring through the room, and it made Hart’s teeth tingle with discomfort.

“Hart,” Fix started. His voice was placating and meant to be soothing, but Hart was having none of it.

“I’m gonna ask Cane if he knows her,” he said. “Somebody has to know her if this was sent to us.”

He stood up, pushing the chair away from the desk a bit too forcefully for it to be justified by him being in a rush. He paused for just a second. He was clearly very disturbed by the lack of direction Damir had brought. His hopes had been high, and now they were squashed by a piece of information they couldn’t use in any way. At least not anytime soon. That was all it was.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring anything more useful,” Damir said, expression and tone apologetic as he spoke. “I’ll get my team to dedicate more time to looking at our old cases, and I have a few connections to a few other teams, so I’ll email them as well.”

“Thank you,” Hart forced himself to say. “I do apologize for being on edge like this. The case is just…”

“I completely understand,” Damir said, hands raised. “We’ve all been there.”

Had they, though? Hart honestly doubted it.

“I’ll let you know…” he started, but was cut off by the door to the meeting room being thrown open and a tiny figure rushing inside.

“Did anyone see…” Wren looked up from the floor to the team, blue eyes growing wide and words dying on his lips when they landed on Damir.

“Teddy?” he whispered, his entire body frozen in place.

Damir’s face reflected Wren’s emotions almost perfectly. Like a mirror. He stared at him in wonder, as if he’d never seen another human being before. He jumped up from his seat, the action rattling the chair and spurring Wren into motion.

He gasped and fled the room, his steps echoing down the hallway.

“Teddy?” Ash asked, staring at Damir with a frown on his face. “I thought you were Damir?”

Damir shook his head, his eyes never straying from the door. “Not to him, I’m not,” he whispered.

“Care to explain that?” Ash crossed his arms over his chest, stepping closer like he was ready to fight. “Because we sure as shit haven’t heard of you, but clearly there’s some history there that just sent my little brother running for the hills.”

Damir winced, visibly and painfully, but it didn’t seem to be at Ash. “I…don’t think it’s my place to say. I need to talk to him.”

He pushed his chair back again, taking a step toward the door.

“You won’t find him,” Fix said.

Damir snapped his head toward him, his hands shaking slightly and vulnerable heart on show for the room to see. Beating and bloody. “He was just here.”

“And now he’s not,” Fix said, running his gaze over Damir carefully, like he was trying to figure him out. “Wren has this look in his eyes when he doesn’t want to be found. That was the look.”

“Wren?” Damir breathed out, as if tasting the name on his tongue for the first time. He choked on a laugh and looked down at his feet, a pained, sad smile painting his lips. “My Little Bird.”

There was so much in those words. So much in that name.

Hart couldn’t process any of it though. Not the body language. Not the nuance. He was usually so attuned to people in a room, but he was watching all this happen as if through a haze of smoke. He was there physically, but his mind was already straying away, urging his legs to move.

The palpable yearning in the room, cloying and thick, only fed into his own selfish desire.

Cane, his brain whispered.

Why wasn’t Hart with him? There surely wasn’t anything more important. He was having trouble remembering exactly why he’d come to the office in the first place. Being here was useless. He had much better uses for his time.

He simply got up while everyone was distracted and walked out. He ignored Taylor’s call at his back, letting the door to the building slam behind him and getting into his car almost mechanically.

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