Page 39 of Sebastian

“This isn’t a punishment, Bas.” The cushions dipped as he sat next to me and pressed my crutch into my hand. “You’re healing. Severe injuries like yours take time and you need to...” He trailed off, and the atmosphere around us grew tense.

Too late, I remembered the laptop I’d left open on the arm of the couch. Lunging across Damien, I tried to grab the device, but he held it out of my reach.

“Sebastian, what is this?”

“It’s nothing.” I tried to grab it again, but he held me back with a single hand on my chest. Normally, I could have put up more of a fight, the two of us were equal in strength, but my ribs still ached, and my muscles felt weak after three weeks of sitting around.

He barely had to glance at the info on my laptop to know exactly what I’d been up to.

“You’re still searching for Clay Dahler?”

I gave up fighting and sat up straight. My crutch slid from its position leaning against the couch seat and banged against my good leg. Glaring at it, I balanced the metal stick against the arm of the couch instead.

“Yeah. Figured I could make myself useful somehow. But it’s useless. I’ve exhausted every lead I can think of and found nothing. The man may as well not exist.”

“He’s been missing for almost ten years. We both knew finding him after so much time would be a long shot.”

The crutch fell again, this time nearly knocking into my injured leg. I caught it just in time, but the feel of the cool metal under my hand enraged me. This thing was supposed to help me.

Couldn’t it do at least one thing right, like staying where I put it?

Shouting in frustration, I threw the crutch away. It hit the floor and skidded a few feet before bouncing off the wall where it left a dent in the plaster.

“I just... fuck. I should at least be able to do this much. Even if I can’t get out there and look for myself, finding some information for you to follow shouldn’t be so hard.”

Damien said nothing about my outburst as he set my laptop aside. “So, when your investigation turned up empty, you decided to try exercising?”

I nodded and hunched forward so my face landed in my hands.

Damien inhaled deeply through his nose, then held his breath for a moment. When he finally exhaled, the air came out in one decisive snort, like a bull getting ready to charge.

“All right. I wasn’t going to get you involved, but at this point if I leave you alone, you’re just going to hurt yourself even more. I’m meeting some members of the FPA in our office soon. If you’d like, you can join me.”

I immediately rose from my slump. My ribs protested the quick movement, but I didn’t care. “Mason wouldn’t be meeting with you unless it was important. What happened?”

“While looking into the child disappearances, I’ve been focusing on the adoption agencies the women claimed to have given their children to.”

“Yeah, I looked at those as well.” In fact, I’d spent so long looking into the adoption agencies that the information was practically branded on my eyeballs. “They all seem to be legit organizations.”

Damien nodded. “They are. A false adoption agency would eventually draw attention, so I figured whoever is taking these children must be using real adoption agencies as a cover. So, I looked at the employee records, and I found one man who volunteers at two of the agencies where children went missing.”

“What? No. I’ve combed through those records so carefully. I wouldn’t have missed something so obvious.” I shook my head, my shoulders drooping. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t found that. Normally, I’d never miss something so potentially important.

What was wrong with me?

Ugh. Fuck.

“The man’s name is Smith Harper. I almost missed the connection as well, because of the way the two organizations file their employee info. One lists the names with first name followed by surname, while the other agency lists the names with the surname first. Different formatting like this usually isn’t a problem, but with Smith Harper, where both names could be either first name or surname, it’s easy to overlook.”

It couldn’t be that simple.

I’d been spinning my wheels on this case for months, all because of paperwork formatting?

Goddamn it!

I wanted to shout and cry at the same time, maybe punch a wall for good measure, but there was nothing left to throw, and I couldn’t afford any more injuries. In the end, all I could do was clench my fists until my nails bit crescents into my palms.

“So, we’ve got a name. Great. What do we know about this Smith Harper, other than the fact that the name is probably an alias?”

---