Page 83 of Clap Back (Carter Brothers)

—Maven to Auden

MAVEN

“Let me get this straight,” I said again as my best friend stared at me with wide, shocked eyes. “My DNA was listed in the National Database for assumed abducted children.”

She nodded.

“And my photo lines up with one that they predicted I would look like as an adult,” I continued.

Athena nodded again.

“And I have parents out there somewhere?” I continued.

“Well, not parents,” she said. “You have a grandmother who’s almost a hundred years old. Your parents died about a year ago in a car crash in Chile while they were on vacation. You have several siblings, though.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I do?” I squeaked.

“Let’s go back to the part where you told us you searched her DNA,” Auden suggested. “How did you confirm?”

“I run a lab,” she stated. “I know my work is correct. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that it’s correct. But just to be sure, I went ahead and ran another sample just to check. It’s the same.”

She handed over a set of papers that showed the genetic match.

“And here’s the police report,” she said. “It says she went missing at the age of three from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.”

“My sister is there right now,” I mused. “Dorsey is there visiting friends.”

That was a weird coincidence, wasn’t it?

“When this match popped,” she said, “the authorities there were notified. I…” She looked at me, then at Auden. “I don’t know how this will work. If the authorities there are notified, won’t they notify the authorities here since this is where she’s listed as living now? And if they call DPD, won’t they alert her father?”

My father.

My father had abducted me?

What the fuck?

Then my stepmother’s words right before she’d lost it came back to me. The ones she’d said when I’d threatened to go to the media about what my father was doing to me.

And then you just had to move out of the house, then open a business that’s become so public just to spite your father’s rules.

At the time, they’d sounded so weird.

But now…

I should’ve never married your father. This is too much.

I looked over to Auden. “What kind of in do you have with your current police department?”

“The kind of in that has me starting on Monday.” He shook his head. “Get dressed. Pack a charger. We’re all going to Sunnyvale PD. I have to give my dad a call.”

I looked at Athena.

She nodded, and I got up on numb legs and headed to the bedroom and caught up my charger from beside his bed. I then grabbed my sweatshirt and headed back into the living room where I slipped my feet into my sandals.

Athena and Auden met me at the door. Auden was on the phone, but he gestured for me to head outside.

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