Page 17 of Savage

For a kid, he had a good head on his shoulders and was glad that he’d shared his secret with all of them. He hoped that Kings was wrong about Skye and that she was indeed his mate. Or one of the others? He didn’t care so long as the boy was around to hang out with. He was easy to speak to and to have an intelligent conversation with.

Making his way back up to the bed, he realized how exhausted he was. He and Kaida had been making love every day and night, and while he knew that it was wearing him down, he couldn’t imagine what it was doing to her. He was going to have to make her behave herself and perhaps wear a sack over her body. But then he realized that it would do little good. He knew just what she looked like in anything she wore. Smiling when she curled around him again, he tossed the blankets off of the two of them because he knew that his dragon would keep them both warm. Besides this way he could look at her longingly without her jumping his bones again. And again.

Chapter 8

“How long will you be gone?” Kings was packing his things as he spoke to them. He told her that he’d be gone for about two weeks but would have all the investments that they have taken care of. “Taken care of how? And why can’t you do that from here?”

“I’ve been doing it from here. And it’s not getting done. I have to go there and face to face with them so that our money is where it belongs. It’s millions of dollars that are tangled up in a weave of lies, and if I don’t go now, we may never get it back.” She asked him if he needed to go alone. “No. But my cousins are busy. I’d take you with me, but I think that Tucker would have a cow.”

He would too. They were having so much fun being a married couple that she couldn’t stand for him to be much more than an arm’s length away from her before she missed him terribly. Not even explaining to her that they had lifetimes together could she get over the fact that he was going to leave her someplace. That had come from Kings’ parents. His father had said it would only last six months before he’d drop her to the curb. Kaida was very insecure like that.

Taking him to the airport, she felt like she was losing a part of herself. The man was only going to be gone for a couple of weeks, and she was being silly. On the way home, she tried to console herself with thoughts of the party when he returned, but that wasn’t working either. She missed him too much. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have a lot to do while he was gone.

“Matt’s parents arrived in town this morning. They’re staying at the hotel just outside of town. It’s a nice little place, much nicer since it was renovated some years ago.” She asked Tucker what the plan was for them. “Nothing yet. It’s not like we can keep their son from them. Just keep hiding him away so that they don’t do a snatch-and-grab with him. I shudder to think what it is they’d do to him when they find him. They’ll more than likely put him under lock and key, and that would be bad for him.”

“What about that guy, Jason? What can we do about him?” Tucker told her that he was in jail and would be for a while yet. “I guess opening fire in a restaurant full of people will get your ass in trouble in more ways than one.”

“He didn’t have any kind of permit to carry either. Not to mention him being a convicted felon who had a gun specification on his record.” They stopped just outside of town to pick up some things for dinner. They were having fun feeding Matt. He had the appetite of a full-grown man and the silliness of a child. Plus, he was very intelligent, too.

Thanks to Matt, they knew what his parents looked like. So when they stepped out of the grocery store with a photo in their hand, Tucker stepped back so they’d not have to encounter them. They looked pinched in the face, plus years older than she thought that they would with a child of Matt’s age. She was going to look into that as well.

Keeping an eye on the couple in the parking lot, the two of them picked up the things to make your own Sundays for dessert tonight. They were also having pizzas as it was the cook’s night off. She was going to make things for a cookout, but it was Skye who wanted hot pizza right out of the oven, and who could turn that down.

“Excuse me.” She turned when someone spoke behind her, and she smiled at the couple. Up close, they looked beaten, like not having their son around was making them lose some grip on their livelihood. Taking the picture when it was shoved at her, she looked at the picture of Matt. It was an old picture taken when he was about seven or so. “Have you seen our grandson?”

She nearly let the cat out of the bag when she nearly asked if he was her son or grandson. Looking at the picture, she could see too that Matt didn’t look a bit like his parents, not even an eye color that would maybe make it so that they looked related.

“I don’t remember anyone like that. I think that I would too if a child that little was all by himself.” She explained that he was ten now and not necessarily hanging out alone. “Oh, so he’s with his mother or something? Not that it matters. I’ve never seen him before.”

“Why would you say that?” The woman’s voice was sharp and mean. Taking a step back, she told her that she’d not meant anything by it. Only making an observation. “You think that I’m too old to have a son this age? Well, I’m sick of people assuming anything when it comes to him. He’s my son, not my grandson, and I don’t want to hear another word from you.”

They had drawn a crowd now, and she hated that. When Mr. Moore, the store manager, asked her if she was all right, she told him that she was but that the woman seemed out of sorts. As her husband—whoever he was started pulling her along, Kaida could hear him telling her to hush up before the police were called.

“They’ve been all over town about three times whipping out that picture and asking people if they’ve seen him. I’ve told her at least a dozen times that I’ve never seen him. But that doesn’t stop her. She’s also looking for a woman and a man. I don’t know what to think about that but if you were to ask me, it seems sort of fishy. They’re a might too old to be his parents, then all of a sudden today they are his grandparents. What’s this world coming to, Mr. Savage?” Mr. Moore shook his head in disgust. Tucker said that he didn’t know but would look into it if necessary. “You go on and do that for us. She’s being a pain in the ass, pardon my speech, but just look at them every day—I’d probably be doing the same thing if it was my boy. I know that, but why don’t they move on? We’ve done told them that we’ve never seen him. Now, this man and woman are someone they’re searching for.”

“Could it be the same man that shot up Travelers the other day?” It was funny that she was just going to say that when one of the others said it first. “I heard he was looking for a boy too. You think those people are out to kidnap all our kids? Well, they come around my house, and I’ll show them how we greet the door in his town. I’ll blow them away.”

“Mr. Jacobs, you don’t want to be killing anyone. It might be all the stress of losing their son or grandson. I don’t know which.” No one seemed to have any idea what their names were either. Kaida thought that odd. To be showing off a picture without any means of contacting them if they were to see the boy. She wanted to race home now and tell Matt what they had discovered but they needed to be calm about this. Calm and collected until they had more news.

After getting their things bagged up, they headed out the door. Having pizzas tonight seemed slightly spoiled because of the people around town. But she’d bet anything that if Matt were to walk down the main street right now, no one would tell the Connors. She was going to ask him about his grandparents, too.

“I’ve lived with them all my life, and they told me that I was their son. It never occurred to me that they might be my grandparents until just now.” He handed back her phone with a confused look on his face. “How would we find out if they are my parents or not? I mean, not that I ever looked for one, but I never saw a birth certificate when I was living with them.”

After getting his birth date and social security number, Brenin started to do a search on him. Coming up with the name of the hospital became something of a trial, as he couldn’t remember anyone mentioning that. After about two hours of searching and making pizzas, they had little more information than when they started. Just the name of the hospital that he might have been born in and a record of his social being used about fifty years before he’d been born. It was making more questions than answers, she thought.

“I have a plan.” Cassian said he wasn’t going to tell anyone his plan in the event that it didn’t work. She was all right with that, and so was everyone else. About an hour after they’d exhausted every little bit they could find out, one of the members from the local pack came to the house with a bunch of pictures. She worked in the hotel and was a cleaning lady for them.

Getting the information hadn’t been all that difficult. All she’d had to have done was go in like she was cleaning, finding the paperwork, and taking pictures. After tidying up the room, she left and finished out her shift. Kaida thought that it was just too easy to get the information from the room anddecided that she was going to use the safe in the rooms when she had something to hide.

“I have DNA, too, that I found in the bathroom. The mister must be a diabetic, and when he pricks his finger, it leaves me enough blood to get some information from that.” Kaida shivered, thinking of all the things that were left behind when people stayed at hotels. “I have a friend that I’m sending this off to, and when we get the results back, we’ll have a better understanding.”

Beth was able to take Matt’s DNA, too, and that was sent off as well. Once they got the results back, in a couple of weeks, they were told, then they could work from there. At least they’d know how or even if he was related to the elderly couple at all.

In addition to the things that she located, there were things in the room that had startled her. There were handcuffs as well as chloroform. A body bag, too, that was still in the package. All she could think about now was that she was thrilled that she’d never given them any information when she’d seen them today or the other day. These people weren’t right in the head and she was slightly afraid of what they might do in order to get Matt back to them.

“There is no record of birth filed in the county that he was born in. There are no files with the Connors name on them either. No homes, no driver’s license. They have never voted either, as far as I can tell. I can’t find a place where they have voted or even registered to vote with their registration on it.” She asked what that meant. “They aren’t real. At least as far as the county is concerned.”

The more they dug, the deeper they were in with questions. If he was their child, there should have been something that would have had his name on it. There wasn’t anything. The car that they drove around was a rental but it wasn’t registered to anyone they could find. Just a post office box number that didn’t exist either.

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