Page 58 of Sinful Reality

“A woman and her son.”

I jump and hiss, hot liquid spilling over the lip of my mug and dribbling onto my fingers. But my eyes swing to Cato’s, drawn to his sleepy smile that notches up when I twist in place.

“Write that down.” He turns onto his side and wedges his hands under his cheek for support. He tucks his legs up, his knees brushing feather soft against my shoulder blade. Then his eyes move back to the screen, his lips curling into a grin. “You’re missing them.”

“You’re a jerk.” I turn back and quickly make a note of the new bodies moving through the gates, wiping my hand on my hoodie and setting my coffee on the floor. “Why are you awake?”

“I could ask you the same question.” He smacks his lips and exhales a relaxed, sleepy breath that declares he’s a mere blink away from returning to the land of dreams. “That screen says it’s two in the damn morning. I only got to bed at one.”

“Makes you an idiot.” But a new family enters the park, so I write those down, too. “You’re a growing boy, an athlete, and a student. If you were smart, you’d be in bed before ten.”

“Says the doctor who can’t even get through a winter without catching the plague. You only make out withoneperson and still got the ick, but here I am, out here carrying the family and sampling the whole city, and my immune system is fighting strong.”

“I’m convinced you say gross things purely to elicit a reaction.” I look down at my paper and describe clothes. Bags. Hair colors, if I can makethem out and they’re not covered in hats. “My greatest weapon is to starve you of attention.”

“Damn.” Amused, he tugs his blanket up, wafting me with warm air. “You caught me, Doc. I have mommy issues and a deep-seated desire for attention from older women. Is that such a crime?”

“I’m not an older woman.”I’m not even thirty yet. “And yes, it’s a crime. I have a right to peace and quiet. Found someone you wanna marry yet?”

He snickers in my peripherals, his emerald eyes flickering in the light of the television screen. “Not yet. You’re stuck with me a while longer. Found your bad guy yet?”

“No.” I search for a way to differentiate all the black coat and white coat folks. Since, clearly, those were popular colors in the nineties—besides the obvious aqua and purple with yellow slash windbreakers. “Let me know if you see him, though. That’d help.”

“I like being involved in these things. It almost makes me a cop, and that would have pissed my father off more than it did when Arch became a cop.” He draws a long breath and exhales into the darkness. “We’re looking for a guy? Twenty to fifty years old?”

“Actually…”Woman and two children wander through at 1801. “I’m not so sure about that anymore. I think I’m looking for a couple. Twenty to fifty years old. Could be a married couple who lost their child?” I ponder. “Their daughter died or something. Which could explain why they kept replacing her year after year.”

“Sick.” His teasing expression devolves into a disgusted scowl. “None of the suspects have a missing or dead kid?”

No one except Andy.And he’s not our guy.

“None that we’ve found yet. That’s what makes it all so confusing. Typically, the cops could pool all the people they consider suspects, even the suspect’s associates and cousins and best friends, and find a date that matches. A birthday or a death day or something significant. In eighteen cases spread over nearly twenty-five years, nothing is coming up.”

“So the significant thing wasn’t reported. Obviously.”

Curious, I twist to search his eyes. “What?”

“I mean… Do you think my mother’s death date is recorded somewhere? Or Archer’s mother? Or Tim’s? These women died, Doc, but the records are hardly accurate. It’s not uncommon amongst the crowds I grew up around.”

“So maybe the daughter who died, the one they’re trying to replace, hasn’t been reported as dead?” I say it like a question, my brain sprinting in a hundred directions in search of clarity. “Like no one even knows she’s missing yet?”

He huddles into his blanket and makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. “Maybe. Inaccurate records would explain why you can’t find the date in anyone’s folders. You can’t see the report if there isn’t one.”

“But the psychology…” Frustrated, I turn back to the screen and stare at the grainy images. “They keep taking a five-year-old girl. Always the same age, always the same date. They don’t age their target up, either, like a five-year-old in ‘98 and a six-year-old in ‘99.”

“So they’re stuck in time,” he counters. “They’re getting older, but the girl isn’t.”

“Which brings us back to a very specific data set. Must be five years old, must be female, must be taken from the park—though the last one may simply be opportunity. Each of them belongs to a single mom, and they’re always returned exactly a year later.”

“Because they’re older a year later.” He reaches around in my peripherals and snatches a blanket from the back of the couch. Dragging it forward, he dumps it on my shoulders and smiles when I meet his eyes. “You’re shivering and sick, and though I would offer you a spot up here with me, I figure there are lines a man shouldn’t cross, no matter how big his balls are. Spooning you in the dark is probably that line.”

“Ya think?” I pull the blanket down and cocoon myself in the warmth, tucking the ends under my feet and curling my toes in so they don’t completely fall off after my abuse this week. Then, I tap my laptop to bring me to the next video. Anything to skip past the grainy hopelessness of the nineties. “I’ll call Detective Gilbert in the morning and suggest he look closer at anyone who had a young daughter in ‘98.”

Andy had one of those, and he lost her around that age.

But not in the nineties.

By the time he was running a fruit stall, he’d already served his sentence, and his child was long past five years old.

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