Page 61 of Tear Me Apart
“Yeah. Baby farming. Not cool.”
“Any way to find out who she worked with?”
“The files identified a couple of young women, but the majority just disappeared. But catch this. One of the women identified was named Graciela Flores. She had a baby girl and gave her up for adoption, the works.”
“My God. That could be our girl.”
“Except...”
“Of course it’s too good to be true. Except?”
“The kid she gave up would be eighteen now, not seventeen. And you said that you saw Mindy when she was an infant—I hardly think you’d mistake an infant for a toddler.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Maybe she had another kid right afterward? Or they got the dates wrong.”
“I don’t know, Juliet. Something about this feels weird. There’s more.”
“What’s that?”
“Castillo was fired in June 2000. Mindy was born in August.”
“So she did the work behind the fence after they let her go.”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, a full-blown OB/GYN who’d just lost her license, and some off the path kids having babies? She’d be the ultimate midwife. She probably had a few ready to pop when she was fired, and just let them know where she’d be when their time was nigh.”
He runs a hand through his silver hair, looking doubtful. “You may want to ask your sister for some more details, is all I’m saying.”
“Well, I can’t do that right now. They’re telling Mindy the truth about her parentage as we speak. We should try to find this Graciela woman, see if she remembers Lauren at all, and see if she’d be willing to take a test. Maybe the files were wrong. We can only hope, right?” She rubs her hand across her face.
“Absolutely.” He parks himself at her desk. “You have any beer to go with that pizza? Since I’m playing hooky...”
“I do. Be right back. Want a cold glass?”
“No, I can rough it.”
She grabs a bottle of Yuengling, makes herself a cup of tea. Throws some pretzels into a bowl. Brings everything back to the office to find Cameron scrolling through his phone.
“What are you doing, swiping right?” Her smirk is unmistakable, but Cameron has stopped scrolling and is staring at her.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“We have a match.”
Her pulse kicks up. “In CODIS? Let me see.”
“Just hold on a second. I need your computer.”
“Sure. Of course.” She gestures toward the desktop. He opens Google, speaks quietly.
“There’s a cold case, out of Nashville, Tennessee. I saw a case study of it a few years back. The man’s name is Zachary Armstrong. His child was kidnapped.”
“Wait, that’s the same name Lauren was looking up. Jasper asked me to look into him.”
He typesZachary Armstrong baby kidnappedinto the search bar. “Look.”
There are pages of hits. Her heart leaps to her throat.
