Page 48 of Paternal Instincts
“Yes.”
“Sign with your finger.” He held the device screen toward Nixon and let him scrawl something that likely didn’t come close to resembling his signature. Nor did the man ask for ID, so I supposed it didn’t matter if Nixon was a Davis. So far as I understood, anyone could sign for a package, but this man seemed to want to be a prick about it.
The FedEx guy thrust the envelope at Nixon, but I took it instead, earning a glare from both sides. “Is there any way of finding out who sent this?”
“Not my job. You can call headquarters, but I doubt it. Best they can do is track it back to the depot where it was mailed.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a day,” the man said, returning to his running truck.
Nixon lost several shades of color as he stared at the envelope in my hands. Fresh tears surfaced but didn’t fall. “Is that…”
“In the house.” I didn’t want the media all over this.
The raging tempers had cooled upon my return. An electric, anticipatory pulse took its place. No one spoke. Everyone stared at me like I carried a bomb. My stomach soured, not knowing what I was going tofind. Another note? Pictures of an abused child? A dead child because we were too late for a deadline we weren’t given? At least it was flat, so my fear of receiving body parts diminished. Would it be a demand for money? A proper timeline? Instructions for a trade-off?
The possibilities were endless and daunting. I didn’t want an audience. I locked gazes with Jordyn across the room and motioned for her to follow me into the kitchen.
Nixon and Flynn rode my heels, and I stopped midstride.
“Gentleman, if you could—”
“No. I need to see,” Nixon said.
Flynn rubbed his brother’s shoulder. “Nix, why don’t we—”
“No,” Nixon roared. “I need to see.”
Reluctantly, I allowed them to join us.
Imogen appeared in the doorway. She glanced at her husband, at Flynn, who held her gaze for a long time, communicating something I couldn’t interpret, then at me. The apprehension on her face made her seem both years younger and decades older somehow.
Jordyn presented me with a pair of nitryl gloves. I put them on and turned the envelope over, examining the exterior to be sure I hadn’t missed anything important. Fingerprinting the exterior would be pointless. The envelope would have likely passed through dozens of hands before landing on the Davises’ doorstep.
“We’re going to need an evidence bag,” I said to my partner. The first note might have been clean, but we could hope our perp slipped up the second time.
“I’ll get one from the car in a second.”
I located the pull tab and tugged it. The tear of ripping cardboard filled the room. Inside was a single piece of folded paper. Typewritten like before. Same font. Same structure. Three lines of text. No signature.
I said no police. Shame on you.
I did my own research and discovered the truth.
Give me one reason why you deserve him back.
I didn’t read it aloud, so the held-breath moment stretched as I remained silent, pondering each sentence and the possible meaning behind every word. Jordyn moved beside me and read over my shoulder. Still no timeline. Still no proper demand informing us how we could rectify the situation and get Crowley back. What were we supposed to take away from this? What did this person want?
It was Flynn who spoke first. “What does it say, Detective? Nixon has a right to know.”
Imogen glanced at her brother-in-law, then at me, and I thought for a moment she would tell me not to read it, but she said nothing.
I read the note aloud, slowly and without inflection, not wanting to add dramatics to an already tense situation. They were words on a page, and I didn’t want to be the one to put meaning behind them.
It was the actions and reactions of the others that interested me most.
Nixon tried to keep a sob at bay, but it blustered out of him. “What does that mean? Oh god…” When Jordyn and I didn’t respond, he asked Flynn, blubbering over and over. “What does it mean, Flynn? Where’s my boy?”
