Page 2 of 2nd Strike
“They don’t match,” the kid says softly. His voice is rough, almost as if he’s about to cry. “My DNA didn’t come from my mom and…fromthem.”
“Holy shit,” Meg says.
Holy shit is right.
I look up and meet his eyes, speechless. My stomach bottoms out.
“You returned me to the wrong parents, Charlie,” he whispers. “I’m not Ethan Havers.”
Meg looks at me as if she can read my mind. She can. “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” she says.
I’m sure there is but it could be a damn poor one. I bite back my frustration that the Havers refused to do DNA testing eight years ago when I brought Ethan to them. They were convinced he was their son and all the evidence pointed to that as well.
“Why don’t you go on home?” I suggest to Meg. My thoughts are running ahead of me, ninety miles an hour. “Ethan and I have some catching up to do.”
“The hell I will.” She motions at the back door to our building. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
Meg is my sister, my best friend, my rock. She’s an accomplished forensic sculptor who barely survived Billy Ray’s attack a few hours ago, but here she is, ready to dive into my mess as if it’s just another day—or night at this point—at the office.
If the results in my hand are accurate, there is no bottom to find. There will be hell to pay, and my ass will be the one doing it. The Bureau won’t take any responsibility, nor help me fix this, since I no longer work for them.
“My dad did a news segment where he submitted his DNA to see what countries his family originated from and revealed the results on his show,” Ethan says softly. “He convinced Mom to do it, too. It was really interesting because Dad thought he was English—British, you know?—and German. His results showed he’s forty percent Norwegian and doesn’t have a drop of German in him.”
Many people discover similar results. I’ve seen it hundreds of times as a genealogy hobbyist. “That’s why you wanted to do it for your final.”
He nods. “Most of the kids already knew my parents’ results because of the news segments. It was fun.” His gaze goes to the paper. “I thought it’d be cool to see how much of each of their DNAs I had.”
I take a deep breath, stopping the spinning hamster wheel in my brain. I’m getting ahead of myself.I did not make a mistake eight years ago. I saw the age progression Meg did and it was nearly an exact match to Ethan. There's a simple explanation. There has to be.
Sleep would allude me now even if I went home and crawled into bed. Meg and I exchange a glance and she nods, reading my mind again. Looks like we have a new case.
Except we don’t take cases from minors.
Hmm.
Giving Ethan a reassuring smile, I motion for him to follow. “Let’s go inside.”
Schock Investigations contains three offices, Meg’s art/workroom, a tiny kitchenette, bathroom, and the receptionist area. I tap buttons on my phone to turn off our security and use my key to let us in.
Meg goes in first, slapping on the lights, Ethan in her wake. His backpack is high-end, expensive, just like his designer jeans and sneakers.
Although Meg and I are both single with no kids, she’s got a maternal streak and chats with him about the weather, curfew, etc., as I lock us in, turn the alarm back on—the brush with a serial killer has my paranoia in overdrive—and grab a water for Ethan.
Meg sits in one of the two chairs across from my desk. Ethan takes the other. His backpack now rests against the desk, and he accepts the bottle when I hand it to him, but doesn't open it.
I’m far from being a DNA expert, but my side hustle is reuniting lost families, which involves studying genetic results and family trees. While my father is the one who ignited this hobby for me when I was a kid, Ethan’s case all those years ago is the reason I plunged back into tracking people’s ancestry as an adult.
Everyone is quiet as I study the paper. It’s not a complete evaluation, but it paints a clear picture all the same. There is a brief, impersonal written analysis and I read it several times, trying to wrap my brain around this situation.
When I finally look up, Meg stares a hole through me. Ethan has set the water on the desk, crossed one ankle over his knee and is picking at the rubber on his sneaker.
“I can’t tell my parents about this,” he says quietly. “They're having problems…with their marriage…and this would be, like, too much on top of everything else." He glances at me, guilt clouding his face. “It's my fault—I mean, I'm the reason it’s on the rocks. Seeing this?” He points to the paper and shakes his head. “Way, way too much.”
Too much, indeed. Unfortunately, his parents will have to be told if we're going to pursue the truth.
Ethan uncrosses his legs and sits forward, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “How did you figure out who the kidnapper—Amelia—was?" he asks. “How did you know for sure I was theirs when you found me?"
He deserves to know, but his parents should be the ones to share that information. The case is long closed, and many of the specific details where suppressed from the public, even though it was big news in the media. He's probably already done a search and found numerous pages of hits. It garnered world-wide attention, but legally, I'm on shaky ground, unless I get the FBI, and/or the U.S. district attorney to sign off on it.
