Page 53 of Forged in Flames (Made of Steel 2)

"Excuse me?" What was her problem? Who came into someone's home and started throwing out insults like this?

"All I'm saying is that he's asking a lot from us when he doesn't even trust us with his identity."

"That's not what you just said. You called me crazy." What a bitch.

"To make a point. Don't be so sensitive."

We all jumped when V slammed his fist against the glass table. I hadn't even seen him walk over there. He folded his arms across his chest. "Liza, we could really use your help. I've already told you that. But if you're not going to let this go, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

She glanced over at the computers with a dreamy look on her face. "Fine." She shrugged her shoulders. "Consider it dropped."

V nodded. "If everyone would take a seat."

The rest of us joined Liza around the table. I sat down across from Liza and Eli quickly stole the seat beside me, almost running into V. Eli draped his arm on the back of my chair without touching me.

The hostility was back in the air almost immediately as V took the seat across from Eli and glared at him.

This wasn't going well at all. I wanted answers. Not whatever the hell this was.

V cleared his throat. "Liza, what have you found out about Sadie Davis?"

"Not as much as I would have liked. She's ex military. More importantly, she's a highly trained sniper. Hopefully that doesn't come into play."

My stomach seemed to churn at her words. So that was how I was going to die. When I least expected it.

"There is a development on our end," V said. "Sadie ran into her yesterday. She put her hand up," V raised his hand, his five fingers spread apart. "She thought she was telling her to stop. But today when they ran into each other again, she only had four fingers raised."

"Is she counting down to something?" Eli asked.

"It sure seems like it." I shifted slightly in my chair. "We have four days to figure out what."

"Four," Liza said. "Huh."

We all turned toward her.

"What if she was telling you to stop yesterday. But today, she could have been saying something else. I mean, V called this thing the meeting of The Four. What if it's about us?"

A chill ran down my spine. We all looked back and forth between each other.

"We won't be able to figure out what she's saying until we pinpoint what her purpo

se here is," V said. "I think we should have Sadie walk through her whole story. We must be missing something."

I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I wasn't used to talking about my past. It was like this small piece of me I kept locked away, close to my heart. I put my hand in the middle of my chest, expecting to feel my pendant, but instead I was reminded of all that I had lost. "When I was eight my parents died in a car crash." I locked my hands together and put them on the table. "I moved in with my grandmother. She died a little less than a year later." I stared down at my hands. "I bounced around in foster care a lot. Until Don." I swallowed hard. "I don't know what you want me to say."

I felt Eli's arms move off the chair behind me and wrap around my shoulders. "We already know all of this. I don't think making her talk about it is helping anything."

Thank you.

"Well, I have plenty of amendments to that detailed story Summer just weaved," Liza said with a laugh and pulled out a notebook from her bag. "Someone created a false report saying that Summer and her grandmother both died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I traced the cyber footprint to sometime earlier this year. Which means whoever did it was trying to make it look like you disappeared and resurfaced with a stolen identity. It looks like you changed the records, falsified reports, and stole someone's identity. It's enough to put you away for a long time. The adoption papers I uncovered, on the other hand, were actually legit. You were legally adopted by Don Roberts when you left foster care."

She held up her hand like she was waiting for me to protest. I hadn't planned on saying anything, though.

"But, now we know that he changed your name and adopted you as Sadie Davis so that everyone else would think Summer Brooks was missing. He was never enrolled as a foster parent. So whoever took you to him wasn't a part of the system either. Do you remember who it was?"

I bit the inside of my lip. "I was just a kid. I don't..." I tried to pull back the memory of when I first met Don. My mind was drawing a blank. All I could remember was that I thought he had a friendly smile. I had thought my luck had finally changed. Just the thought made me want to throw up. I shook my head. "I don't remember."

Liza sighed. "Okay, so we don't have a lead there. All we have about the missing persons case is the claim that Rebecca Young filed. Did you know her, Summer?"

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