Page 110 of Collide

“Come up when you’re done.”

I turned to leave him to it, no wonder he’d grimaced when he sawwho was calling, apparently she had taken a bit of a shine to Hendrix when he grilled her in Huntsville and had now taken to texting him several times a day.

Isaac was waiting for me when the elevator opened on his floor, hebobbed his head in acknowledgment and indicated for me to follow to his office.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Wolfe,” he said as he took his seat behindhis desk and held out his hand for me to sit in the chair opposite.

“I’m hoping this will be worth my while, Isaac.” I gave him a faint smileand he suddenly looked nervous, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing.

“I, uh…I managed to find some information on the Detective, JohnAnderson. It’s taken me longer than I’d hoped but the information was difficult to come by,” Isaac stuttered.

I relaxed back in my chair, hoping it would ease him. Isaac wasan ally and one I intended to keep so I didn’t want to scare him.

Unless I really had to, of course.

“How so?” I asked. Isaac opened his mouth to speak but wasinterrupted by a knock on the door before Hendrix walked in without waiting for an invitation. He greeted Isaac who again bobbed his head in reply and then sat in the chair next to me.

“Anything?” I asked Hendrix, referring to the phone call he had justhad. He smirked but shook his head.

“Silly cunt wanted to know when I would be back in Huntsville so Icould take her on a date.” He waved his hand, dismissing the whole thing and I turned my attention back to Isaac.

“Why was the information difficult to come by?”

“Perhaps I should start from the beginning.”Isaac adjusted his dark-rimmed glasses and sat up straight in hischair. He was an odd looking fella, with mousy features and floppy blonde hair. There wasn’t anything remarkable about him, but that’s what made him good at his job, he had a face you would instantly forget.

“Anderson’s mother died when he was three years old, it seems noone knew who his father was, so he went into the foster system. He spent the next six years bouncing around foster homes. He was a difficult child, constantly sick, and was slow developing.”

“Fuck me, Isaac,” Hendrix interrupted. “When you said you weregoing to start from the beginning, I didn’t think we’d be getting a blow by blow account of the bastard’s life,” he chuckled, earning himself a scathing look from me.

“It’s relevant,” Isaac hissed back, his cheeks turning red.

“Go on,” I said, giving Hendrix a look that said,‘Shut the fuck up.’Isaac glared at Hendrix for another beat before sucking in a breathand continuing.

“He was eventually taken in by a family, the Brown family who lived inJacksonville, and he was moved across the country to live with them. The couple fostered a whole bunch of kids over the years and it seemed Anderson stayed with them from the age of nine until he enrolled in the police academy in Florida aged nineteen.” Isaac paused and readjusted his glasses, almost like it was a nervous tick.

I leaned forward in my seat, ready to hurry this the fuck along. “Struggling to see where the difficulty in getting the information is,Isaac.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I saidit seemsAnderson stayed with the familyuntil he was nineteen but there are no records to confirm that. Between the ages of nine and nineteen, there are no records of Anderson. No school reports, no medical reports. Nothing for the entire ten years. And as for the records before he turned nine, some exist, for example, a few of the foster homes he lived in. But a lot no longer exists, including things like his birth certificate, and where he lived for the first three years of his life.“ He sat back in his chair, looking pleased with himself.

“How is that even possible?” I asked, my brows narrowed inconfusion as I tried to comprehend what Isaac was trying to tell me. Someone didn’t just disappear for ten years of their lives, especially not at the age of nine. There would have been some public record of his existence. And what about the records from when he was born? It didn’t make sense.

“It’s not possible unless someone hacked into governmentdatabases and wiped his records for periods of his life. That could only be done by a really good hacker or someone official and high ranking who would have access.”

Well. Didn’t this make things a whole lot more interesting?

I looked at Hendrix who was looking as equally confused, andwhen he saw me looking, he gave a shrug of his shoulders.

“That’s not all,” Isaac continued. “I thought I’d look into the records ofthe Brown family, see if I could identify any foster siblings, but all of those records have been erased too. There is literally zero information available as to who Anderson was living with besides Carol and Anthony Brown.”

“What about the foster parents? Surely they can shed some light,where are they?” I asked, already plotting a journey across the country to visit them if they were still living in Florida.

“They’re dead.”

Fuck sake.

Of course they were.

Every fucking turn resulted in a dead end. I rolled my eyes andswiped my hand down over my face in frustration.

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