Page 10 of Blindside

“Do that,” I say as I briskly walk my criminal ass out of his office, then out of the fucking building, practically running to my car.

* * *

“You’ve lost your fucking mind!” Nathan shouts and I cringe.

I shoot him a toothy smile. “He didn’t catch me,” I defend. His eyes narrow as he places his hands on his hips giving me his best disappointed dad glare.

“He could have caught you and then your ass would be in jail! I don’t have that type of bail money and let’s be real, I’m not that good at sucking dick to convince a judge to not charge you.” I can’t stop the laughter from bursting out of me, Nathan sucks at telling anyone off. “I’m serious, Katie.” My laughter dies in my throat at the hint of concern in his tone. My shoulders droop and my eyes soften as I look at my friend. Everything I have done wouldn’t have been possible without his help. I owe him so much and yet he has never asked me for a single thing except to never lie to him.

“I’m sorry. Jackson pulled away from me after seeing Saint and Crue. I had to do something, Nate. I… I can’t lose my daughter,” I whisper the last part brokenly. He curses under his breath before rushing around the counter in the kitchen to engulf me in a hug. I rest my cheek against his chest and let his embrace ease some of the tension inside me.

“I know, baby girl. Let’s order some takeout and we’ll spend the night going through all his shit and find our girl.” Hearing those words from his mouth has my heart swelling inside my chest.

“Thank you, Nate, for everything you have done and continue to do for me,” I mutter.

“I do it because I love your crazy ass.”

I chuckle and tighten my hold around his waist. “I love you too.”

Nathan orders us takeout while I set up my laptop in the living room and get comfortable on the sofa. I open it and begin to scan through all the emails. Nearly an hour later Nate joins me with our takeout containers. I’ve scrolled through hundreds of emails and still, I’ve found nothing. Another hour passes and I’m about ready to give up and cry myself to sleep when Nate comes up with an idea.

“Check the Google Drive, surely he would have his phone linked to his work computer.” I do as he says and bring up the drive and gasp. “Is that what I think it is?” Nate whispers from beside me.

“Nate, I think it is,” I breathe out. Right here, there are hundreds of files of unscripted adoptions. I never found out Jackson worked for the adoption agency until after I gave birth. The sight of him didn’t sit well with me, so I did some digging. That’s when I found out, Saint’s dad was the one to adopt my baby girl. I knew at that moment it wasn’t a coincidence and now I have the proof. Jackson is running off-the-book adoptions.

“Bring up his banking.” I do as he says and scroll through his incoming payments. Holy shit. “Is that a payment for a million?” My throat closes up and I nod. “This motherfucker is selling children!”

Horror fills me as I turn to face my friend. “He sold my daughter to Devon. He’s going to use my baby girl to blackmail Saint into giving him his company back.”

Nate gulps and eyes me warily as he asks, “Didn’t you once say that Devon was into some shady shit, like videoing children and selling it on his app?” Bile rushes up my throat as horrible images of what he could be doing to my daughter flash through my mind.

Saint

Three weeks later

I sit on my bed with my computer in front of me, owning a tech company comes in handy when you have information on people. Since my go-to hacker is no longer in the picture, I’ve had no choice but to reach out to my staff at my newly named company Morgan Tech IT. Janet has proven herself invaluable when it comes to sourcing Katie’s medical records. Grabbing my phone and checking the time, it’s nine p.m. here so it’s seven in Seattle. Crue should be home from practice now. I dial his number and put it on speaker before bringing up the file Janet just sent me.

“Hey, what’s up?”

I smile, I miss talking to him every day. It sucks not being on the same team and being so far away from him but at the end of the day, we knew this could happen and tried to prepare ourselves as much as we could.

“Janet just sent me her medical records,” I say.

“Facetime me off your laptop and screen share.” I hang up and do as he says. Within a minute his face fills my computer screen, and I share my screen with him as I open the file attached to the email. We’re both silent as we read over the notes. I scroll through her records from when she was a child. I stop when I spot a date toward the start of last year in May. She saw Dr. Lordus in Tennessee. This would have been a couple of days after she fled CHU.

“What the fuck is a subchorionic hematoma?” I ask.

“Hold up, let me Google that shit,” Crue says as I continue to read on that she was sent home and advised to be on complete bed rest. “Listen to this,” Crue says and begins to read out what he found on the internet. “A subchorionic hematoma is when blood collects under the chorion membrane during pregnancy. This membrane attaches the mother’s uterine wall to her baby’s amniotic sac. The most common symptom is vaginal bleeding. But some people don’t have symptoms. Most subchorionic membranes go away on their own without causing pregnancy complications.”

“Holy fuck,” I breathe out. Crue looks pale and taken aback by the information.

“She didn’t lose the baby,” he mutters. I ignore him and continue to scroll through the notes. Sure enough, she had ultrasounds booked and regular doctor’s appointments to check on the baby because of the hematoma. I stop scrolling when I reach her records from December, right there in bold black print it states that Katie went into pre-term labor. She gave birth on the first of December to a healthy baby girl, weighing in at six pounds two ounces. It looks like the baby had to spend a night being monitored but didn’t need to go to the NICU. Crue and I remain silent as we soak in the information we just learned.

We have a baby.

A daughter to be exact.

That thought swirls round and round in my mind for a while, until I try to scroll on and find out more about our child, except it ends. There are no more records of her or our daughter.

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