Madison's Quest (12 page)

“She doesn’t look nineteen.” The age Bio-mom was supposed to
have had her.

“Sixteen tops,” Shane said. “But she might just look
younger. It happens. Does your family have any baby pictures?”

“No.” Of that she was absolutely certain. Since she’d come
home from Miami, they’d pulled out the old photographs, watched the old videos
together.

Shane flipped the picture over then back again. “No date.
Nothing to give the location away.”

It could have been taken in a house, an apartment, even a
storeroom. The background consisted of a wall with dull white paint.

Madison turned the last item over. Her eyes drawn instantly
to the thick, bold, red lettering stamped in the center.
FORGERY
.

“Oh shit,” Shane said. “I take it Bio-mom’s name is supposed
to be Suzanne Turner?”

Madison’s gaze jerked to the top of the page, to what was
supposed to be her original birth certificate, the one Bio-mom had provided as
part of the legal documentation, as part of the proof of who she was, of who
Bio-mom was
supposed
to be.

FORGERY
.

That couldn’t be right.

If this birth certificate was a forgery, then it would mean
the woman who gave her up for adoption wasn’t the same one who’d given birth to
her.

Madison’s heart thundered in her ears, the beat so hard and
loud she felt light-headed. Because that’s exactly what Bio-dad was telling her
with the document and the picture of a girl who looked sixteen, not nineteen.

Shane crowded closer. The arm along the back of the bench
shifted so it lay across her shoulders, his hand rubbing her upper arm.

“We can figure this out. Maybe Bio-dad has it wrong. Fuck,
maybe there is no Bio-dad. Maybe whoever is behind this is some twisted fucker
who saw you play in Miami and became obsessed to the point of trying to find a
way to insert himself into your life.”

She didn’t believe that. She didn’t think Shane did either.

Her stomach roiled. She swallowed down the urge to hurl.

Shane rubbed his cheek against hers. “You’re forty-five
grand ahead. You could walk away from this right now.”

“I don’t think I can.”

He caught a lock of her hair. “You said your parents never
met Bio-mom. But their friend did. Does she still work for the lawyer?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If you can make contact, you can send her the picture. If
she can’t remember what the girl who surrendered you looked like, there’ll be
photos in your file. She can compare them to this one.”

Madison felt as though her heart was caught in a tightening
fist. As if her lungs couldn’t hold air.

She didn’t want to risk this getting back to her parents
before she could talk to them about it. She didn’t want to risk there being
legal ramifications, though she would absolutely never believe her parents
knowingly adopted a child who’d been—what? Sold? Stolen? Given away?

“Not yet,” she said.

His eyes met hers. Probed. Worried over this revelation.

“I’m good. I can deal with this.” It helped that she had a solid
belief in her parents. They hadn’t been a part of anything illegal.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, the tone of his voice
saying
, Your call. No pressure.

What did she want to do?

It was easier to come up with what
didn’t
she want to
do.

She didn’t want to hurt her parents.

She didn’t want to worry them.

But she also didn’t want to quit without discovering the
truth.

What if another family still grieved over her disappearance?
What if finding Bio-dad meant healing that wound?

But if that was the case, that’d make him a total asshole
for not coming forward, for not telling them where she was—except maybe he was
protecting her.

Maybe he hadn’t wanted them to show up while her father was
battling cancer. Or maybe there was no one who missed her, maybe he was doing
her a favor—

Or maybe she was going to drive herself crazy with
possibilities when she
couldn’t know
,
wouldn’t know
until she had
answers instead of an endless string of questions.

Madison tugged the clue out from beneath her thigh. It read:
The way forward remains two steps into the future and five steps away from
it. Blanketing clouds obliterate and fog the fruitful promise that will one day
turn golden. Time spent with T and E and J is haze and rain, though beneath the
soil there is unseen growth, a seed that refuses to wither and die, to be
strangled by oak roots and obligation though it has not yet escaped the
darkness.

The words felt as though they passed through her eyeballs and
disappeared, obliterated in a different kind of fog.

She knew she should concentrate on figuring out what they
meant. She couldn’t.

She wanted to act, to do something that was her idea, her
choice, not Bio-dad’s.

“Let’s go back to Oakhurst Prep,” she said. “Let’s see if
someone recognizes the girl in the picture or if she’s pictured in a yearbook.”
It wouldn’t cost them that much time and she’d feel better, freer.

“Worth doing. If she’s really closer to sixteen than
nineteen, there’s a stronger chance of her being one of Bio-dad’s classmates.”

“Do you think he’s always known where I was?”

“Odds are in favor of it.”

She wet her lips. “Why’d she wait until I was two to get rid
of me?”

“Mad.” He touched his forehead to hers. “You can’t let this
screw you up. Would you rather she
hadn’t
given you up?”

“No.”

“So don’t spin it like you were somehow unlovable.”

He gave her a hard kiss then said, “Maybe her family kicked
her out and she had to make it on her own. Could be that it took her two years
to figure out how tough that is when you’re a teen mother. We’re talking about
people with a lot of money, about a girl who might have been accustomed to
living the good life and who decided she’d rather get back into her family’s
good graces. And if not that kind of girl, then one who finally accepted a
life-changing offer of money. Either way, easy enough to arrange for forged
documents and a trail that doesn’t lead back to the bio-parents.”

Ache blossomed in Madison’s heart, at war with her rational
mind.

“We’ll get to the end of this and you’ll have answers,” he
said. “You are definitely not unwanted. You know that right?”

“Yeah, I know that.” And she did.

There was video footage of the day she’d arrived at the pale
yellow Cape Cod owned by Pete and Lara York. She didn’t have to close her eyes
to remember the expressions on their faces, the love and joy, the fierce
commitment to be her parents that had never wavered.

She swallowed against a throat tight with emotion—not
feelings of abandonment linked to a girl she didn’t remember, but by the
montage of images that followed what had been day one as Madison York.

She had parents who loved her. She had parents she loved.

Madison tucked everything back into the envelope then pulled
out her cell, restoring order to her life by searching for bank locations so
she could walk the deposit in, so the money would be there to help her parents.

Showing the screen to Shane, she said, “We’re close, right?”

“A few blocks.”

He stood, his fingers entwined with hers and keeping the
chaos from returning to fill her head. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to
deal with Bio-dad’s quest and his revelations alone. She had Shane. And Tyler.

“This way,” Shane said, leading her past glass-fronted shops
doing plenty of business, though she couldn’t always tell the tourists from the
locals.

Gay couples. Lesbian couples. Straight couples. She felt at
home in The Castro. Could easily imagine herself partying there with Shane and
Tyler.

They turned a corner and had to veer to the left to avoid
slamming into a pair of model-gorgeous men in an ass-grabbing, crotch-grinding
clench.

Heat flared between her legs, a further distraction from the
birth certificate and picture, and she welcomed it.

She glanced at Shane, but couldn’t get a read on whether
seeing two guys together turned him on or turned him off.

Ask him directly?

The feelings she’d had in the Jeep returned in a rush, and
she didn’t dare. If he answered
yes,
it’d only make returning to
Richmond, and later, the life she’d led in Miami, even harder.

But she couldn’t completely leave it alone.

“My first serious boyfriend was bi. Elijah and I used to
look at gay magazines and manga together.”

Shane startled, not visibly, but she felt it through her
palm. And that made it impossible not to add, “When I first saw Tyler, I
thought he could have stepped off a page of gay manga.”

Shane nearly choked on the sudden panic.
What the fuck am
I supposed to say to that?

He fought the impulse to jerk his hand from hers, afraid his
heart was pounding so hard that it was pumping the truth into her where their
palms touched.

Had she guessed at the fantasies that’d pretty much been
raging through both the big head and the little one since he met her?

Was she telling him she thought Tyler was bi?

They passed a shop with plenty of leather in the window.
Vests. Cuffs. Floggers. Crops.

A couple of ball-gags.

He might as well have had one of those stuffed into his
mouth. He couldn’t bring himself to ask her if that was her read on Tyler. He
wouldn’t be able to pull off casual, wasn’t sure he wouldn’t reveal his own
desperation.

Believing
that Madison was meant for him, that the
three of them were meant to be together, didn’t make it easier to reveal
something no one he cared about knew. Once that truth was out, there’d be no
taking it back. Once he’d acted on that truth—assuming Tyler was interested, at
least in doing it with him because of Madison—there’d be no hiding it, not from
a family that picked up on tells as easily as other people took in spoon-fed
news.

He felt suddenly overheated, his T sticking to his skin. It
was a measure of how mentally fucked he was that he’d been telling himself
there’d actually be a choice as to whether or not he’d come out as bi.

If he acted on the desire for Tyler.
If
, then his brothers,
his cousins, his parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents would all figure out what
was going on—despite how hard he and Tyler pretended the relationship with
Madison was like Dante and Benito sharing Calista, or Quade and Lucca sharing
Kiera, or Mace and Cade sharing Grace.

Entering the bank, Shane let her hand go so she could deal
with making the deposit.

He felt like banging his head against the counter, not that
it’d provide clarity. He was pretty much fucked when it came to Tyler.

Right now the real danger would be getting naked with
Madison at the same time Tyler was. As long as he avoided that situation, he’d
be golden.

She finished her transaction.

He snagged her hand, liked the feel of it in his. “Ready to
go back to high school?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Unlike the night before, Oakhurst Preparatory wasn’t silent
or empty. And unlike the night before, arrangements hadn’t been made to make
getting in and getting what they were looking for easy.

The stern-faced woman behind the school office counter
stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. She spouted about privilege and
privacy. She refused more than a flicked glance at the photograph Madison had
placed on the counter and wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of yearbooks.

Not totally unexpected, but it didn’t deter him and it
wouldn’t defeat him. They weren’t going to leave without learning something for
Madison, even if that something was that this was a dead end.

He turned toward Madison and leaned his hip against the
counter, projecting the same slightly insolent attitude he’d mastered in his
teens when he’d been sent to the office for disciplinary action—usually because
he’d gotten caught running card games.

If he could have floated a bet, he’d have tried to win some
of his money back by wagering that the open door to the far left was the
principal’s office.

“Ready to go?” he asked, making sure his voice carried. “Should
be pretty easy to find out who’s graduated from this place. Once we do, we can
start digging in their business and paying them visits. That’ll be good fun.”

“True,” she said, using his inflection and making him grin.

He pushed away from the counter. “They’re going to
love
having people wonder why Crime Tells is taking a hard look at them.”

She picked up the photograph.

As if on cue, a man wearing an expensive suit and a
politician’s smile emerged from the office and came to the counter.

“I’m Harry Kipling, the principal here. Can I help you with
something?”

Score!
Shane tipped his head in the direction of the
photograph. “We’re trying to locate this girl. She might have been a student
here somewhere around twenty-four years ago, give or take.”

Kipling gave the photograph more of his attention than the
woman had, but shook his head. “You understand that we can’t open our records. But
I see no reason not to allow you access to the school library. The entire
collection of yearbooks is there. It will save you time and spare our graduates
from unnecessary interruptions.”

Interruptions
came out as a smooth euphemism for
harassment. Shane grinned. Either worked for him.

“That’d be excellent,” he said, hip bumping Madison a moment
later as they walked down the same hallways they’d roamed the night before.

They passed locker 180, the two of them exchanging a smile
and a smoking hot glance. Who said high school was all bad?

They reached the library and discovered that being allowed
access to the yearbooks didn’t mean being left unattended. The uber-helpful
librarian practically lived at their backs.