“Personnel?” Rook chews at his lower lip noisily, the pink thing rubbery and flopping. “Wh-who?”
“Former President of Operations. Oliver Major,” I say. “And my daughter. Stillborn. Last name Delaney, first name…unnamed. I carried to term in a Galentron facility. Good company girl to the last—and they never even let me see my precious girl’s body before they took it away.”
Oh, fiddlesticks.
I hadn’t meant to say that much.
It just came falling out of me, the memory of that cold, sterile room that wasn’t even a hospital, just a lab. All white walls, a metal table under me, strangers with cold eyes over surgical masks and the blood everywhere.
They gave me drugs. I remember that part.
Not for the pain.
But so I wouldn’t be able to focus, think, remember.
Or question.
But I remember hearing a baby’s cry.
Dim, fuzzy, distant. I knew the way any mother knows that she was mine, but when I came to the day after they told me I hallucinated it. My daughter was stillborn, they said, and never even drew her first breath.
What did I say about how much I hate being wrong?
That cry has haunted me for years in every nightmare.
She was breathing. I know she was.
She lived.
I just don’t know what they did with her, or why.
And that question is what sent me on the warpath.
I never meant to drag Gray, Leo, and their friends back into this. I never meant to bring fire and screams back to Heart’s Edge twice.
That little town just happened to have the misfortune of being a pit stop on the way to my answer.
And right now, Tim Rook is in my way.
When I raise my hand, he flinches, well aware that the next time I cause him pain, there’s going to be blood.
Probably a lot of it.
“I’m looking,” he gasps, a tremor rolling through him. “I’m looking, give me a minute, please!”
Still making those absolutely repellent sounds in the back of his throat, he rattles through screens, search windows—then pulls up a personnel file.
There’s a single photograph of a man with a strong jaw, a dark trimmed beard, those rakish bourbon-brown eyes I remember looking at me with a mix of tenderness and dry, cynical amusement.
In the photo, he’s wearing a suit, the fabric stretched stiff over broad muscles. Even with the very best tailors, it always seemed like his jackets were a size too small.
Like no clothes ever crafted could contain the sheer wild energy and strength of that man.
His hair is jet-black, just barely touched at the temples with a splash of early grey.
I wonder how he’d look now.
I wonder if he’d still smile, with those honey-sweet eyes softening just for me.
Oh, Oliver Major.
I…
I hate how the terrible knot of diamond in my chest where my heart should be actually tries to beat again at the sight of him.
But it hardens again the second I scan over the thin skim of information there.
Date of birth, some fifty-odd years ago, but the date of death I’m looking for?
Conspicuously absent.
“Where’s the rest?” I ask, nearly panic swallowing what’s left of my second hard candy of the night. “His dossier, cause of death, everything? The report on the assault?”
“Attached in the files in his profile, but…” Rook wobbles his lips, darting me a fearful look. “They’re encrypted. Only accessible to one biometric profile.”
“Whose?”
I know the answer even before he says it.
Because I just have that kind of luck.
Rook closes his eyes, whispering out in a nasally tremor, “Um…Leland Durham’s, ma’am.”
Well, fuck.
I don’t—I can’t—
Oliver’s not my priority.
He’s an adult who can take care of himself, and if he’s still alive somewhere…it’s been too long.
He doesn’t belong to me anymore.
It’s enough to know he’s probably out there, and Galentron had their reasons for faking his death and covering their tracks.
This is about my little girl.
She needs me, wherever she is.
I prod Rook’s shoulder. “My daughter.”
“That’s going to be harder to find without a first na—”
“Don’t.” I clench my jaw. “You know what kind of data to look for. I don’t need to tell you the company forced every Nightjar to receive all medical care in-house. You know how our records were tracked. Find the damn information.”
Something flickers in Rook’s eyes.
Then he just nods like a deflated doll, bowing his head obediently and raking his fingers over the keyboard.
A moment later, he finds a file saved only by number, in the four-dash-six-dash-two sequence used for numbered Galentron personnel files.
There’s no name inside.
No photo.
Just another number.
Mine.
And a date of birth, a gender.
A daughter.
Data confirmation. Truth, however brief. Something more than the lying words of the cold, impersonal doctor who barely spoke to me when I was reeling in a drugged-out haze.
But that’s it.
The day I was wheeled into that sterile lab and left to suffer through labor for hours, and for nothing.
It’s also the only thing I get. There’s just nothing else there. No other data.