“Seven, almost eight.”
“And then Driscoll took him to begin this training?”
“Yes,” she said, a catch in her voice, and where she had not shed tears when speaking of her family killed in her home country, her eyes glittered when she spoke of the boy.
“Do you know if Driscoll was working with someone else?”
She shook her head. “No. No one else. Just him.”
“Did you have any idea what this so-called training entailed?”
“No. I do not know. Dr. Driscoll come here at night when boy sleeping. I try to stop him. I . . . do not want to let him go. I will raise him, I say. But Driscoll push me. He say he will revoke my work visa. I will starve with no work. No family.” She hung her head. “He give the boy medicine so he will not make fuss and then he take him.” The look on her face was so bereft that despite what she’d done, Mark couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the old woman in front of him. No country. No family. Left to live with the terrible choices she’d made out of desperation. Left with not knowing what had become of the boy she’d obviously loved, though she’d been instructed not to.
“Do you know what happened to boy?” she asked, not meeting Mark’s eyes, her body tense and unmoving as though she was holding her breath as she waited for his answer.
“He’s alive. He had a very harsh upbringing as you have probably imagined. But he’s a survivor. He’s very strong.”
She nodded, a tear escaping her eye and coursing down her wrinkled cheek. “Yes. Strong. That’s why I call him Jak. Means strong in my language.” She paused for a moment, obviously gathering herself. “He very smart boy. Good boy.” The expression on her face was one of pride as she said it. “Driscoll move from here, he say he building nice house to raise Jak soon. He say no school, it interfere with training. But I teach the boy to read, and I teach him numbers in the English. I tell him not to talk like me but like the TV. He very smart and learn fast. I say the words are very important. I try to teach him what I can with books about tying knots and building things. What I think will help him. And I make him stay outside many hours every day so he climb trees and build forts, and grow even stronger. I try . . . I try to give him what I can.”
What she should have done was call the police and report Driscoll. But . . . Jesus, there were always so many shades of gray involved in the cases he worked, so many stories, so many situations that most people couldn’t even imagine surviving. “From what I know, what you did helped him.”
She nodded her head. “Good.” She paused for only a moment before asking, “He killed Driscoll then? My Jak?”
“He says he’s innocent of the crime, and there’s no evidence to say otherwise. Driscoll’s murder is unsolved right now.”
She looked vaguely surprised at his answer, as though she’d assumed Jak had killed him. Hell, after finding out what he had, he was surprised Jak hadn’t killed him. If that turned out to be true. And though there was no evidence against him, he had one hell of a motive. The man had not only watched on as Jak had suffered, but he’d deceived him about there being a war. Enemies. He’d planted the fear in him when he was just a child so it was all he’d ever known. It was really a wonder Jak wasn’t stark raving mad.
“He . . . remembers me?”
“He does, yes.”
The old woman nodded, tears shimmering in her eyes again. “Will you tell him Baka is sorry. So very, very sorry.”
“Yes, ma’am. Of course I will.”
Once he’d said goodbye and left the small apartment of the woman Jak had once called Baka, Mark descended the steps, walking slowly to his car, one of the pieces of the puzzle of Jak’s life sliding into place.
He turned the ignition and sat for a moment staring up at the apartment building where Jak had been raised, unknowingly being prepared for a “training” program devised by a sick and/or evil mind. What the hell did that mean? What had Driscoll’s point been? Why had he done what he’d done to an innocent boy? He glanced at what he could see behind the building. A vast expanse of woods . . . the place Jak had first played at what would become his only existence.
Jak was the common denominator in all of this. How? Why? Who else knew what Driscoll had set up, other than the woman found murdered in town? Jak’s mother. Had there really been cameras in the trees? If so, who removed them? Driscoll? Who was the man on the cliff? Or had that actually been Driscoll and Jak’s young mind had misremembered?
He pondered on all he knew and what he’d just learned, his mind then turning to Harper Ward and how her parents had been murdered too. Driscoll had been particularly bothered by the foster care system, Dr. Swift had told him. Harper Ward had grown up in social services. Did that mean anything? Were the two cases random and unconnected? They very well could be, but Mark had a feeling they were twisted together in some sinister way he could not yet fathom.
A shiver rolled through him as he backed out of the parking space at the apartment complex, the old woman in the apartment he’d just visited staring at him from her window. When he’d first started investigating the homicides, he’d believed them to be crimes of hate. He’d find the perpetrator, and then move on to the next case. But with each week, with more and more puzzle pieces emerging, he became increasingly disturbed. Jak had been taken, mistreated, and had probably nearly died while trying to survive. A woman had been manipulated to believe that in taking in a baby, she’d find joy in a reunion with her family. Families broken. Parents grieving. But how was it all linked? What was first? Who was responsible? Would anyone pay for these crimes of cruelty?
And was there a bigger picture he wasn’t yet seeing?
PART II
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Mark and Laurie Gallagher’s home was a charming ranch at the end of a curved driveway, woods stretched out around it. Harper pulled up in front and shut off the engine, looking over at Jak, who sat next to her, his palms flat on his thighs. The first time she’d seen him in the sheriff’s office—what now seemed like a decade ago—he’d been sitting the same way. She now recognized it for what it was—nervous body language. He was grounding himself.
She reached over and put her hand over his, linking their fingers. “This is going to be fine.”
He gave her a nervous smile. “What if I do something wrong? I don’t know about going to someone’s house for dinner.”
“Jak, these people know that. They want you here. They’re not going to judge your table manners. Just do what everyone else does.”