Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,26
kids were perfect and never did anything wrong. Kenny was older and he thought he was a tough guy. But Sam was smarter, and he wouldn’t let Kenny push him around.
Kenny was a jerk and his sister was a tattletale, always making up stories that weren’t true. He liked Suzy and Tim, but they were afraid of Kenny and the Robersons, and they would never stick up for him or even for themselves. They would just stand there and look frightened.
He didn’t want to stay in a place like that. He wanted his mom, but she was dead. He wanted to be with Claire, but she had forgotten about him.
His throat ached. He closed his eyes so Troy couldn’t tell he was trying not to cry. Pepper whined and nudged him, curled up against his side.
At least he had Pep.
The only friend in the world he could trust.
Eight
To keep herself busy and not wonder if Ben would find Sam in East L.A., Claire went out to the carport and opened her storage locker. She had kept a box of Laura’s things, stuff Claire had put away for Sam when he got older.
If she was right and the boy Ty found wasn’t Sam, they would need to continue their search. She had gone through the box right after Sam disappeared, looking for photos to give the police. Aside from pictures of Sam and Troy Bridger, she hadn’t found anything helpful among Laura’s possessions, but there was always a chance she had missed something.
Carrying the cardboard box into the living room, Claire set it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa, retrieved a pair of scissors, cut the packing tape and opened the box.
Sam’s baby clothes sat on top of a pottery plate with his handprint that Sam had made for his mom in kindergarten, and some crayon drawings he’d made that Laura had kept on the refrigerator.
Beneath them, photo albums. The one with photos of Bridger and the latest picture of Sam—photos she had given the police—Claire picked up and flipped open.
Most of the pictures had been taken with the inexpensive digital camera Laura carried when she took her son to the zoo or the time she and Claire had taken him to Disneyland last year for his birthday.
They were in order front to back, oldest to newest. She flipped to the back, to the most recent shots, including a few Claire had taken: Sam hamming it up at Christmas, Laura and Sam having Easter dinner at Claire’s apartment.
She ran her finger over that one and thought of her friend. In the pictures Laura looked so normal. They didn’t show the times she had drunk too much and passed out on the couch, the times she had forgotten to pick up Sam after his Little League baseball game.
They showed the Laura that was smart and funny and a very good friend.
Claire turned the page, realized two were stuck together and pulled them apart. She froze. There was a photo of Laura with Troy and two men, a picture she had never seen. She set the album down and ran into her bedroom, went over to her desk and grabbed a magnifying glass out of the top drawer.
Back in the living room, she studied the photo more closely and saw that the two men looked a lot like Troy. Enough like him, in fact, to be the brothers Sadie had mentioned. Laura hadn’t said anything about the visit when she and Troy had been living together, but the resemblance and the men’s ages made it hard to mistake the relationship.
She pulled the four-by-six glossy off the page and examined the men’s features. Same height, around six feet; same solid, no-fat build; same dark hair, same fair skin, same face shape and eyes. Troy’s were blue, she remembered, his best feature.
It was what they were wearing that was even more interesting—identical drab green camouflage T-shirts. On the front was a fist and underneath the numbers 33/6. She didn’t know what the sign and numbers meant, but she had a feeling it was important.
She set the photo aside and continued through the album but found nothing more.
She closed the box and set the picture on the coffee table and looked at the clock. More than two hours had passed. Where was Ben?
Thinking of him reminded her of the brief kiss before he had left. She hadn’t expected it. And as much as she tried, she couldn’t forget it.