manila file folder was on top of several other folders, and sticking out was a black and white photograph of himself. He pulled it out, his blood turning cold as he realized what it actually was—not a photo of himself at all, but a photo of his biological father.
Reed blew out a breath, his heart thumping harshly against his ribs. The picture was a close-up, but it appeared to have been enlarged, the manipulation making it slightly grainy, distorted enough that Reed had mistaken the man for himself. Distorted or not, Reed couldn’t deny that he carried this psycho’s genes.
God, how did Josie look at Reed with such love? Such pride? He was grateful for it—amazed by it—but it honestly eluded him how she didn’t cringe each time he showed his face.
His birth mother’s strength—the purity of her love—went beyond comprehension.
So yeah, he was part of this man. But he was also part of her, and that was the part he claimed with all his heart.
But why did Zach have a picture of Charles Hartsman? He set it aside, picking up the paper underneath it, and looking at the ones beneath that too. They were printouts, lists, transcripts of calls . . . all about the man who’d escaped a police manhunt twenty years before. What the hell?
He zeroed in on the dates, his gaze moving from one to the other, going back over the ones that looked familiar to him on a personal level. Confusion descended. His heart sped.
Reed heard footsteps and turned to see Zach standing in the doorway. His gaze moved from the papers in Reed’s hands to his face. He paused, assessing Reed for another moment before he took a deep breath, and stepped into the room, turning and closing the door behind him.
“You’ve been tracking him,” Reed said, disbelief clear in his voice. He placed the file back on the desk. “How?”
“My own digging mostly, law enforcement contacts in other countries willing to help off the books, a few private detectives over the years.” He walked to the other side of the desk and hitched one hip on the corner, turning toward Reed. Reed looked at the paper in his hand, scanning the dates, the locations. “These”—he gestured to the paper in his hand—“are what? Sightings?”
“Mostly. Yes.”
“You even have video of him?” He pointed at the slightly grainy photo. “This is an enlarged freeze-frame from video footage.”
“Yes. That footage was reviewed two days after a sighting that was reported in a small town in France. That was seven years ago.”
Reed released a breath, leaning against the side of the desk where he stood. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned this to me? We work together.” You’ve always treated me like one of your own sons.
Zach paused. “I didn’t think this was something you needed to involve yourself with, Reed. I didn’t want this to touch you.”
“Does Josie know?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “Or at least, she knows I keep track of sightings and that I do some remote hunting of my own. She’s never asked to go through the file. I don’t think she wants the particulars.”
Reed tried not to feel hurt by the knowledge that they’d both knowingly kept something like this from him. Secrets had been hidden from him all his life. He understood why, hell, he even appreciated it on a rational level, but the fact remained that he’d been excluded from the truth when he was a child, and he didn’t want to be excluded from information pertinent to his life when he was an adult. “It’s not your job to protect me from this, from him, anymore. Jesus. I’m a grown man. A police detective.”
Zach shook his head. “You weren’t being excluded, Reed. There’s simply nothing that concerns you directly.”
“Bullshit.” He looked at the paper, tapping his finger on one of the dates. “You think he was here, in the United States, on this date. That’s when I graduated from high school. Or here . . . I graduated from college that month and that year. Another U.S. sighting.” He pointed to another one. “And this one. This is when I graduated from the police academy. It’s when I became a cop.”
His eyes shifted. “I don’t have confirmation that he was in the United States, and absolutely zero evidence he was in Ohio. A lot of that is based on unsubstantiated information, some merely my own hunches—”
“Which are trustworthy and based on years of being a detective with a near perfect solve rate.