Perfect Victim, The (34 page)

"Don't worry, I didn't expect you to stick around
—”

Without warning, he mashed his foot down on the brake. The truck screeched to a halt, jerking her against her shoulder harness hard enough to jar her teeth.

Fury simmered behind his eyes when he turned to her. "You either do what the fuck I say or you fire me right now!"

Addison stared at him wide
-
eyed, her heart pulsing against her ribs as she took in the display of anger
.
His jaw was clamped tight, his eyes flashing like heat lightning. "I'm not going to fire you," she said.

"That's not good enough."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be smart about this." His eyes cut into her brutally as he rammed the shifter into park. ''We do this my way or we don't do it at all. It's your call. What's it going to be?"

She stared at him, hating it that he'd rendered her speechless. All she could think of was that she wanted her old life back. She wanted to by safe. She wanted her days to be predictable. Her nights ...

Dammit, she didn't want him to go back to Washington.

"Addison, I'm trying to keep you alive, I know this isn't easy for you but you're going to have to cooperate."

"Then we're going to have to keep our relationship on a professional level," she managed after a moment. "I can't deal with you when ..." Her voice trailed when she realized what she was about to say. "You're complicating things for me. This is hard enough without that."

He looked out the windshield at the snowy landscape beyond. "All right. We'll keep it professional from here on out."

"Promise me."

"You've got my word."

Not trusting her voice enough to speak, she looked out the window. The last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of him. The last thing she wanted him to know was that he'd hurt her.

Perceiving her silence as acquiescence, he glanced once in the rearview mirror and pulled back onto the highway.

* * *

They arrived at the office of Talbot Investigations at noon. Jack sat behind the computer, looking bone-weary, but wired on technology, nicotine, and caffeine. Two days of stubble darkened his jaw. His ponytail hung loosely down the center of his back, flyaway strands of hair falling into eyes that were little more than red-rimmed slits.

"Morning, big brother," Randall said as he closed the alley door.

Addison walked into the office, taking in the odors of cigarette smoke and burned coffee. An opened quart of chocolate milk lay on its side next to the keyboard, a puddle of muddy ooze beneath its spout
.
The garbage can overflowed with paper, a half-eaten burger, and pages of handwritten notes. The surrounding floor was littered with paper, much of it creased by the thin tires of his wheelchair.

It was obvious Jack had been at it all night without respite. He looked dead tired. An uncomfortable pang of concern slid through her as she took in the dark circles beneath his eyes. At
-
the same time, his tenacity touched her
.

"Looks like you had a hell of a night," Randall said.

Grinning, Jack tamped out his cigarette. "You don't know the half of it
.
"

"Any luck?" Addison asked.

"Some
.
Adoption files are tough."

Randall walked over to the desk and picked up the quart of chocolate milk
.
Absently, he smelled it, then tossed it into the trash. "Anything we can use?"

"Maybe." Jack dragged a stack of computer printouts across the desk.

Randall straddled a chair. Jack leaned close to him and said something just out of earshot
.
Curious, and more than a little annoyed that they were discussing something about her case without including her, Addison came up behind them and peered cautiously over their shoulders
.

Jack pointed to the first printout, where he had concocted a haphazard flowchart. "I had five sources of information to work with that included the adoption agency, the hospital where Addison was born, the attorney who handled the adoption
,
the vital statistics office in Montgomery County, and the delivering physician. I knew from the start this wasn't going to be easy."

"I ran into problems with sealed records and confidentiality laws, as well," she interjected.

He nodded. "Exactly. So, I started with the easy stuff first
.
Namely the hospital where you were born."

Excitement zigzagged through her. .Months ago, she had, written to the very same hospital for copies of her records, only to have her request denied.

"I was able to hack into their historical accounts receivable records. I wrote some code and searched for the name Beckett. It came up with this." He handed a sheet of paper to Randall. "I thought it might be important."

Addison read over Randall's shoulder. Her heart kicked in her chest when she saw Agnes Beckett's name listed at the top of an emergency room invoice dated November of 1974.

Admittance time: 12:32 A.M.

Agnes Beckett

Age: 16 Female

Rt. 3 Box 72A Siloam Springs, Ohio

Sutures: $19.98

Emergency Room charge: $27.50

Attending physician: $60.00

X rays (technician) $46.50

Rape kit: $22.19

Total Due:
$176.17

Trepidation built in her chest as she skimmed the invoice. She was wondering how the information was pertinent when two horrible words registered in her brain.

Rape kit

Shaken, she stepped back. Blood pounded in her ears. Terrible knowledge ripped through her. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak.

She reached for the paper and ripped it from Randall's grasp, her eyes searching out the date. November 17, 1974. She'd been born in August the following year. Mentally, she tallied the months, her heart filling with dread.

She looked up to find both men staring-at her, knowledge spread across their faces like dirt.
They know
, she thought.
Jack dropped his gaze to the computer screen in front of him. Randall held her gaze and gently worked the paper from h
e
r clenched fist
.

"This doesn't mean anything, Addison," he said g
e
ntly.

'
The hell it doesn't." She wanted to scream in outrage. She wanted to shout that this was not how her life had begun. That she had not been conceived in an act of violence. “The tim
i
ng is right
.
”

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"Don't tell me how to feel
.
"

Before she could turn away, Randall caught her arm. "Don't do this to yourself
.
"

His voice cut through the sea of raging emotions
.
She tried to shake off his grip, but he held her securely. She raised a trembling hand to her face, rubbing the
spot
on her forehead where a headache had broken through
.

"Don't do what? Say out loud what we're all thinking?" she snapped.

"You don't know anything for certain at this point
.
"

“
There's a very strong possibility that I was conceived through an act of rape
,
and we both know it
.
"

He stared back at her, saying nothing. Addison knew him well enough to know he wouldn't lie to her
.
Not now. Not after everything they'd shared. She would have lost respect for him had he tried.

Randall shook the paper
.
"You may not like it
,
but this is exactly the kind of information we were looking for. We're going to use it to find th
e
son of a bitch who tri
e
d to kill you
.
Don
'
t lose sight of that
,
Addison
,
because
y
ou can't ch
a
nge the past
.
You can
'
t change what
'
s done
."

She blinked at him, wondering for the first t
i
me if she really wanted to take this any further, if she really wanted to know her root
s
. "That paper doesn
'
t tel
l
us who the bastard was."

"
If the police were notified
,
somebody made a report
.
"

Jack pulled his chair closer to the computer and his fingers danced across the keyboa
r
d
.
"There'
s
more information out
there. I've got another search ready to go. I’ll need a couple of hours or so to finish writing code. There are places I haven't even tried to access."

Shaking loose of Randall's grip, Addison turned to Jack. She felt as if she'd been forcefully knocked off balance by the news. "Was Jim Bernstein the attorney who handled the adoption?"

"His name came up a few times," Jack said.

She felt as if a giant piece of the puzzle had just fallen into place. "This ties everything together."

Jack nodded.

"And we're one step closer to finding the son of a bitch responsible," Randall reminded her.

Glancing up from the keyboard, Jack caught her gaze and winked. "And I'm just getting warmed up."

Randall watched the rearview mirror as he sped along the side streets of a residential neighborhood on the way to her apartment. Beside him, Addison gazed pensively through the window, her hands lying motionless in her lap.

She hadn't spoken to him since leaving the office. He supposed she was trying to find a way to deal with the information Jack had thrown at her like a bucket of cold water.