Colton Christmas Protector. Beth Cornelison
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the beveled edge of Hugh’s desk as he pondered the circumstances surrounding his missing father. “Or we haven’t provided the right incentive to make that someone talk.” He opened a desk drawer and rifled through the files, felt the bottom of the drawer for anything suspicious.
They worked silently for another minute before Pen glanced in his direction. “Do you suspect foul play, or is it possible he left on his own terms, that maybe he doesn’t want to be found?”
Reid twitched a grin. “Yes.”
She frowned at his evasive answer, then shook her head and continued her searching.
“Anything is possible. The truth is we really don’t know.”
Reid looked on the underside of the desk for a file taped to the unfinished wood. Nothing. He gritted his teeth. Hugh Barrington didn’t strike him as the cleverest man. Devious, perhaps. Intelligent, yes. But the man had a twenty-five-year-old passcode on his house security system. Surely Reid could figure out where Hugh might have stashed incriminating information. If there was any to find.
And he believed there was. Because despite how things had gone down in the last months of his time on the police force with Andrew, he trusted his partner’s intuition and insights.
Pen climbed to her feet, abandoning the window seat, and moved down the wall to another bookcase. “But you’re a cop, Reid. Surely you have some gut feeling about what happened to your father. Haven’t you done any investigating on your own?”
He snorted. “I was a cop. I’m not privy to all the details of the case. The family knows some, but not all of what the detectives have learned. They have to keep a few tricks up their sleeve to stay a step ahead.” He moved on to a bottom drawer, big enough for hanging files. The drawer rattled but wouldn’t open. A locked drawer. Not uncommon, all things considered, but...
He felt the underside and checked the smaller top drawers for a key. Nothing. The matching file drawer on the opposite side of the desk slid open easily, and Reid walked his fingers through the contents of the drawer, scanning tab labels. “All that said, I—”
His gaze snagged on a file with the heading Penelope. He stilled, his line of thought forgotten. Furrowing his brow, he pulled out the file and flipped it open. The file was full of legal documents. A few medical records. A picture or two.
The last document was a petition for adoption. Hugh and his wife had signed as the adoptive parents and two names were scribbled on the lines for the birth parents. He blinked and reread the opening lines.
We the undersigned do permanently relinquish all claim and parental rights for our biological child, Lisa Umberton, to Hugh and Constance Barrington of Dallas, Texas...
His breath snagged in his chest, and the thump of his pulse grew in his ears. With fumbling fingers he flipped back to the front of the file to the first documents. A court order to legally change Lisa Umberton’s name to Penelope Lisa Barrington.
“You what?” Penelope prompted, dragging his attention away from the file. Her expression shifted when she glanced at him. “Reid, what’s wrong? Did you find something?”
Uncertainty and shock fisted around his lungs. He swallowed hard and scrubbed his cheek with his palm before stammering, “Uh, no. N-nothing...relevant.”
Did Pen know she was adopted? He thought back through the many meals he’d shared with Andrew and his wife through the years, game-day parties and birthday celebrations. Had she ever mentioned being adopted? She’d talked about how hard her mother’s death had been on her, how distant she felt from Hugh, how alone and out of place she’d felt in the large, sterile home growing up. She talked about her envy of Reid’s large family, how she’d hated being an only child.
But she’d never mentioned adoption.
“Reid,” Pen said, a note of excitement in her tone. “I found a safe.”
Reid hurried over to where Pen stood, anxiety lining her brow.
Sure enough, behind the row of law manuals, she’d discovered a false wall panel that when opened revealed a safe.
“Do you think you can get in it?” he asked.
“I’m sure gonna try.” She rubbed her hands together and twisted her mouth in deep thought. “We’ll start with birthdays.”
While she began testing different combinations, Reid stuffed the file on Pen’s adoption into the waist of his jeans at his back and pulled his shirt over it to hide it. He moved over to where Pen stood, his gaze riveted on her slim fingers delicately adjusting the safe dial.
He held his breath, as much from anticipation as so he could listen in the near perfect silence for the snick of the lock’s tumbler.
When the telltale click came, he touched her arm. “Stop. Did you hear that clink?”
She cast a quick side glance, then narrowed her eyes on the dial. “Twenty-one. The first number is twenty-one.”
“Can you think of any significance for that number?” he asked. “Maybe you can come up with the other numbers, if you can think of any relevance for twenty-one.”
She drew her bottom lip into her teeth and furrowed her brow. “It’s not his birthday or anniversary. Nor my birthday. Or Nicholas’s.”
“Well, try turning the dial slowly the other way and let’s see if we hear the next tumbler click.”
She nodded and leaned close to the safe as she turned the combination dial slowly to the left. The dial went completely around without another giveaway snick.
He gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Keep trying.”
She angled her gaze to his hand, then raised a dubious look to him. “Back up. You’re crowding me.”
He raised both hands, palms out and took a step back. “Sorry.”
Then, while she worked, he had an inspiration. Turning his back to her, he pulled out the adoption file and cracked it open. With his gaze, he scanned the document on top until he found the date her adoption was finalized. The date she came to live with the Barringtons. August 21, 1987.
One month and a few days after she was born.
He hid the file under his shirt again and faced her. “Try eight with the twenty-one. Before or after. Then...” The dial had no eighty-seven. The numbers stopped at 50. “Then eight again and seven.”
She faced him, her head cocked to the side. “Why? What do you know about those numbers?”
That the digits meant nothing to her was more evidence she didn’t know about her adoption. He’d have to think long and hard about whether he would tell her about his find. For now he downplayed his suggestion. “Just a hunch. May be nothing.”
When she continued to question him with her dubious glare, he flicked a hand at the safe. “Let’s go. We need to hurry and get out of here before someone finds us.”
She huffed her acquiescence and spun the dial slowly to the combination he offered. Nothing happened when she tested the door, and she gave him a so-much-for-your-idea look.
He returned to her side, nudging her out of the way with his hip. “Let me try.”
He tested the combination again, turning the dial the opposite direction to start. And heard encouraging clicks as he progressed through the pattern. When he tugged on the safe door, it swung open.
She made a little grunt of surprise, then moved forward to peer into the hidden lockbox. “You will be telling me the significance of those numbers later.”
At the front of the deep compartment were the expected jewelry boxes. When they opened the first box they found a diamond and sapphire choker