Page 21 of Old Secrets

I laughed at my husband and went back to work trying to find out what else I could dig out from the files destined to forever change our lives.

FIVE

“I don’t know what I’m hopeful for.”

With the awareness that not even my age was correct and I was actually at least ten years older than I’d believed, I reset my investigation, threw out everything I thought I’d known about myself, and I started again.

This time, after making use of the plane’s phone and a helpful Inquisitor in the United States, I began with the infant me, aged somewhere between six or seven years old while being locked in the body of a newborn, arriving in the United States. Airport records confirmed I had been brought on board a plane, and in the holy grail of investigative work, I had been accompanied by a Tibetan woman. Her name and appearance didn’t match mine, but the FBI had information on her, as she possessed a work visa to help bring children being adopted into the United States. They’d kept track of her comings and goings.

The woman lived, she had taken up residence in Montana after obtaining citizenship, and someone would be knocking on her door at a reasonable hour to learn more about her work.

As part of her visa conditions, she’d submitted a list of all children brought into the United States along with complete copies of their records. Every scrap of paper that had come with the child had gone into an information vault. Someone had made a note my file had included a rather lengthy series of pages.

The Inquisitor promised to get the records pulled, informed me he would call me back, and hung up.

Finally, progress. I placed the phone on its hook. “Jake.”

My husband looked up from his paperwork. “Yes?”

“The FBI has the records of my first adoption, when baby me, already probably six or seven years old but still a baby, had been brought into the country with a lot of paperwork. There is a woman who escorted me, and she played by the book. Because she handled immigrant children, she submitted everything to the government. There was a note with my transport she had submitted a thick stack of paperwork.”

“You started at the beginning, looked for the missing links, and found a hit?”

I pointed at the phone. “While you were reading, I called the Inquisition night staff and asked to see if we could track the airplane that had brought me into the country. The records were intact, and with the right date frame, he was able to get a hit. The escort was listed, as the tickets had been bought in a pair. The government’s notes confirm that couple was my adoptive parents. We have an actual lead.”

“Good work. Are you hopeful that those papers are about your species?”

“I don’t know what I’m hopeful for,” I admitted. “I’m more hopeful we might find out a motive.”

“You’re beautiful, and every man with functioning eyes wants you to be his wife. But I have won, and all other men are surely jealous of me.”

A laugh escaped before I could stop it. The reality of my life before Jake had been sad and painful, but day by day, I healed from the whole mess of it—even the parts Jake held responsibility for. No, especially for those parts.

Together, we thrived.

We had needed to fall before we could fly.

“No, all other men are relieved they don’t have to deal with the mess that is me,” I informed him. “There is a significant problem, though. It’s possibly my infancy lasted between eleven to thirteen years, and I’d lived in Tibet or China somewhere for the first six or seven years of my life. Yet I came into the United States appearing to be a newborn. In good news, putting up with me comes with benefits, assuming you can conquer your current set of challenges. You should, eventually. I’m sure you’ll manage somehow. It might leave me waiting a while, but I’ll suffer through.”

“It’s like you have this little switch, and sometimes, you decide you must be as absolutely difficult as possible. It’s the same switch where I need to use the cuffs so I have an intact throat when you’re finished with me.”

I shrugged as he spoke the truth. “I’m honestly hoping the paperwork offers some clue as to what my issue is, what sort of things I need to do should I happen to have a litter, and so on. I have made an important parental decision, however.”

“We’re making parental decisions already?”

“Yes. The pack has to babysit the litter so we can escape to do our jobs long enough to pay for having entire litters. And if the litters come in groups of three to five, we are not having additional litters for like twenty years. There’s no way we can add to the litter for at least twenty years. My infancy lasted over a decade, Jake.”

“How long are you going to be fertile for in order for this plan to work?”

“At the rate of my delayed development, I predict I will maintain fertility for at least a hundred years. Humans typically have at least twenty years of good fertility, and I seem to age somewhere between four to five times slower than a standard human, if my infancy is any indication. I flew through adolescence, though. So maybe I’ll fall over dead tomorrow from old age.” I allowed myself a smirk. “I really might be a cuttlefish.”

“You’re paying for that comment,” he informed me. “I have made my first parental decision. We will have a risk of litter every time you make some sort of comment indicating you might fall over dead from old age.”

Damn. “If you bust me on that, we’ll be swimming in children, Jake. I’m never going to stop. You make these irritated expressions, and your eyes flash gold. All this does is encourage me to do it some more.”

He rolled his pretty brown eyes, which were streaked with the wolf-gold I enjoyed. “I stand by my declaration. If we end up swimming in children, it’s entirely your fault for making those comments. Make them at your own risk.”

I matched him eye roll for eye roll. “Empty threat with our current issues.”