Sixth Grave on the Edge

“Are you going to be mad long?” I asked him.

He ratcheted again, refusing to meet my gaze, so I let it drift over the front of the car to his spread legs, lean and powerful, his slim hips crafted to perfection, and his rock-hard waist, rippled and taut. His T-shirt had ridden up to reveal several inches of deliciousness above his jeans, and my mouth watered in response.

“Which part are you mad about?” I asked, realizing he could be mad about any number of things. I tended to rack up the shit-list points.

He finally spoke, drawing my attention back to him. “You are investigating what you think was my kidnapping.”

That was what he was mad about? Wait, did he just say—? “What I think was your kidnapping? You mean, the baby that was kidnapped from the Fosters wasn’t you?”

He put down the ratchet and picked up another, equally foreboding tool. “Yes, it was me, but I was hardly kidnapped.”

I leaned closer to him, trying to see him past the engine. “What do you mean?” My thoughts staggered into each other as I reviewed the case in my mind. “I don’t understand. You weren’t kidnapped?”

“Not that time.” The car dipped with the pressure he was putting on her.

“Reyes, please explain. Were you kidnapped from the Fosters or not?”

“It doesn’t matter what I tell you. You’ll take that information and do whatever you want with it. You never think about the consequences of your actions.”

“You are so wrong.” I lowered myself onto my knees and bent to look at him under the car. His biceps strained against the thin fabric of his T-shirt as he worked. “That’s all I consider. I do what I can to help—”

“Strangers,” he said, turning the wrench so tight, the car dipped again. “People you don’t know. You don’t think about the people who are closest to you. What your actions could do to them.”

I was appalled that he would even say such a thing. “Do you think I don’t care about my family? My friends?”

“I think you care for too many. You’re spread too thin. You take on too much, risk too much, and you ca

He was changing the subject on purpose, bringing up an old argument to urge me off the trail of his kidnapping. “Reyes, were you abducted from your biological family or not?”

Breathing hard, he lowered the wrench and finally looked at me, his eyes glittering in the artificial light. “Yes. I was.”

“So, the Fosters are your biological family. The family you chose to be born with on earth?”

“No.” He went back to work, and I pressed my mouth together, struggling for patience.

“So, the Fosters’ child was abducted, but he wasn’t you.”

He squinted as he struggled with the car. “Wrong. And wrong.”

I found myself mesmerized by his actions for a moment. The shadows between his muscles shifted every time he flexed. “Okay, so if this is opposite day, the Fosters’ child was not abducted and—” I strained to think about how I’d put it. “—and it was you. You were the Fosters’ kid.”

“Closer.”

I threw myself onto the pavement as dramatically as I could manage without incurring injury. “Oh, my god. I will give you a million dollars if you will just tell me.”

He examined the wrench thing he was holding. “You don’t have a million dollars.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling onto my back and patting my pockets. I brought out what I did have: three ones, some spare change, and a watermelon Jolly Rancher. “I’ll give you three dollars, fifty-two cents, and a Jolly Rancher.”

His mouth softened as he gave me his full attention. “I was going to say no, but since you threw in the Jolly Rancher.” He scooted out from under the car and stood before helping me to my feet. “If I tell you, will you give me your word on something?”

“I’ll give you a lap dance. On your lap,” I said, shaking out my hair.

“Deal. I wasn’t abducted from the Fosters.”

I swiped at my butt, but stilled when he continued.

“The Fosters were the ones who abducted me.”

As I stood gawking at him, he lifted out the droplight and closed the hood of his car. While this was nothing like the times I’d tried to get him to open up about his childhood with Earl Walker, the monster who raised him, I could tell he did not especially want to talk about this part of his life either. He wiped his hands on a rag, completely ignoring the fact that he was covered in dirt and oil. He defined the word

sexy

.

I stepped to him, put a hand on his arm to get his attention. And, well, just to touch his arm, because damn. “Can you explain? I don’t understand.”

He studied the rag as he spoke. “I’m not a reaper. I can’t remember everything from my birth on like you. But from what I’ve been able to gather, Mrs. Foster abducted me from a rest area in North Carolina.”

“North Carolina?” I asked, taken off guard.

He nodded. “I think it was a crime of opportunity. She’d just found out she couldn’t have children. She and her husband were driving home from yet another doctor’s appointment. My mother’s car overheated. She pulled off at a rest area, and since I was napping in the back, she locked the car and walked five feet to get the water hose. When she came back, she opened the door to check on me and cover me with a blanket. She forgot to lock it back. Mrs. Foster was watching the whole thing from her car as her husband used the facilities. She took it as a sign from God that I should be hers. Any mother who would leave her child alone like that … She couldn’t believe that a mother so undeserving of a child could have one while she could not. As my biological mother was behind the hood, filling the water reservoir, Mrs. Foster walked up, opened the door, and took me. It all happened so fast. My mother stepped around to check on me again, and I was gone.”

He was talking as though he’d read it from a police report. “But you know, then? You know who your biological parents were?”

“Yes. As I got older, I started remembering more and more. Most of it didn’t come to me until I was in prison, but slowly I remembered their names. That was it. That was all that came to me.”

“Then how did you put all of that together?”

“I hacked into the FBI database and read the reports.”

“You hacked the FBI from prison?” When he simply lifted an arrogant brow, I shook my head, astonished. I’d forgotten how good he was at those things. “What happened after that? If Mrs. Foster abducted you, why did she then turn around and … and, what? Have someone else abduct you back?” I struggled to understand. “That makes no sense.”

“It was one of those cases where everything just kept going wrong. After Mrs. Foster took me, she convinced her husband it was meant to be. But they could hardly just show up with a three-month-old baby. So they left the state, moved around for a bit until they ended up in Albuquerque, which was weird on a whole other level.”

“Why?”

“Because my biological parents were supposed to move here. It was why I chose them. Then, after I’m abducted, I end up here anyway?”

I leaned against the thick lamppost. “That can’t be a coincidence. What happened next?”

“The Fosters were here for a while. They’d met the neighbors. Joined a church. Started making friends. But Mr. Foster’s family started getting suspicious. They wanted to see him. They never liked his wife and were worried she was dangerous, so they pla

“They just … up and sold you? Like, on eBay?”

“That is one piece of the puzzle I haven’t quite figured out yet. Maybe Mr. Foster met someone who helped them. Who knows? Either way, I think the plan was just to sell me and be done with it, but a neighbor saw a suspicious-looking man leave out the back door with me. She thought I was being kidnapped, so she called the police. They showed up, the Fosters panicked and said, yes, their baby was gone, and the rest is history.”