“Well-”
“I’ll have you know that some teas are even stronger than coffee.”
“I didn’t-”
“And there’s nothing wrong with having sugar and milk in your tea. British men drink it that way all the time and no one judges their manhood.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Now the British, they knew how to do shit. No matter what they’re doing, they have this gentlemanly air about them. A duel at dawn? Have a spot of tea first. Battle of the Somme? Tea always comes first.”
“Except for the poor bastards that didn’t have the luxury of drinking tea because they were on the front lines.”
“Well, yeah, except for that.”
“So, do you want the tea or not?”
“Gatorade,” he said before spinning back around.
“So, all this bullshit-”
“Yeah, I was just fucking with you. But I will take that Gatorade.”
I did my best not to punch him in the face before I left the room. After all, I needed him to help me and beating him up wouldn’t get me very far. I walked down to the kitchen and grabbed his Gatorade, then made my way back to the IT room, slamming the bottle down on his desk.
“So, now that you have your Gatorade and you’ve successfully wasted ten minutes of my day, do you want to tell me what you’ve found out?”
“I’m glad you asked,” he grinned. “See? Isn’t it nice when we all get along so well?”
I really wanted to punch him now.
“Alright, I did some digging into the social worker’s files. Don’t ask me how I found them. It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Fine.”
He turned to me and sighed. “Really? When I say not to ask, that’s when you’re supposed to ask.”
“But you just told me not to ask.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Florrie, I’m stuck in this fucking room every single day. I stare at a computer and have no friends around to keep me company.”
“You train with Knight every day,” I pointed out.
“And I very rarely get to speak with anyone about anything-”
“You run all the teams when they’re out in the field.”
“And it’s just so goddamn lonely here. Would it really kill you to ask how I got all this information that I’m not supposed to have in the first place?”
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that if I killed him now, I wouldn’t get the information I needed. “Fine. Rob, how ever did you get all this information that you’re not supposed to have access to?”
He nodded like he was fucking proud of me. “Sorry, doll, but that’s something I just can’t tell you. I’d love to, but it’s better if you don’t know, especially since it’s about your kid and it could get you in trouble with the courts.”
Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him.
“Now, I found the couple that is petitioning for custody of Reid-”
“And?” I said urgently.
“And I’m getting to it. Geez, you’re so tense. You should try and relax a little more. Maybe do some yoga.”
“Rob!”
“Alright, alright. Geez. I can’t tell you for certain that these people are Reid’s relatives. He has an aunt and uncle on his father’s side, but unfortunately, they had their identities stolen a little over a year ago. Someone did a real number on their lives. Credit cards were stolen and charges were blown sky high. There’s a second mortgage in their name. I mean, think of any fucking thing that someone could steal from a person to fuck up their lives and it’s happened to these people. It looks like they’re still trying to sort it all out.”
“Over a year ago, why is this taking them so long?”
“Well, it doesn’t appear that they knew what was happening immediately. A lot of this shit happened without them knowing, so by the time they caught on to what was happening, they were already truly fucked. And they didn’t have a lot of money to begin with, so getting this all sorted out is really a slow process. They’ve had debt collectors, lawyers fees, court fees…basically, they’re fucked.”
“And if they knew that the senator had a son that could help them out financially, they could make this all go away,” I surmised.
“Well, it could be. It’s hard to tell. They appear to be good people from everything I could dig up on them.”
“Yeah,” I snorted. “They’re good people that only want Reid because he can fix their financial problems. They must have found out that the senator’s estate went to Reid and decided to make a nice payday.”
“Could be,” Rob shrugged. “But that’s not something I can tell from looking at this clusterfuck. From what I can tell, around the time that the senator died, they were neck deep in figuring out this financial mess. They might not have even known about Reid.”
“That seems too convenient to me.”
“It might be,” he shrugged. “But until those tests come back, we won’t even know for sure if these people are really Reid’s relatives.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great. Those tests won’t be in for at least a week.”
I spun around to walk out of the room. There was nothing else I could find out about these people right now.
“Hey! That’s it? No thank you? No drinks at the end of the day?”
I flipped him off and kept walking.
CHAPTER FIVEReid
I watched Kayla train from where I sat doing my homework. I couldn’t help but think of what Alec had told me about practicing before I made any moves on her. Well, technically he said that I was too young for her, but I just couldn’t see how that even mattered. Age was just a number. I really liked Kayla, and if she liked me too, what did it matter if she was older?
“You’re staring, you know.”
I glared at Caitlin. She had been following me around a lot lately, probably because I was the closest in age to her. She was ten years old, and the oldest of all the
