“Wait,” he said, snatching at my arm. “Do we know who these people are?”
“Does it matter?” I asked, not bothering to spare him a glance.
“Of course it matters. We need to know who we’re up against.”
I shook my head, jerking my arm out of his grasp. “She didn’t say, and I doubt she can until she verifies who they are.”
“There has to be some way we can find out.”
I walked through the panic room doors and into the tunnel. I had to get to the IT room. Surely Rob could find something on these people. I kept walking, not worried if Alec followed me or not. I had to get out in front of this.
“Would you stop and fucking talk to me?” Alec shouted.
I sighed in irritation and turned to him. “She said they were claiming to be his aunt and uncle.”
“Then we start searching the senator’s relatives.”
“It could be his mother’s relatives too,” I reminded him as we headed down the hallway. “But I thought we already covered all this the last time we went to court.”
“Maybe we missed something. We can have Rob do a more in-depth search for family members. Maybe it’s like a great aunt or something.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Do we tell Reid?”
I stopped walking and turned to look at him. I couldn’t stand the thought of telling Reid right now. I didn’t want to see the look on his face, not until we knew more. “I think we should wait. He’s really settling in here and he’s happy. I think telling him would only freak him out right now.”
I felt like I was unraveling right now. Everything was changing so fast. One minute we were becoming this family, and now we had no clue what would change in the next few days. Alec wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in close. I could feel his heart pounding against my cheek and I took comfort in that for the moment.
“I know this sucks, but we just have to take this one step at a time. If we freak out about this, Reid’s gonna know something is wrong.”
“I won’t let them take him,” I said, pulling back to look at him. “I can’t. He’s mine, Alec.”
“We might not have a choice.”
“That’s bullshit. We have the resources-”
“What do you want to do, Florrie? You want to take the kid and run? We can’t do that. Besides, there’s no guarantee that it’ll even come to that. For all we know, these people aren’t related to him in any way.”
“And what if they are?” I snapped. “The case worker told me that judges tend to side with relatives of the child. We’re not relatives. Are you going to let them take him from us?”
“Florrie, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve been his guardians for the past eight months. That has to count for something. Let’s just go find out anything we can on who’s petitioning for rights.”
I nodded, even though I felt like throat-punching him for being so naive. If these people were in fact his guardians, there was no way a judge was going to grant us custody.
✯✯✯✯✯
“What do you have for me?” I asked Rob as I stormed into the IT room.
“You know, just once it would be nice if someone said hello first. Ya know, Hey, Rob. How’s it going? Are you having a good day? Want some coffee?”
“You don’t drink coffee.”
“Still, it would be nice if someone fucking asked,” he grumbled, spinning around in his chair to stare at his computer screen. Rob was just like the guys. He had the same build and most of the same skills, but he was a computer geek at heart, which meant that he would always be on this side of the action.
I plastered a smile on my face and cleared my throat. “Rob, how’s it going? Want some coffee?”
“You forgot to ask if I was having a good day,” he said as his fingers flew over the keyboard.
“Fine,” I bit out. “Are you having a good day?”
He shrugged. “Eh. It’s okay. My sciatica is flaring up again.”
“You don’t have sciatica.”
He spun around and glared at me. “I could have sciatica. How the fuck would you know? This is the first time that you’ve asked me how I was doing.”
“I know because I pay attention when you talk, and you’ve never once mentioned sciatica to anyone.”
“Maybe I didn’t want anyone to know about my condition.”
“Right, because men are so good at keeping their pain a secret.”
“Hey, I’m not like those baboons you work with. I’m a real man that has feelings and shit.”
“Feelings and shit, is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, so where is this sciatica that you’re talking about?”
“In…my sciatic nerve,” he said, obviously not really knowing what sciatica was.
“Well, I sure as hell hope it’s not in your optic nerve, or we’d all be screwed.”
He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “My optic nerve. Right. Anyway, aside from that, I’m good today. And yes, I would like something to drink. I’ll take an Earl Grey, please, with milk and two lumps of sugar.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
Rob was a jokester at times, but the thing that made Rob so awesome was you were never quite sure when he was fucking with you. He could fool anyone into doing anything for him because he had a seriously dangerous poker face. He leaned back in his seat and stared me down. It wasn’t like he made me nervous or anything, but I was relying on him for all the help he could give me, so I didn’t want to piss him off either.
“Why would I fuck with you on this?”
“Well, it’s just that tea isn’t really very manly.”
“Oh, so I guess any man that works at Reed Security could only drink coffee that’s
