“Just let me know if I can help.” Marianna was very obviously inspecting the little man. Marianna was a mother of seven children. Her eyes showed her compassion, immediately. “I’ll call home. Ed ran home to take a shower and grab some files not even an hour ago. I have a box of clothing to donate ready for the Brynlock clothing drive in our garage. I know there will be things in there he can wear from my boys, and I think Georgia has some things of Matthew’s in there as well. We’ll get him taken care of.”
“Thanks. I just…couldn’t leave him there to be forgotten about. They barely even checked my ID. Sturvin could have walked right in and taken him. Anyone could have. I just had to sign one form and he was free to go with me. Just like that.”
“Totally understand. He’ll be safe here, while we look for his cousins,” Marianna said as Shayna came up behind her.
“What’s up, Doc?” Shayna said as her gaze landed on the little boy. And the hot man at Miranda’s side. “Well, looks like you’ve been busy.”
“Heard you have, too.”
Shayna waved a report in front of her. “Who wants it? Here’s the deal. An adult print was found on top of the purple residue on Debbie Miller’s rear window. It was purple hard candy, by the way.”
“Did it match anyone?” Miranda asked. Shayna had that look in her big brown eyes that said she had found something. “Let me guess? Paul Sturvin.”
“Nope. But very, very close,” Shayna said. “Want to guess who? It came back to a ten card from Ft. Benning.”
“Military? Sturvin was never in the military. Who do we know in the case that has a military record?”
“Philip James Sullivan,” Shayna said. “Paul Sturvin’s identical twin brother.”
“The guy who was killed in an auto accident six years ago?” Miranda just stood there and gawked at the other woman.
“The very one. Interesting twist, isn’t it? I’ll let you tell Mr. and Mrs. Jones all about it.” She turned toward Tag, holding out the report. “Well, you’re new. Welcome to Crazyland. Here, Randi looks like she has her hands full.”
Miranda looked at Tag, as her mind tried to process what she was hearing. Paul Sturvin had visited Bentley weekly. Not just as the devoted uncle. No, he’d visited just like a parent would. “Just whose child is this?”
He smirked at her. “For the moment, lady, it looks like he’s going to be yours.”
75
Jac, Max, Dani, Whit, and that idiot Barnes were going over the reports they had one more time when Miranda walked in, a small child cuddled in her arms and a tall, gorgeous Black man in a severe suit at her side.
“Randi?” Jac asked. “Who…?”
“Meet Bentley Philip Sullivan. Paul Sturvin’s nephew…or son. I’m not entirely certain which. I found him in a group home a few hours from here. But we have a bigger problem. Has anyone spoken to Shayna recently?”
“What?” Max asked, taking the boy from Miranda like the experienced parent that he was. Within a moment, he had the little boy sprawled out on the couch and covered with his own suit jacket that Max had hung on the back of a chair hours ago. The child never woke. “Start talking.”
“I spoke with Shayna,” Miranda said, taking a sheet of paper from the man next to her. “Everyone, this is Agent Walker Taggart. He’s asked to observe this case, and Ed said that was ok. Apparently, Tag is on the short list to transfer to PAVAD. Poor guy is a friend of Knight’s, by the way.”
“What did Shayna find?” Jac asked.
“There was a fingerprint on top of the candy on the window. It came back to Philip Sullivan’s ten card from his time in the army. Whoever is out there, whoever has those girls, it’s not Paul Sturvin. And probably never has been.”
Jac stared at the report as she processed what Miranda was telling her with what Dani was working on as well. “Identical twins do have completely different fingerprints. And it explains the difference between Alabama and Georgia, like Dani thought.”
“We have an evil-twin situation going on here?” Dani asked, rolling her chair close to the little boy to look at him, compassion on her face. “So if this is Paul’s nephew, he’s Philip’s son. We won’t be able to tell via DNA, either.”
“We’ll probably never know for sure who the father of this child is—or Olivia and Ava Sturvin,” Whit said, making notes on his phone. He was an obsessive note taker.
“No, not with Paul and Philip being identical.” Jac tried to work things out. She stood, then walked to the board, studying the names and dates written there. She crossed out Paul Sturvin’s name beneath his photo and wrote Philip instead. “What if this isn’t the first family this man has killed?”
“Go on,” Max said. She looked back at him, noting how he was showing the stress of the last forty hours or so.
Jac both felt they were making progress—and still no closer to having Ava and Olivia safe. Her gaze landed on all the reports spread before them.
They’d been hitting this nonstop since they’d made it back to the conference room at seven thirty that morning. They’d worked until three a.m. before Max had had to call a halt for people to get some sleep.
“The woman who adopted Philip died fifteen years ago from carbon monoxide poisoning. What if it wasn’t accidental?” She shuffled through papers on the table and laid out Susan Sullivan’s death certificate. “Paul’s adoptive parents were both killed in a fire five years later. Arson investigation was inconclusive. The pair was elderly, and it was thought one of them left something burning on the stove. What if Philip left something on the stove, knowing what would most likely happen?”
“You’re reaching a bit,” Barnes said. He’d not exactly been helpful, but he’d had a few good
