Because I Love You (19 page)

It wasn’t until the following Friday that we were able to research again. Between Jill’s mom asking her to help out at the store after school and Neil’s uncle forcing him to cut grass for customers before the season ended, there was no time for us to play Investigator during the week. So, after five days of tutoring sessions at home and trying to keep up on my schoolwork, I was beyond anxious to do something other than stick my nose in textbooks.

Unlike last time, we had the condo to ourselves the whole night. Jill’s dad was on patrol until 5:00 a.m., and Jill’s mom was traveling for some jewelry conference. While Jill typed away at her desk, Neil and I cozied on her twin mattress as he logged into Owen’s computer. Neil’s task: try to dig up information on Denver’s hospital employees from sixteen years ago. Like Jill, he typed random letters, numbers, and symbols into black boxes. I wanted to ask if there was something I could do, but my right hip was pressed against his left, and instead of cigarette smoke, he smelled like cologne. I bit my lip and breathed deep. His new scent was intoxicating.

My eyes widened.
I hope he doesn’t notice I’m sniffing him.

“Anything yet?” Neil asked Jill. She was still attempting to break the security walls on Bethlehem Family Service’s third party system.

“No. I don’t get it. They must’ve had a professional hacker set this up ‘cause it’s freaking complex. I think I make progress, and—
bam
. Another wall.”

“You know, if you’d show me how to use
your
programs, I might be able to dig up something on my end.”

After Neil had commented that Jill’s room looked like it belonged to a ten-year-old boy, she’d paid him back by refusing to share her hacking secrets. Owen’s laptop did
have some of the necessary equipment but nothing like Jill’s. I had to admit: Seeing Neil struggle was amusing.

“Yeah, well, next time, don’t insult Iron Man,” she replied.

“Fine. I’ll just fart on his face.”

Jill spun in her chair and pointed her finger at him. “You leave your stench on my bed, and I will crotch punch you.”

I laughed as Neil smiled. The two of them in the same room was like watching T-rexes slap fight—their heads were too big, and neither wanted to admit the other was the alpha. Or, in this case, smarter.

Not two minutes later, Jill exclaimed, “Yes! I’m in!”

Neil and I leapt off the bed—nearly toppling each other—to peek over Jill’s shoulders. She entered keyword after keyword until we narrowed the folders to all the babies born in my birth year. After a few more lines of code, she broke the password on the main folder for May and found all the babies born on the seventh. There were two of us.

“Well, this shouldn’t be too hard,” Neil said.

“That’s what she said,” Jill replied. “Wait.”

“Yeah, that didn’t work. Usually girls like it if—”

“Can we please look through the files?” I interrupted.

Both Jill and Neil smirked, then Jill unlocked the password to the first file. She really was a hacker genius.

“Male, African-American. Unless you’ve had a sex change and a skin replacement, I doubt that’s you,” Neil said.

I shook my head as Jill opened the other document. My heart sank. I’d seen it before.

“It’s the same one, the same birth certificate. Look”—I lifted the paper—“my parents’ names are even missing.” My shoulders drooped. We were never going to get any closer than this stupid paper.

Neil wrapped an arm around my shoulders and kissed the side of my forehead.

“If I can just figure out who was working at the time of your birth, I should be able to narrow down who handled your case,” Jill said.

Neil took the paper from me, set it on the desk, and led me away from her computer as her fingers started flying over the keys again. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Neil pulled me onto his lap. I rested my hands on his firm chest as he cupped my cheeks in his palms.

“Hey, we’re going to keep looking. We’ve just scratched the surface,” he said.

I nodded. There were still so many other avenues we could take to find a key to my past. But I still couldn’t help feeling that we were going to fail. That I was going to be no closer to discovering who I was. I had so many questions—who did I take after, personality-wise; did I have any brothers or sisters; why had they given me up; were they even still alive?

Neil kissed me as my bottom lip quivered, sliding one hand to the back of my neck and slipping the other into my hair. I leaned into him and let my sorrows and fears drown in his smell, his touch, his taste.

“Hey, you two. My bedroom is not available for hanky panky.” Jill quirked an eyebrow. “Come see what I found.”

Neil smiled against my lips as a blush rose in my cheeks, then I hopped off his lap and resumed my position next to Jill. A file was open on her computer.

“A payroll report?” Neil leaned closer to the computer. “That’s perfect.”

“It only shows me who was working that month, but when you break it down by position, there are only six case workers. One of them has to be Andie’s.”

Six people; that was it. And we finally had names, a place to start. My pulse drummed in my chest.

“Hopefully some are still living in the area. We’ll split the list and run searches on each person. Nice work, Pocahontas,” Neil said.

Jill glared at him. “Do you want to be crotch punched?”

He flashed her a grin and plopped back on the bed, pulling Owen’s computer onto his lap. With adrenaline forcing my energy level to ultra-awake, I sat next to him with a huge smile, ready to find someone who could tell me about my parents.

chapter nineteen

We didn’t stop until 2:00 a.m. Though we’d narrowed down who’d worked the month I was born, we weren’t able to dig up information about what cases they’d handled.

“Because the government’s so involved in adoptions,” Jill said, “these personnel files are ridiculously secure. It might actually take me a few days to crack these.”

I sighed.
Great
.

“I didn’t get much, either,” Neil said. “Of the six case workers, two are dead. I was able to find current contact information for the other four, but that’s about it.”

“You sure I can’t just hack the court’s files?” Jill asked.

“No,” Neil and I replied at the same time.

“It’s one thing to break into the adoption agency’s system. But going anywhere near the court’s is bound to set off immediate red flags,” Neil continued.

“And I don’t want you going to jail for me,” I added.

“Fine,” Jill mumbled, closing her laptop. “Where do the four live?”

“One’s in Seattle now, but the rest are still in Denver.” Neil waved three notecards in the air.

I squinted at her. “Why? What are you thinking?”

She shrugged. “Maybe we show up and tell them you’re thinking about putting your baby up and have questions about your own adoption.” Her hand shot into the air before I could correct her. “I know you’re not. But
they
don’t have to know that.”

Neil nudged my arm. “It’s a decent plan, Andie. If they agree to help, they might have access to old records. And if they don’t, we can keep doing what we’re doing.”

I bit my lip. But wasn’t it a law that they couldn’t share details of my adoption? I didn’t want to visit and get my hopes up, just to have them come crashing down. Still, if the person who handled my case
did
agree to talk with me, they’d be able to tell me more than a piece of paper could.

“Okay,” I said. “Who do we start with?”

Jill smiled, and the three of us dove into making plans—and didn’t stop until 5:00 a.m. After Neil left, Jill and I slept until noon. I groaned when I sat up. Between sharing a twin bed with her and not moving a single muscle the entire seven hours, my body was stiff and exhausted.

I checked in with Mom, then Jill and I proceeded with our agreed-upon plans. One of the four caseworkers happened to be a woman Neil did lawn work for—Regina Miller. She lived the closest, and Neil would be at her house today, ready to jump in if things got out of hand.

“She’s a class A bitch,” he’d said last night. He wanted to be there when we talked to her, so we decided to stop by her place first.

While I fixed my hair and makeup, Jill packed a duffel bag full of small, high-tech-looking devices from her closet.

“What are those?” I asked.

She jumped. “Oh. Uh, well . . . I just thought if she refuses to tell us anything, she might call someone to let them know we were there, like the person who handled your adoption.”

I raised my eyebrows and leaned toward her. “And?”

She cleared her throat then spoke super-fast, “And so I’d bug her house and record all her outgoing phone calls.”

My mouth dropped. “Jill, no. That’s . . . that’s a stupid idea.”

“How is that a stupid idea? It’s human instinct—you feel threatened, you call the most logical person. In this case, it’d either be her boss or the person who knows your parents. Either way, it’s a win-win. We’ll know who to talk to next.”

I pressed my lips together and clenched my hands into fists. We’d already committed a crime by hacking the agency’s files. Did we dare add bugging someone’s house to the list? Sweat coated my hairline as I bounced on the balls of my feet. What if we got caught? I didn’t want to see her go to jail.

But what if she was right? What if this was my only chance to uncover information about my birth parents? If I didn’t want to spend the next two years seeing my face in every blonde woman, I needed to figure out who she was now.

Ugh, this is wrong. This is so wrong.

I bit my lip, crossing and uncrossing my arms while Jill waited for me to make up my mind. I took a deep breath and shook my hands out at my sides. I couldn’t wait. I
had
to do this, whether I was comfortable with it or not.

I closed my eyes, exhaled, then opened my lids. “Okay. But eavesdropping on her conversations is
strictly
Plan B.”

With a smile, Jill zipped her bag, and I followed her to her car.

A little while later, after we parked across the street from our target’s house, I jumped from the car with a smile. Neil’s cheeks were flushed from his morning of hard labor, and though the air had a slight fall breeze, he wore just a T-shirt over his jeans. His dark hair was a mess, and he leaned against his rake, grinning. How come when I did yard work I looked like Einstein, but he still managed to look like he stepped out of a magazine?

“It’s about time you two showed up,” he said. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe you kept partying after I left.”

“Dude, the party
began
when you walked out the door,” Jill joked.

Neil’s grin grew. He wrapped an arm around me and kissed the top of my head. I tried not to notice the small line of skin peeking out from beneath the hem of his shirt as it rose. Or the red waistband of his boxers. My face warmed.

“So what do we need to know about She-Devil?” Jill asked.

Neil shook off the leaves that clung to his rake. “Other than the fact she’s screwing my uncle—who’s married, by the way? I hear she likes to make fur coats out of kittens and smack Girl Scouts over the head with newspapers.”

Jill laughed, and I shook my head.

“Thanks, Neil. That was super helpful.” I patted his chest before following Jill to the door.

Jill pressed the doorbell. My heartbeat was in my toes.
Please don’t turn us away. Please don’t turn us away.
A bead of sweat ran down the back of my neck, and my knees weakened. Jill grabbed my hand.

“Breathe, Andie.”

I squeezed her fingers and gripped my pants leg as Jill rang the doorbell again.
Come on, come on.
Someone turned the handle. My knees locked. Then the door flung open, and a woman resembling Cruella DeVille stood on the other side of the screen.

“What is it?” she snapped the moment her glare fell on us.

“Regina Miller, right?” Jill said. “I’m, uh, Jen, and this is Alex. She’s pregnant. We know you worked for Bethlehem Family Services, and Alex here had a couple questions about how your past clients are doing. We were hoping—”

“How did you come by that information?” Her dark eyes narrowed as she crossed her bony arms over her chest.

My hand tightened on Jill’s, and she flinched.

“Through a family friend,” she said.

“Right. Get off my porch.” Regina took a step back as Jill took one forward.

“Please, Ms. Miller, if you’d just give us five minutes of your time. See, Alex is—

“No. I’m not allowed to share information about my clients, and even if I was, I don’t want to talk to you. Now, leave before I call the police.” Regina slammed the door closed and locked the deadbolt.

My grip on Jill’s hand slacked as I stared at where Regina had once stood. My throat was on fire.
Had we really come all this way for nothing? Jill removed her hand from mine then tugged me from the stoop.

“I’m sorry.” Neil coaxed me down the stairs. “I told you she was a bitch.”

Once on the grass, I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned into him as we walked. He tightened his arm around my shoulders, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. What a waste of time.