“Thanks, man.” The men exchanged numbers, and Luke walked up the driveway to Thad’s, well, Rose’s kitchen door. The officer hadn’t moved, and a wave of appreciation for the law enforcement community flooded through Luke. That man did not know him, and he didn’t know Rose, but it didn’t matter. He knew agents were being targeted, and he was going to do what he could to keep watch.
Rose opened the door before he reached it. She looked him over with a critical eye. “Good grief, Luke. You look like something the cat dragged in. What’s going on?”
He entered the familiar room. There was a large island with barstools all around. Muffins arranged on a tray. Coffee in a pot. A little cow filled with heavy cream, even though Rose drank her coffee black. Luke knew his way around this kitchen as well as his own. Maybe better.
But somehow Thad’s absence was everywhere. In the missing shoes by the door. The missing jacket on the hook.
“Are the kids at school?” Rose wouldn’t tolerate shoptalk around the kids.
“Yes. Talk, Powell.”
She poured him a cup of coffee, complete with the perfect amount of cream. He took a seat on one of the stools and talked. He started with Monday morning and kept going until he’d filledher in on the events of last night and even the funeral arrangements for Jared. “I didn’t catch the details of Michael’s funeral arrangements,” he concluded.
“It’s looking like next week.” Rose topped off her cup of coffee and perched on the stool at the end of the island. “I’ve been at Karen’s most of this week.”
Luke dropped his head. “I should have been there too.”
“Nonsense.” Rose slid the tray of muffins toward him. “We don’t need any more dead men. Or women. How’s Leslie holding up? How’s Tessa?”
Luke took a bite of a muffin and studied Rose. Rose was the consummate professional in everything she did, whether it was hunting down terrorists or making a pound cake. If Rose Baker did it, it was going to be done right. But one thing Rose Baker was not great at was small talk. That had been Thad’s area of expertise.
She was making a valiant effort to disguise it, but he knew her too well. He swallowed, took a sip of coffee, and ignored her question. “What’s going on, Rose?”
“I’m trying to catch up on what’s happening. Jacob must have some kind of lockdown on the media, because there’s been very little news coverage.”
“Rose.”
“They’ve messed with my family. Again. I’m angry.”
He didn’t doubt that she was angry, but an angry woman hadn’t called him this morning.
Her expression was unreadable as she reached for an envelope resting on top of a basket in the middle of the counter. She handed it to him, then settled back on her stool. “This came this week. I’m not sure when. I forgot to check the mail. Thad always did it on his way home. I never could remember to do it when he was gone. He’d call me and ask me if I’d checked the mail...”
Luke didn’t want to interrupt her reminiscence. She had a faint smile on her face, and he didn’t think this memory hurt too much.
“I thought it was junk mail, but it felt too thick for that, so I opened it.”
Luke glanced at the address on the envelope. An ancestry site? He pulled the folded pages out and scanned them. “Thad did an ancestry search? With his DNA?”
That did not sound like Thad Baker. Thad had expressed concerns on more than one occasion about the potential dangers of handing over your DNA to a third party.
“I know. I didn’t believe it either. But then ... well, look at it.”
Luke had never looked at one of these reports, so he took his time familiarizing himself with the results. Thad’s name was there. Information about his ethnicity was prominent. His great-grandmother had been Korean. His grandmother had been African American. His mom had been Swedish. Thad had joked that he was the entire melting pot in one person.
Luke continued scanning and on one line, hundreds of tiny pieces fell into place.
He traced the words. The name. The lines going back to Thad’s grandfather, connecting Thad to a young Korean woman—his distant cousin, Park Mi Cha.
15
LUKE READand reread the words.
“This has to be the woman Thad was with. It matches. South Korean, thirty-one years old, female.” Rose’s voice was tight, steady. Daring him to argue. “She was his cousin.”
There was no proof that this was the woman Thad had been meeting with, but what were the odds that it wasn’t her?
A wave of relief flooded through Luke. He had known it all along. Thad Baker hadn’t been cheating on his wife or his country. Luke had held firm in his belief most of the time, but every now and then, he’d had his moments of doubt.Forgive me, buddy. I’m so glad I wasn’t wrong aboutyou.
