13
BECKETT
Age 16
“I always knew you could do something like this, Ry!” I said, flipping through the art portfolio in my lap. Riley was in the middle of his second art class at the local rec center, and it was clearly doing wonders for his confidence. The quality of his work was outstanding.
“I wanted to show you this one,” he said, batting my hands away so he could turn the pages until he found the one he wanted. “You recognize it, don’t you?”
It only took a second for me to know where his inspiration came from. “It’s the view from the window in our tree house.”
He beamed. “Yeah! It took me ages to get the trees right, but I think I did okay.”
“You did more than okay. These are amazing!”
A soft knock on the door caused us to glance up. Darren, one of the other foster kids, was standing there with a black and white ball in his hands. “Hey, want to go play soccer?”
I turned back to Riley only to see he’d closed his portfolio and was doing that hunching thing again, trying to make himself invisible. I hated it when he did that.
“Sure, I’ll be out there soon,” I said to Darren.
As soon as he was gone, I gave Riley a questioning look. “What was that about?”
Riley’s faced turned red and it took him a few seconds to answer. “I just don’t trust him like I trust you.”
I nudged him. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed. Your gift was meant to be shared, Ry. So, don’t hide it, okay?”
***
Riley had some orders he needed to finish, so I used the day to poke around looking for more clues about the heirloom’s whereabouts. I called a few of the contacts I’d made within a fifty-mile radius of Reedsport, asking if they’d seen or heard about any boxes similar to the one I was looking for and requested they call if they came across one. I browsed through popular online auction sites but ultimately came up empty-handed. It was frustrating to have made no progress, but I wasn’t giving up hope.
I thought back to the interview with Michael. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t been very helpful when I questioned him about the box. The only real answer I got from him was that he did have it in his possession when he left Amelia’s house, but he gave me nothing about what he did with it from there. The one thing I kept going back to from my notes during the interview was as cryptic as it was unhelpful.
“It’s under sourced,” Michael had said. But what the fuck did that mean?
I’d looked at the other officer in the room at the time, hoping he’d be able to decipher what the hell those three words meant, but he seemed just as confused as I was. I’d pushed Michael for another half hour, trying to get more information, but the man had been a brick wall.
I scribbled some thoughts on a piece of paper, just as a call came through my phone.
“Sanders,” I answered without looking.
“Hey,” Jake said.
“Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“That’s what I called to ask you. Mind telling me why you’re still in Reedsport?” he asked.
“What?”How’d he know?
“I’ve been by your place twice this week. Your neighbor said you haven’t been home all week and Tosh said you haven’t stopped by to see Harper either.”
“Oh. Well, I’m still working on the case,” I said lamely.
“Come on, Beck. You’re acting weird. What’s up?”
I absently thumbed the corner of the notepad on my desk, trying to decide how much to say. “I reconnected with someone from my past. We’re… getting to know each other again.”
“Boyfriend?” he asked.
