Read Daniel for Free Online

She hooked up with him about the time
little O’Reilly was headed off to Paris.”
    He handed him the last thing in the
file. It was a birth certificate. He looked it over and frowned before handing
it back. “I’ve met the kid. He seems okay. What does her son have to do with
all this other shit, and why is he a part of your file?”
    “Look at the date. The date of the kid’s
birth. I don’t know much about kids and babies, but I know enough to know that
a woman in Paris can’t have a baby in North Dakota, and I’m thinking she was a
mite young to be having him.”
    The kid was going to be twelve in a few
weeks, and he’d said that O’Reilly had gone to Paris around the age of thirteen.
The boy wasn’t hers.
    “Whose is he? The sister?”
    Doyle shrugged. “Maybe.”
    “The boy calls her ‘Mom.’ Benny, she
called him Benny.” Daniel started pacing. “You think she picked up the boy
while she was there, don’t you? When she went to see her dying sister, she
picked up the kid and brought him back with her.”
    “Meagen delivered him, that’s all we
know for sure. She’d had a baby prior to her death, but there was no record.
When we went back to the hospital, they didn’t know any different, so we
figured she’d given birth and claimed to be her sister. She might have known
then her life wasn’t going to be long for this world.”
    “I don’t think it’s over, either.” He
sat down and told him about the phone call and the way her voice sounded. “I
think he or someone had called her just before I did the second time. From what
she begged me not to do, I think he threatened her and the kid. She begged me… him …not
to hurt the boy.”
    “That’s not good. Not good at all. The
little potter has no idea what she’s up against, and if Carver finds her, she’s
as good as dead.” Doyle picked up his phone, but before he dialed he looked at
Daniel. “Can you get to her? Talk to her? She’s going to need to have
protection.”
    “I’ll try. I don’t know how much help I
can be, but I’ll certainly try.”
    ~~~
    Reilly drove to the end of the drive and
saw a car parked across the road. She reached blindly for the gun lying on the
seat next to her as the door opened. When Mr. Hunter stepped out of his huge
black SUV, she nearly wept with relief. Then she got pissed.
    Getting out of her car without hiding
the fact that she was armed, she went to the gate and punched in the code. It
would open for her now and lock up immediately after she passed through the
gates. If someone touched the gates or tried to climb over it, she’d be in
trouble. There was enough voltage running through them to power a small city.
    “I’d like to speak to you. I know that
you don’t have any reason to like me, but—”
    “I don’t like you. You’re a liar and a
pushy man. I know I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that yesterday, but you
came at a bad time, and I was…nervous because I didn’t know you.”
    “Did it have anything to do with another
phone call? The one where you were threatened?” She turned to him, suddenly
terrified. She looked up and down the road to see if anyone was coming. “I can
help you.”
    She laughed. “Sure you can. Tell me, Mr.
Hunter, what is it you think you can help me with? My fashion sense? You do
have a great deal of it all your own. I don’t know anyone else that wears a three-piece
suit on the weekend. How about my finances? I have more money than I can spend
and, as I read last night, so do you. Could it be that you think I need your
legal advice? No, I have all that and more than I need now.”
    “I know about your son. I know he’s not
yours.”
    The world tilted around her. She didn’t
know how she ended up on her passenger seat but suddenly she was there and he
was telling her to breathe. How she was supposed to draw a breath again was
beyond her. And she knew that there was no reason for her to pretend that she
didn’t know what he was talking about.