Read MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel for Free Online Page A

greedily, but there was nothing there to hang on to. Garrett was tall, lanky, fair-skinned, with a full head of sandy hair. He had nothing in common with Jacko’s strong, stout build and dark skin. However hard Jacko looked, he could see no points of resemblance. Nothing.
    His wife, too, was tall and slender. Attractive without making much of an effort. There were a couple of shots of her on a hunting trip, holding a shotgun as if she knew how to use it. There were no photographs of her much beyond the age of forty. Felicity said she died fifteen years ago. Felicity had included her birth date—1951. She died at 50.
    He watched in a daze as the photos crossed the screen, and then— “Stop.”
    Felicity obediently stopped the carousel of photos.
    A family snapshot. Lee, his wife, a young girl standing between them, face scrunched up against the sun.
    Jesus. His mother. Looking…normal. Like any other teenager in the ’70s. Peering closely, Jacko could vaguely see his mother in the teenager’s face. The last years he’d seen his mother, she’d been grossly underweight, face heavily lined, prematurely gray hair falling out in clumps. Teeth ground down to black stubs because of the meth. She looked like shit, always. None too clean and on the lookout for the next high, no matter the price.
    This girl looked happy and energetic.
    There she was, in another photo, happily holding up a sports trophy. And another, on a horse in English riding gear. And another one, in a cheerleader’s outfit.
    What the fuck had happened to her?
    There were no photographs of the girl after her late teens. She disappeared from the Garretts’ lives. Alice Garrett aged ten years in each photo and then she, too, disappeared. Only Lee Garrett remained, looking older and sadder and more stooped in each shot.
    Jacko knew he’d just watched the breakdown of a family, and that was too bad, but he felt absolutely nothing. The faces meant nothing to him and his mother as a young girl was so unlike the woman he remembered, it was as if they were two different people.
    He studied Lee and Alice Garrett again, searching deep inside himself for some spark of recognition, but got absolutely nothing. They were two faces out of the 260 million adults in the US. He wouldn’t believe they had anything to do with him if he hadn’t recognized his mother. Barely.
    Wow. So what now?
    “You know, Jacko,” Felicity said gently. “Maybe you might want to contact that lawyer. From what I gather, the house and property are there, waiting for an heir. At some point, everything will revert back to the state.”
    Jacko stiffened. “I don’t need his money.” Fuck no. He was doing just fine. He’d saved a lot while in the Navy and ASI paid really well. And Lauren had inherited money from her mother and was earning more with her art. He didn’t need anybody’s money.
    “Not for the money. But because in that house, there might be some stuff that will tell you what you need to know. I understand you’re okay with your past but surely more information would be…helpful?”
    Damn right he was okay with his past, for the simple reason that he never ever thought about it. It was not a problem, no sir.
    Except for right now, with Lauren pregnant. He needed to be okay with this because he was not going to lose Lauren, and he was going to be a good father. If it killed him, which it might.
    Maybe Felicity was right. Maybe some more intel would be good.
    “Here, Jacko.” Felicity pulled a flash drive he hadn’t even seen from the side of Puff the Magic Dragon and handed it to him. He turned it over in his hand. It was tiny, and knowing Felicity, it wasn’t available on the market and it could probably contain files the size of the NSA’s. “All this info, including photos, is on this drive. I also sent most of the pertinent data to your cell. Call the lawyer. See what he says. Maybe when you have time, go down and see the house.” She paused a beat, looking