Lachlan
“I’m glad you’re both here,” Ethan said the second I answered Julia’s door.
He barreled into the house, everything about him agitated, a complete one-eighty from his usual put-together appearance. His eyes were bloodshot, blond hair sticking up every which way. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“We need to talk.” He headed straight to the kitchen island, dropping a large, expandable folder on top of it with a thump.
“Can I get you anything?” Julia eyed him warily. “Maybe water, since it looks like you’ve had plenty of caffeine?” She glanced at his trembling hand as he pulled a stack of papers out of the folder.
“I’m fine. I just...” He paused, drawing in a deep breath. “I think I’m on to something.”
“What’s that?” Julia slid onto the barstool beside him.
“Coffee?” I murmured against her cheek.
She gave me a quick nod, then returned her attention to Ethan.
“Since Agent Curran said not much came out of yesterday’s…meeting…” He offered Julia a sympathetic smile, “I spent all afternoon going through Claire’s research, hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Her system is, well… The only word I can think of is chaos. Not even organized chaos. Just boxes upon boxes of stuff in no discernible order. While it may have made sense to her, it’s made trying to figure out what she was looking into nearly impossible.”
“So you didn’t find anything?” Julia asked as I placed a mug in front of her. Then I sat on the other side of her.
“I said nearly impossible.”
With a grin, Ethan tossed what appeared to be a dorm incident report onto the island.
“What’s this?” Julia picked up the sheets.
“I have no idea how Claire got this, but she’d apparently started looking into reports of rape or sexual assault on and around the various college campuses where Nick attended undergraduate and graduate school.”
“Why?”
“She obviously had a hunch. One she didn’t share with me. But it makes sense. Would explain why she visited Nick and wanted to talk to him about his younger years.”
“What makes sense?” I pressed.
“Julia wasn’t his first victim. This woman was.” He pulled a photo out of his file and placed it onto the island.
I blinked repeatedly, shaking my head. “I think you’re confused, Ethan. That’s Lucy Shepard. One of the team’s owners.”
He nodded slowly. “When she attended Brown for undergrad, she met Domenic Jaskulski, which was where he received his first PhD at the age of twenty. Notice anything interesting about her statement to the RA of her dorm?”
Julia and I scanned the brief report, the contents all too familiar.
One spring night, Lucy Shepard, who was still Lucy Ellis at the time, went to Open Mic Night at a nearby coffee shop. She started to feel lightheaded and thought perhaps she was coming down with something, so she left early, walking the few blocks to her on-campus apartment. She couldn’t remember much after that. The next thing she knew, she woke up and it was morning.
And there was blood between her legs.
“Did anything come of this?” I asked, although I already had a feeling what the answer would be.
“Depends on how you look at it.” Ethan smirked, a victorious expression on his face.
Julia leaned toward him, eyes determined. “What do you mean?”
“Were criminal charges ever filed? I think we all know the answer to that.” He gave us a knowing look. Then he smiled slyly. “But something did come of it. Approximately two months later, Lucy Ellis became Lucy Shepard. And seven months later, a healthy baby boy was born.”
He tossed a photo of Daxton Shepard onto the surface. But he didn’t stop there. He then produced what looked to be a photograph of Nick during his twenties and placed it beside a current one of Dax.
“This is all conjecture, but I find the resemblance quite remarkable. Don’t you?”