Page 21 of Paternal Instincts (Valor and Doyle #8)

Quaid

T he man wore a navy-blue polo with the FedEx stripes and logo on the sleeve and a ballcap with the same emblem on the front. His bespeckled beard and leathery skin put him in his fifties. He carried a white cardboard envelope under one arm and produced a handheld machine to collect a signature.

“Davis?” he asked, his tone flat and bored as he punched buttons on the machine.

I produced my credentials. “Detective Valor.”

That caught his attention. No longer running the gambit of his ordinary day, he stopped what he was doing and glanced up for the first time.

He gave me a once-over before he seemed to notice the stream of cars parked along both sides of the street, including two news vans, whose occupants were loudly debating crossing the property line to see what was happening.

“Um…” He plucked the package from under his arm and read the front. “I have a delivery for Davis. Needs a signature. If you aren’t Davis, you can’t sign. ”

“Who’s it from?”

He glanced at the envelope and shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

“What does it say when you scan it?”

With an irritable sigh, the man shuffled the package and signing device into one hand and unclipped a scanner from a loop on his belt with the other.

Staring at me and not looking at what he was doing, he scanned the barcode on the package and announced, “Says I don’t fucking know because they didn’t fill it in.

Is there someone here who can sign for this? I’m running behind.”

“I can.” Nixon appeared at my shoulder.

“You Davis?”

“Yes.”

“Sign with your finger.” He held the device screen toward Nixon and let him scrawl something that likely didn’t come close to resembling his signature.

Nor did the man ask for ID, so I supposed it didn’t matter if Nixon was a Davis.

So far as I understood, anyone could sign for a package, but this man seemed to want to be a prick about it.

The FedEx guy thrust the envelope at Nixon, but I took it instead, earning a glare from both sides. “Is there any way of finding out who sent this?”

“Not my job. You can call headquarters, but I doubt it. Best they can do is track it back to the depot where it was mailed.”

“Thank you.”

“Have a day,” the man said, returning to his running truck.

Nixon lost several shades of color as he stared at the envelope in my hands. Fresh tears surfaced but didn’t fall. “Is that…”

“In the house.” I didn’t want the media all over this.

The raging tempers had cooled upon my return.

An electric, anticipatory pulse took its place.

No one spoke. Everyone stared at me like I carried a bomb.

My stomach soured, not knowing what I was going to find.

Another note? Pictures of an abused child?

A dead child because we were too late for a deadline we weren’t given?

At least it was flat, so my fear of receiving body parts diminished.

Would it be a demand for money? A proper timeline? Instructions for a trade-off?

The possibilities were endless and daunting. I didn’t want an audience. I locked gazes with Jordyn across the room and motioned for her to follow me into the kitchen.

Nixon and Flynn rode my heels, and I stopped midstride.

“Gentleman, if you could—”

“No. I need to see,” Nixon said.

Flynn rubbed his brother’s shoulder. “Nix, why don’t we—”

“No,” Nixon roared. “I need to see.”

Reluctantly, I allowed them to join us.

Imogen appeared in the doorway. She glanced at her husband, at Flynn, who held her gaze for a long time, communicating something I couldn’t interpret, then at me. The apprehension on her face made her seem both years younger and decades older somehow.

Jordyn presented me with a pair of nitryl gloves.

I put them on and turned the envelope over, examining the exterior to be sure I hadn’t missed anything important.

Fingerprinting the exterior would be pointless.

The envelope would have likely passed through dozens of hands before landing on the Davises’ doorstep.

“We’re going to need an evidence bag,” I said to my partner. The first note might have been clean, but we could hope our perp slipped up the second time.

“I’ll get one from the car in a second.”

I located the pull tab and tugged it. The tear of ripping cardboard filled the room. Inside was a single piece of folded paper. Typewritten like before. Same font. Same structure. Three lines of text. No signature .

I said no police. Shame on you.

I did my own research and discovered the truth.

Give me one reason why you deserve him back.

I didn’t read it aloud, so the held-breath moment stretched as I remained silent, pondering each sentence and the possible meaning behind every word.

Jordyn moved beside me and read over my shoulder.

Still no timeline. Still no proper demand informing us how we could rectify the situation and get Crowley back.

What were we supposed to take away from this? What did this person want?

It was Flynn who spoke first. “What does it say, Detective? Nixon has a right to know.”

Imogen glanced at her brother-in-law, then at me, and I thought for a moment she would tell me not to read it, but she said nothing.

I read the note aloud, slowly and without inflection, not wanting to add dramatics to an already tense situation. They were words on a page, and I didn’t want to be the one to put meaning behind them.

It was the actions and reactions of the others that interested me most.

Nixon tried to keep a sob at bay, but it blustered out of him. “What does that mean? Oh god…” When Jordyn and I didn’t respond, he asked Flynn, blubbering over and over. “What does it mean, Flynn? Where’s my boy?”

Nixon’s brother embraced him, shushed him, and said he didn’t know.

Imogen stared blankly into the middle distance, her entire body taut and trembling. Without word or comment, she left the kitchen.

A moment later, the shrill sound of screaming filled the house. Jordyn, Nixon, Flynn, and I darted from the kitchen, following the sound. In the living room, shocked and startled family members stared at Imogen .

Red-faced, fists balled, and tendons protruding from her neck, she shrieked at the top of her lungs, not at anyone in particular, but in what seemed to be pure hysteria.

Nixon shoved past Jordyn and me, shouting his wife’s name. “Genie. Genie, baby, calm down. No, no, honey. The baby. You can’t—”

She spun on him the second he touched her shoulder, bellowing, “Get away from me. This is your fault.” Then, to her audience, “All of you, get out of my house. Get out. Get out right now.”

Another high-pitched wail emerged from her throat before she collapsed to her knees and sobbed into her hands.

Then, as though possessed, she twisted around and glared with the devil in her eyes at her husband, who seemed too stunned to talk and hid behind Flynn.

“Give. Me. Back. My. Son!” A final shrill cry shattered the day before slowly waning in intensity.

The last of her energy zapped, Imogen lay on the floor in a fetal position, hiccupping and crying.

Not a single person in the room moved, let alone breathed. Sparrow appeared in a different doorway with Zoey behind her. The poor girl looked like she’d seen a ghost.

My professional brain told me to monitor people and note actions and reactions. Manage the situation because it had spiraled out of control. My heart, on the other hand, begged me to scoop Sparrow into my arms and take her away from this horror movie shit show that had become her life.

I snagged Jordyn’s arm and hissed, “Get Imogen upstairs in bed. I don’t care how, but she needs to calm down before she puts herself into labor.”

Jordyn jumped into action.

I made eye contact with Zoey, who looked apologetic. Without words, I communicated that she should remove the child immediately. Sparrow didn’t need to see this.

To Flynn, I said, “Take your brother to the kitchen. Get him a glass of water. I’ll be there in a second.”

Before I started herding people out the door, which I didn’t want to do, I considered other options. We needed to separate family members, but first, we needed help.

I punched Aslan’s name into my contacts, not having the capacity to write him a text.

“Hey, hot stuff. I was just—”

“I need you.”

“Aww, I need you too.”

“No, I mean at the Davises’ house. Things are out of fucking control. Are you with Costa?”

“I am. What’s brought on the big boy words?”

“Pure fucking anarchy. Get Costa, please.”

When the phone switched hands, I asked, “Did you look into FedEx?”

“Yep. I was able to trace the package to the depot where it was mailed. Got off the phone with the supervisor not twenty minutes ago. He didn’t want to play nice, so I threatened to get a warrant.

He was more cooperative then. He said they could timestamp when the package was put into their system, but depending on how busy they were, it might not reflect when the package was dropped off.

Also, if the person sending the package didn’t disclose their personal information, which is not required, he has no way to discover it. ”

“Fuck. Camera footage?”

“Need a warrant, but he has one aimed at the front counter, and he’d be happy to provide it if we go through the legal channels.”

“Please make it happen. We got another delivery less than five minutes ago. I’ll snap a picture of the shipping label and send it to you once we’re off the phone. ”

“Roger dodger.”

“Is Aslan still there?”

“Yeah, you wanna talk to him?”

“No. Tell him to move his ass. Oh, and have him pick up a McDonald’s Happy Meal on his way. The chicken nugget one. Make sure he gets the toy.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll need verification. Did you say a McDonald’s Happy Meal?”

“Costa, I swear to god. I’m having a day from hell. Do not—”

“Never mind. I’m relaying the message verbatim.”

“Thank you. I gotta go.” I hung up, scanned the room, and took a deep breath as I mentally prepared myself for what needed to be done.