See Jane Run

Part 4

If it was a regular adoption, Riley reasoned, there would be a paper trail. Unless her parents didn’t want anyone to know…

Her throat constricted. Her parents wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t just steal a baby—or adopt one and hide the records. They were rule followers, a by-the-book family. They would have told her if she were adopted.

Riley unfolded the birth certificate again, scrutinizing it, just as she had nearly every hour since she’d found it. If it were true—if her parents stole her—would the hospital have no record? Did the hospital destroy her record in an effort to protect itself? Riley felt sick and sweaty, but she didn’t want to be in that hospital for one minute longer.

She made a beeline for the automated glass doors and gulped greedily at the lukewarm, non-germ-infested air outside. She edged away from some smokers, and her heart seized when she saw a man peering at her. I know him—I know him—I know him, Riley thought, trying to shake her brain from its fog.

The train!

The second she remembered where she knew him from, he was gone, zigzagging across the hospital’s well-manicured lawn and into the parking lot. He threw a glance over her shoulder and caught Riley’s eye, his gaze so icy that she felt it zing through her.

Why was he here?

Riley considered flipping on her heel and asking Carla for a bed in the psych ward when her cell phone rang and nearly gave her a heart attack.

“Are you going to stand there all day or are you coming into the coffee place?”

Riley licked her lips, trying to pull her scattered thoughts back together. “Um, yeah. I mean, no. I’ll be right over.”

She crossed the street without looking and thanked God that her stupidity didn’t turn her into a hood ornament. She took several deep breaths before yanking open the coffeehouse door. She chanced a glance over her shoulder, expecting the train man to be right behind her, his nose pushed up against the window, but the sidewalk was empty. She turned, scanning the place for JD.

“Hey.”

He was sitting at a corner table, a spiral notebook open in front of him, its pages littered with his precise black scrawl. He pressed a coffee toward Riley and smiled. “It’s full fat. Extra whipped cream.” She took the coffee and tried to mirror JD’s smile. By the odd way he looked at her, Riley was pretty certain that her mirrored expression was a fun house one. She leaned over and sipped her coffee.

“Almond Roca?” Riley asked, letting the sweet warmth of the coffee slip through her.

“Shot in the dark,” JD said with a shrug. “So, did you get what you needed at the hospital?”

Riley bit her bottom lip then frowned. “Actually, no.”

“No? They didn’t have Jane’s medical records? How is that possible?”