Dollar Runaways

Chapter 27: Aha!

AGENT KLINE WOKE up at six in the morning out of habit on Saturday morning. As he aged, he found himself facing the fact he could rarely sleep in anymore... Even with the kids no longer kids, he just couldn't do it. His wife rolled over and noticed him awake, "Go ahead and go do whatever it is," she told him, kissed him, and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

'Gee thanks honey,' he thought with a smile. She knew him, and though she never pried much, she had some of the details out of him on the case. He had long ago learned that she was a confidant to whom he could vent as needed. Life was too short to keep secrets from his wonderful wife... she knew not to ask too much though.

That decided, he rolled out of bed, shaved, and then threw on a pair of slacks and a polo shirt since he was technically off-duty on the weekends. He drove into work and found his parking space before heading upstairs to the office.

'Okay, she most definitely disguised Tony as a girl... But even with that I haven't seen any sets of ladies with daughters that look right...' he thought to himself. 'She's not buying things for an eleven-year-old,' he thought a moment later. He looked at the details from the file and on a whim looked at the height and weight information again. A few minutes later he thought, 'Okay, Tony is exceptionally small for his age... Not surprising with the short mother and the midget asshole he has for a father...' He stared at the list of things that he had been able to see her buy from the screen and thought, 'Okay how young could he be by his size...' Their own children had been a little bit off the beaten path with their growth spurts and he remembered growth charts being something the doctors discussed with them.

He pulled up Google and soon found the CDC had a handy set of growth charts. He clicked on the 'Boys 2-20' and immediately backed out and found the girls one. 'Okay... He's four feet and an inch according to his medical records...' he looked at the chart and thought, 'Okay, so at forty-nine inches he's anywhere from being a six-year-old to a really tiny ten-year-old... But the average size of a seven-and-a-half-year-old...'

He looked at the chart again and checked the boys' chart just on a whim, 'Worse for the poor kid,' he thought, 'six to being less than ten...' You had to really feel for the kid being so short, but with his parents as short as they were it wasn't much of a surprise. He'd definitely drawn the genetic short straw. 'Okay, so the kid would absolutely be embarrassed and hate it... But they could pretend he was around seven or eight and no one would probably be the wiser...'

He went back and looked at the latest picture of Megan that they had. She looked haggard and tired in the picture. While she was smiling, he could see the signs of abuse in her face even in the photo. 'Okay... Besides that, what is there in her face...?' he asked himself. 'Maybe she would look younger too?'

It was like a jigsaw puzzle of pieces coming into play and he suddenly moved back to the airport footage. He practically jumped up and down in his seat as he saw it. A lady he had dismissed as being too young, with a daughter too young, and the right car seat, it had to be her!!!

'Okay, now where did you go?' he asked. Now that he knew which one she was, he followed her out to a taxi where they piled their suitcases in and climbed in. 'Nothing about them would have given them away...' he thought to himself. 'They're probably pretty safe from recognition,' he admitted. The footage didn't give him any high-resolution stills of their faces, but he got something halfway decent on their new hair color. The dye must have been red as Megan's was full blown beautiful red and Tony's looked almost like a strawberry blonde. He made a pretty cute looking girl and his hair was more than long enough to be convincing. His mother looked like she was ten or more years younger as well.