Accidental Surrogate

Sinclair

As Cora sits on the bed with her sister, I meet my brother’s eyes above her head and nod towards the door. He nods as well, agreeing. He places a hand on Cora’s shoulder and gives her a little squeeze before heading to the door.

Ella turns towards me as I stand up, grabbing my phone and heading to the closet, but I speak to her mind–to–mind to let her know that everything’s fine as I quickly pull on some casual clothes. Take care of Cora, I say to Ella, trying to send warmth and support along with my words. We’re just going to go talk downstairs with the team.

Ella nods to me, with a little smile, and then when I meet Roger at the door we walk out together, closing it behind us.

As soon as the door is shut, we’re instantly in motion. “We need more information,” Roger says, striding for the stairs. “And we need a drawing of this man, if we can convince Cora to speak to a sketch artist – it could be incredibly helpful –

”

“That shouldn’t be difficult,” I agree as the two of us hurry down the stairs to my office, where a team of investigators worked through the night on the case. “I’ll have a trained sketch artist come by as soon as possible – I’m sure Cora will comply –” I pull my phone from my pocket and start looking through my contacts.

“Someone should contact Hank,” Roger murmurs, striding into the office and moving behind the, desk. “To let him know that she won’t be in to work anytime soon – we need her here –“

―

I pause, a little, in my search for someone who can contact a reliable and discreet sketch artist to look at Roger and raise an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t think you’d be showing such concern for Dr. Hank anytime soon,” I murmur.

Roger shoots me a dirty glance. “It’s strictly professional,” he murmurs, sorting through some papers on the desk and handing them off to the investigators to properly file. “And after last night, he knows something is up –”

“Does he?” I ask, looking at Roger fully now. “Hank was there last night? At Cora’s?”

”

my eyes. Can we not?” he asks, impatient.

I do so. Honestly, I could use a little distraction from waiting for someone to bust into my house to steal my child, and

seems to me,” I say after a moment, crossing my arms and thinking aloud. “That the best clue we have so far is the black robes. Cora said that several times – the man was consistently dressed like one of the Goddess‘ dedicated priests, but in black robes. That has got to

close to him, “Don’t you have someplace where

and that

touch with him yesterday in case he had come across anything useful in the past few months – but now that we have new

confirms, still

looking for?” I ask, working

searching. “With some…rare books. On the subject of the history of shifter religion.” He shrugs and turns the computer to me so that I can see a very old, very basic website that includes a description

then perhaps we can contact the people here. It’s a closed–stack collection but,” he

leaning over the computer and scrolling

kind,” he replies. “Hundreds of years of shifter religious history. If anyone’s going to have an answer about

will be them.”

looking back to my phone to

“What?!”

sketch artist,” I continue, looking up to meet

frustrated. I’m curious about this. Why does he suddenly not want to go with Cora? “I mean, what is Cora going

more details. It just means she didn’t tell us about them in the moment because she didn’t think they were important, or because she’s upset. If

his chair, nodding. I work hard to keep the smirk to my

sent Hank along with her, on the mission…he’s clever enough. Probably a good researcher, to get out of

a glance at my brother I see that he’s glaring at me, knowing precisely what it is that I’m implying. “Cora and I

I say casually, pressing a contact

coming down the stairs, the baby in Ella’s arms, presumably heading for