Page 72 of The Dark Before Light

I should be taking this time to review the latest report on their investigation into the phone call. Sven’s been trying to talk to me about it for days. But I keep blowing him off. I’m too distracted. Something else dominates my thoughts—someone else.

Setting down my coffee, I pull the folder onto my lap and open it. The first page is a list of the contents.

“Jesus,” I whisper.

School transcripts from elementary school onward. Articles in local newspapers and online in which her name has appeared, the oldest more than fifteen years ago and the newest from yesterday. Employment records. Credit history. Properties purchased and sold. Copies of expired and current drivers’ licenses, ID cards, and passports. He even included the abstract for her PhD dissertation.

With a guilty grimace, I close the folder. Sven’s right—this is a major violation of her privacy. A thousand times worse than having him break into her house to assess her security. I should destroy it as soon as humanly possible. It’s the right thing to do. What a good man would do.

Only apparently I’m not a good man, because a minute later I’m reading a series of remarks from early teachers suggesting her parents have her intelligence levels assessed. Her first IQ test was at seven. Another at thirteen. The last at sixteen.

When I see the numbers, when I realize what they mean, my cock stiffens. No fucking wonder I was obsessed with her brain first. Her sharp eyes and sharper tongue.

She’s smarter than me.

So fucking hot.

I’m grinning as I browse deeper into the file, eventually stopping on an article about her graduating high school at sixteen and being accepted into UCLA. There’s a grainy, black-and-white photo of her in the top corner. My smile slowly fades as I stare at a young Talia. With the exception of her coloring, she looks shockingly different—her eyebrows thicker, her face rounder. She’s barely smiling, but I see a hint of braces.

Déjà vu prickles over my skin, the same familiarity I felt when I met her. Only this feeling is a hundred times more potent.

I know this girl.

Which makes absolutely no sense.

I flip through pages without really knowing what I’m looking for, only that I have to find it. My search becomes chaotic—papers hit the floor as I throw entire sections to the side. A cluster slips off the table to the aisle. The sheets scatter, a few sailing across the floor under another seat. Glimpsing color and the curve of a pale face on one of them, I launch out of my chair and land hard on my knees.

“You all right, man?”

Ignoring Dylan, I grab for the pages, ripping through them until I find it: a color copy of her first passport, issued when she was fourteen.

And my heart

fucking

stops.

Somewhere past the boundary of my dying brain, I hear voices.

“I just got to sleep, Dylan.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re the only one who can handle this type of shit.”

“What type of—Christ.” Footsteps pound toward me, and Sven’s hand clamps on my shoulder. “Kier? What happened?”

I whisper hoarsely, “I’ve died of shock.”

Then I start to laugh.

I laugh and laugh until tears stream from my eyes, while Sven and Dylan gape at me like I’m a lunatic.

But if I’m a lunatic, then so is she.

My match—my queen.

Birdie.

I remember the day well. It was a Saturday. Early evening. Mam told me to go for a walk and stay gone for an hour. When I’d grinned and asked if she wanted me to act surprised when I came back and found a party, she smacked me upside the head.

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