Page 78 of Tear Me Apart
The CBI agent is watching him with undisguised interest. It takes a few minutes before he feels able to put words together.
“Talk. Please.”
“She’s my niece.”
“And you work for the CBI?”
“I’m a DNA analyst. I manage the lab.”
“You found a match so soon? My God, they just swabbed me yesterday.”
The pretty brows furrow. “What? Who swabbed you?”
“Nashville Homicide. They came yesterday, said they were considering reopening the case.”
Ryder frowns deeper. He notices she’s contemplatively petting Kat, who is practically floating on air with happiness at the female attention. Kat loves women. He can barely cross campus with her, she’s in every girl’s path, showing off, hoping for some flirting and rubbing from the fairer sex. Watching her with Ryder, he realizes maybe Kat’s been trying to tell him something.
Ryder finally focuses back on him. “What are the odds? No, a colleague and I ran the DNA and found the match to your wife’s case. We just found out about Mindy anyway, and blood doesn’t lie, but when I learned about your case and saw the photographs, saw you...she looks so much like your—”
“Wife. Vivian. Yes.”
“But you, too. She’s a mix of you both, though she has your eyes. And of course, there’s the blood.”
Zack hands the phone back carefully as if it might explode when he releases it. “I think you need to start explaining what’s going on, Agent Ryder.”
“Juliet. Call me Juliet. And I will explain everything. I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. My sister, Lauren, adopted Mindy—your Violet—when she was very young. Days old. A doctor in Colorado put them together. The doctor was doing it all off-book, as we’ve found out, but my sister had no idea anything was wrong. She agreed to a closed adoption, paid a large sum of money to the doctor, and no one, not even me, knew Mindy wasn’t hers. It’s only just come to light for us in the past few days.”
She stops and shakes her head slightly.
“Listen. None of this matters right now. We can figure all of it out later. What we have to talk about is Mindy. She’s sick. Very, very ill. She needs a stem cell transplant, right away, to help her battle an aggressive form of leukemia that she’s been fighting.”
“Leukemia?”
“Yes. Mr. Armstrong, I know this is all quite a shock, and it sounds terrible, but I need you to give me a blood sample so I can test you against Mindy’s DNA, just as a confirmation point that you’re her father...”
“I am her father. You said the blood—”
“I have a mitochondrial match to her mother. I still need to run you. I mean, yes, we all know it, but there’s still a protocol to follow, on the off chance Vivian had an affair... I’m sorry, but we need the tests. If you are a match, then we turn it over to Mindy’s doctors to test as well. If you’ll work for the stem cell—”
“A blood sample.”Stop repeating her words, you idiot. Wrap your head around all of this, and now. He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath, the possibilities dancing so fast and hard he can’t even focus.
Violet.
“Dr.... Juliet. Anything you need, you can have. But can I just go to Colorado and see her? I mean, I understand someone else has been raising her, and there are a lot of questions, and she might not for sure be mine and her parents... Jesus, I’m probably the last person they want to see. But if there’s a chance, and I can help, you said there’s no time to waste, right?”
Ryder’s smile is almost blinding.
“Yes. We can fly back tonight if you can swing it. And my sister and brother-in-law will be thrilled. We all know what’s at stake. Personal issues aside, Mindy is our priority. All of us.”
“That’s good to hear. Of course, I can go tonight. Right now. Though we should probably let the Nashville cops know what’s going on. If they come knocking and I’m not here...”
“I can take care of all that. Why don’t you pack, and I’ll book us a flight back to Colorado. We’ll talk to the police from the road.”
Zack takes three steps and turns back. “How sick is she? Honestly?”
Juliet’s brows touch again briefly, and she looks young and scared again. “Very. The transplant is the only chance Mindy has now. We only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago. She wrecked in the trials and broke her leg. It was a fluke. A lucky fluke.”
“The trials?”
