Hyper Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 6) Fiona Quinn (the dot read aloud .txt) 📖

a place near and dear to all of your hearts, having spent a good amount of time in the area during your training at The Farm.”

Slight nods. Making this personal to them brightened their interest a bit.

“Mercy was amongst people who were arguing about the need for independence. Indeed, she had been outside of the Capitol Building on July fourth when Thomas Jefferson read the Declaration of Independence from the west balcony.”

I lowered my voice to sound conspiratorial. “Soon after, there was a fire at their house on the Duke of Gloucester Street.”

Heads nodded, recognizing the location.

“Mercy had been convinced about the righteousness of the Colonials’ cause. So, when the fire alarm went up and the servants were shrieking for help, Mercy threw on a dark cloak and grabbed a satchel that she’d been preparing from her trunk. Slipping out into the night and disappearing, everyone thought she’d died in the blaze. No one even considered that she existed. And where did Mercy go? She was secretly transported via colonial sympathizers to her family’s mansion in New York. There, she and her sister took turns being out and about. It took immense cunning, forethought, and courage. But they succeeded. And now historians call Serenity and Mercy Officer 355 as if they were only one person.”

I smiled. Tada!

I held off on the jazz hands.

They didn’t seem to have made the connections.

The men sent side eyes to their fellow officers to see if they picked up on some seed in that story that had relevance.

Seriously?

Finally, Casper pulled up his PowerPoint again and pointed at the image on the screen. “This guy is an only child. So while you offered up a cute story, it has no relevance here.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. There it was again, the essence of my parents. If I could explain the sensation, it was like they were both nodding their heads at me. “That’s right. Remember…” Again, it was like something out of a Harry Potter novel, and Harry was staring at his parents in that magic mirror, seeing them huddled behind him. It was as if my parents took this opportunity to pull a long-ago forgotten family story out of storage, shake off the dust, and hold it up to the light for inspection.

What could anything happening to me now have in common with my Revolution-era grandma?

Pay attention!

“No, we aren’t sure.” Casper leafed through his papers. “He was adopted.”

“An open adoption?” Cho asked. “Would we be able to track records? The birth mother? The hospital where he was born?”

“Foreign. The family moved here from Switzerland when the subject was still an infant. So I’d say access to those records would include a heavy ask from our allied country and might even show our hand.”

“How would they have found each other if they were adopted in a foreign country?” DiSarro asked.

Casper leaned forward. “Depends on the birth country’s laws, and if it were an open adoption, I would guess. We didn’t find familial DNA here in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t initiate the tests in another country.”

I took another sip of water then set the glass on the window ledge beside me. “I was reading just the other day that a woman who had been adopted as a child found a paternal cousin through DNA&Me. She met up with the guy and asked for any information about her birth father. It turned out that her dad was wanted by the FBI.”

“No kidding?” DiSarro was perking up. “What did the dad do?”

“He had been FBI with high-ranking security clearance. He came home one day, agitated, and decided to kill his wife and four kids.”

“I’d say that was taking the definition of ‘agitated’ to the outer boundaries,” DiSarro said. “When you think of it, the mom putting that woman up for adoption probably saved her life.”

“Chilling,” Cho said. “And he’s still on the wanted list, which would make me want to keep that story to myself. Circling back to this crime.” He pointed at the screen. “Let’s assume for a minute we have two men—identical twins. What did you call them? Goats?”

“As a metaphor, yes,” I said.

“It’s possible,” Cho hooked a hand around the back of his neck, “they found each other. I suppose it’s possible they both liked crime. Though, I’m not really buying this theory.” He gave a shrug. “I guess we could try to rule it out.”

“You could rule it in by just paying attention to their photographs,” I suggested.

“Their. Plural?” Casper raised his brows.

“Identical twins,” I repeated. “Could you please put up the photos of the man at the coffee shop and then of the man on the park bench side by side?” I could feel Striker putting off warning vibes. And yes, I could hear my own tone. Irritation. It had little to do with this meeting; it had everything to do with Black…and maybe the CIA in general.

After a moment, Cho had them up.

I walked to the front of the room, standing in front of the screen, and pointed at the photos. “Same day. From the time stamp on the photos, we know that these are also an hour apart. At some point, this man left the officer’s line of sight. These men are not the same.”

“Come on now.” Casper flicked his pen onto the tabletop and leaned back in his seat. “Look at him. Hair, clothes, scuff on shoes, drip of coffee, identical.”

I rubbed my forehead, working to modulate my voice to sound professional. “Subject on the right has a mole growing in his left eyebrow.” I lifted my finger to point.

Cho played with the mouse and zoomed in.

“It is not in the eyebrow of the subject on the left.” I turned and lifted my other hand to point at the exact location