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Chapter 31

They were back in the kitchen, the place where it all began.

Patrick, Nancy, and Brooke all sat at the kitchen table. Myron and Win stood off to the side, close enough to hear but not be involved. Patrick sat with his back to the big glass doors, intentionally, Myron supposed. His mother sat next to him and held his hand. Brooke sat across from him and waited.

Patrick looked at his mother. She nodded for him to go ahead. Patrick stared down at the table in front of him. His hair was close cropped, almost shaved. He rubbed his head for a moment before letting his hands drop.

“Rhys is dead, Mrs. Baldwin.”

Myron glanced at Brooke. She had steeled herself for this. There was barely a tell. Myron turned to Win. His expression was blank, the same as his cousin’s.

“He died a long time ago,” Patrick said.

Brooke’s voice did not crack. “How?”

Patrick kept his head lowered. His hands were folded on the table in front of him. His mother kept her hand on his forearm.

“We were taken from this kitchen,” Patrick began. “I don’t remember a lot of things. But I remember that.”

His voice was stilted now, a chilling monotone.

“The men, they stuck us in the back of a van.”

“How many men?” Brooke asked.

“Brooke, please.” It was Nancy Moore. “It’s the first time he’s been able to speak. Just let him get through this, okay?”

Brooke said nothing. She turned her focus back to Patrick. Patrick had his head down. “I apologize,” she said with too much formality. “Please go ahead.”

“They stuck us in the back of a van,” he repeated, almost, Myron thought, as though someone had backed up the teleprompter. “We drove for a long time. I don’t know how long. When we stopped, we were on a big farm someplace. There were animals. Cows, pigs, chickens. Rhys and I, we shared a bedroom in the farmhouse.”

Patrick stopped, keeping his head down. The silence was suffocating. Brooke wanted to ask something, maybe a million things, but the moment felt bubble fragile. No one moved. No one spoke. No one dared disrupt the moment.

Nancy gave her son’s arm a squeeze. Patrick gathered himself and continued.

“It was a long time ago,” he continued. “Sometimes it feels like a dream. It was nice there. On the farm. They… they were nice to us. We got to play a lot. We could run around. We got to feed the animals. I don’t know for how long. It might have been like that for a few weeks. It might have been like that for a few months. Sometimes I even think it might have been like that for years. I just don’t know. It’s not like me and Rhys kept track or anything.”

Again Patrick stopped. Myron looked past Patrick, out that back window into the spacious yard, all the way to the trees in the back. He tried to see it as Patrick spoke, the men breaking in here, grabbing the two boys, vanishing into that yard.

“Then one day,” Patrick said, “it changed.”

His tone was more hesitant, the words coming out in a strange, uneven flow.

“They brought men around,” Patrick said. “I… I was abused.”

Brooke still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t changed her expression, but it was as though Patrick’s words sped up the aging process. Nothing about Brooke changed, and yet Myron could see that she was hanging on by the most brittle of threads.

“Rhys… he was stronger than I was. Braver. He tried to save me. He tried… he wouldn’t let them do that to him. He stood up to them, Mrs. Baldwin. He fought them. He poked one guy in the eye with a pencil. Really got him good. So…” Patrick still couldn’t lift his eyes from the table, but he managed something like a shrug. “They killed him. They shot him in the head. They made me…”

Patrick’s shoulder started hitching. Myron saw a tear hit the table.

“They made me go with them to this ravine.” The monotone was gone now. Patrick’s voice was raw, struggling. “They made me watch…”

His mother put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m right here.”

“I saw it… I was there… They just… just dumped his body into this ravine. Like it was nothing. Like Rhys was nothing…”

Brooke let out a low moan, a sound unlike anything Myron had ever heard.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Baldwin.”

And then the tears came from both of them.

When Nancy hurried her son toward the door, Win stepped in her way.

“We need to know more,” Win said.

Patrick was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Not today,” Nancy said, pushing past Win. “Dr. Stanton warned me this might be too much for him. You know the truth now. I’m so, so sorry.”

She hurried outside. Win gestured to Myron, then moved toward Brooke. Myron quickly followed Nancy and Patrick. When the three of them were outside, Myron shouted, “How long have you known, Nancy?”

She spun toward him. “What?”

“How long have you known Rhys was dead?”

“What are you… Patrick just told us this morning.”

Myron rubbed his chin. “Odd timing.”

Patrick was still crying. The tears seemed real, and yet once again, something wasn’t adding up.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Nancy asked.

“Patrick,” Myron said, turning his attention to the distraught teen, “why were you in New York City yesterday with Tamryn Rogers?”

Nancy took that one. “What business is that of yours?”

“You knew?”

“He needed to get out,” Nancy said.

“Really? So you knew?”

“Of course.”

“How come he took a bus? How come you didn’t drive him?”

“That’s not your business.”

“He met up with Tamryn Rogers. I saw them together.”

“You were following my son?”

“Yep.”

Nancy put her hands on her hips, trying to look angry, but somehow it came across as more for show. “What gave you the right?” she snapped. “He went out by himself, he started talking to a girl his own age. Don’t make it more than what it is.”

“Hmm,” Myron said. He started walking toward them. “Your story matches hers.”

“So?”

“Even the outrage over me following them. Tamryn Rogers expressed it nearly the same way.”

“You were following my son. I have a right to be angry.”

“Is he your son?”

Patrick stopped crying, almost all at once.

“What are you talking about?”

Myron tried staring into the boy’s eyes, but again he kept his head down. “You both seem to be one step ahead of us, don’t you think, Patrick?”

He didn’t reply, didn’t look.

“I confront Tamryn Rogers. Suddenly your story matches hers. Win and I tell your dad you told Fat Gandhi that Rhys was dead. Suddenly you’ve recovered enough to tell Mrs. Moore about it.”

Nancy used her remote to unlock the car door. “Are you out of your mind?”

Myron bent at the waist, trying to force Patrick to look at him. “Are you really Patrick Moore?”

Without a warning, the boy reeled back his fist and threw it at Myron’s head. Myron was off-balance from leaning forward, but this was, after all, an inexperienced teenage fighter throwing a wild punch. All Myron had to do was duck down a bit, not much, not enough to stumble, and let the blow sail harmlessly over his head.

The survival instinct, paired with his training, took over, giving him various options for how to counter the attack. The most obvious was to wait another millisecond. With the punch at full extension, the teenager would be completely exposed. Myron’s knees were bent. He could pop a shot to the throat, the nose, the groin.

But he wouldn’t do that.

Instead, he stayed in a standing tuck and waited to see how the boy would respond. Using the momentum from his missed punch, Patrick broke into a full run. Myron stood, about to give chase, when Nancy started pounding on his back with her fists.

“Leave my son alone! What the hell is wrong with you? Are you crazy?”

Myron weathered the blows for a moment. He stood upright as Patrick disappeared up the driveway and down the street. Nancy ran to her car and opened the door.

“Please,” she pleaded, sliding in the car and putting it in reverse. “Please leave my boy alone.”

Myron was about to head back into the house when his cell phone rang. It was his nephew, Mickey.

“We got something on Tamryn Rogers,” Mickey said. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“Where are you?”

“Ema’s house.”

“I’m on my way.”

Win stayed with Brooke. He had been filling her in on all the recent developments, the most puzzling for her being the return of her former au pair, Vada Linna, now known as Sofia Lampo.

“Why would Vada be back?” Brooke had asked. “I don’t get it.”

Neither did they.

Two stone lions guarded the driveway to the mansion where Ema resided with her mother and grandparents. The gate was closed. Myron leaned out. The security guard recognized him and hit the button. The gate creaked open.

When Myron was a kid, the estate had been owned by a famed Mafia don, or boss or capo or whatever you called the head mobster. Rumor had it that there was a furnace on the property where the don cremated the bodies of his victims. When the house was later sold, a furnace was indeed found back behind the pool area. To this day, no one knew whether it had been used for his weekend barbecues or whether those rumors were true.

The mansion was enormous and baronial and dark. It looked like someone had combined a medieval fortress with a Disney castle. The estate was sprawling and probably-and this had been the appeal for the current occupants-the most private in the area. There was a helicopter pad so they could come and go without being seen. The home was in a corporation’s name, so as to protect the identity of the real owner. Up until a few months ago, even Ema’s closest friends had no idea she lived here or why she kept it secret.

There was a lion-head knocker on the door, but before Myron could reach for it, Angelica Wyatt opened the door. She gave him a warm smile and said, “Hey, Myron.”

“Hey, Angelica.”

Even though he had known her for years, even acting as her bodyguard at one point, it took a few seconds to see Angelica Wyatt as a person and not a poster or distant celluloid image up on a big screen. What, Myron often thought, must that be like-to be that kind of beautiful and famous that people, maybe even those close to you, always see you through the haze of movie stardom?

The famous face leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“I hear you’re getting married,” Ema’s mom said to him.

“Yep.”

Fifteen years ago, when Angelica Wyatt had given birth to her daughter, the tabloids had been horrible, following them nonstop, snapping photos with high-powered lenses whenever they’d leave her Los Angeles home, demanding answers about the baby’s paternity. Headlines screamed stuff like ANGELICA WYATT SECRET BABY SHOCKER or WE KNOW THE DAD and then speculated on some recent costar or Arabian sultan or even, in one case, a former British prime minister.

The attention grew to be too much for the little girl. She started having nightmares. Angelica Wyatt even quit the business for two years, disappearing with the child to France, but that just led to more rumors and other issues, the most salient being that Angelica Wyatt missed making motion pictures. It was her calling.

So what to do?

Angelica Wyatt secretly moved back to the United States and found this private home in New Jersey. She enrolled her daughter in the public school under the pseudonym Emma Beaumont, though eventually the nickname Ema stuck. Ema’s grandparents took care of her when Angelica was on set.

No one knew the identity of her daughter’s father except, of course, Angelica.

Not even Ema.

“I’m really happy for you,” Angelica Wyatt said to him.

“Thanks. How are you?”

“Good. I’m off tomorrow to a shoot in Atlanta. I had hoped Ema might come with me, but, uh, she seems distracted right now.”

“You mean with Mickey?”

“I do, yes.”

“They’re good kids.”

“This is her first boyfriend,” Angelica said.

“He’ll be good to her.”

“I know, but my little girl… Is it too cliché to note that she’s grown up too fast?”

“Things become clichés because they are apropos.”

“Breaks my heart.” Angelica smiled through it. “They’re all in the basement. You know the way?”

He nodded. “Thanks.”

Movie posters featuring Angelica Wyatt lined the stairwell down to the basement. Ema had put them up against her mother’s wishes. The basement, Ema had explained, was the one place she didn’t want to hide anything about her true self. It made sense, Myron guessed.

The three teens-Mickey, Ema, and Spoon-were sprawled out on three oversized and upscale beanbag chairs. All three were typing on laptops at a furious pace.

“Hey,” Myron said to them.

All three said “Hey” without looking up.

Ema was the first to close her laptop and rise. She wore short sleeves today, and Myron could see the extensive tattoo work. The tattoos had troubled Myron at first. As common as tattoos were nowadays, Ema was only a sophomore in high school. Mickey had explained to him that the tattoos were temporary, that a tattoo artist named Agent used her to experiment with different designs and that they all would fade away after a few weeks.

Mickey said, “Hey, Spoon?”

“Give me a second to organize our findings,” Spoon said. “Talk amongst yourselves.”

Ema and Mickey came over to Myron. He had debated getting them involved in something like this-they had already experienced too much of this kind of stuff for ones so young-but as Mickey had pointed out, this was what they did.

Myron remembered something. “Esperanza said you wanted to see her.”

“That was more me,” Ema said.

“It was both of us,” Mickey said. “We talked to Big Cyndi too.”

“What about?”

Mickey and Ema exchanged a glance. Ema said, “Little Pocahontas and Big Chief Mama.”

“What about them?”

“They might have been funny in the day,” Ema said. “They aren’t funny now.”

“It’s just kitsch,” Myron said. “They don’t mean any harm. It’s all just a nostalgic throwback.”

“Esperanza made the same argument,” Ema said.

“Times change, Myron,” Mickey added.

“We just suggested she get in touch with a friend of mine who is Navajo.”

“How did that go?” Myron asked.

“Don’t know. They haven’t talked yet.”

Spoon said, “I got it.” He started waving at Myron. “Come here, take a look.”

Spoon stayed on the enormous beanbag chair. Myron bent down, his bad knee creaking a bit, and collapsed next to him. Spoon pushed up his glasses and pointed to the screen.

“Tamryn Rogers,” he began, “has almost no social media presence. She does possess a Facebook and a Snapchat account, but she rarely uses either. Everything she does do is set on private. We assume that this is because her father is a wealthy hedge fund manager. The family keeps a low profile. With me so far?”

Myron adjusted his body in the beanbag chair. It was hard to get comfortable. “With you.”

“We know about her summer internship at the television station. We know that she is sixteen years old. We know she goes to an elite boarding school called St. Jacques in Switzerland.” Spoon looked at Myron. “Did you know that in Switzerland it’s illegal to keep just one guinea pig?”

Ema said, “Spoon.”

“I did not,” Myron said.

“You have to have them in pairs,” Spoon explained. “See, guinea pigs are sociable animals, so it’s cruel to have only one. Or that’s what the Swiss think.”

Ema again said, “Spoon.”

“Right, sorry. Anyway, the only photo of Tamryn Rogers I could find is her profile pic on Facebook. So I took that image and I put it through an image search. Nothing came back. That’s not surprising, of course. Image searches find identical photographs only. Why would someone else have her profile photograph? Still with me?”

“Still with you,” Myron said.

“So I decided to take it to the next level. I located a beta program that uses facial verification software across several social media sites. You may have seen the technology on Facebook.”

“I don’t use Facebook.”

“You what?”

Myron shrugged.

“But all old people use Facebook,” Spoon protested.

Ema said, “Spoon.”

“Right, okay, so let me explain. Let’s say you post a group photograph of your friends on Facebook. Facebook has a new AI software called DeepFace that automatically performs a facial verification search on the photo.”

“Which means?” Myron said.

“Which means it will recognize your friends. So you post the picture and suddenly, Facebook will circle a face and say, ‘Do you want to tag John Smith?’”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“They do that now?”

“They do, yes.”

Myron shook his head, happy for his naïveté.

“Notice,” Spoon continued, “that I said ‘facial verification,’ a technology that recognizes that two images show the same face, versus the more common facial recognition, an attempt to put a name to a face. Big difference. So I put the profile photograph of Tamryn Rogers through the beta program-‘beta’ meaning that it’s still being tested-to see what it came up with. Oh!”

Spoon slapped his own forehead.

“I almost forgot. I first tried it on Patrick Moore. I was able to get a still frame from his appearance on that television interview. I thought, wow, maybe someone has taken a photograph of him. Maybe I can find something about him and thus Rhys somehow.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Not a single hit. Except… well, let me show you.”

He clicked the mouse pad on his laptop. A group photograph came up, maybe twenty, twenty-five teenagers. The caption underneath read SOPHOMORE CLASS, with names below it.

“This photograph popped up on an alumni site for students who attended St. Jacques. If you look over here”-he let the cursor do the pointing for him-“well, do you recognize that young lady?”

Myron did. “It’s Tamryn Rogers.”

“Precisely, Myron. Excellent work.”

Myron glanced at Ema to see if Spoon was goofing on him. Ema shrugged a “what can you do?”

“And if you look down here at the caption”-again Spoon used the cursor-“you’ll see a list of first names only. I assume that has something to do with a privacy program at the school, but I can’t say for sure. Tamryn is the fourth person in on the second row… See?”

Myron saw it. It read simply: Tamryn.

“So?”

“That’s what we thought,” Spoon said, “at first. In fact, well, I confess I’m not that great with details. I’m more of a big-picture guy, you know what I mean?”

“Assume I do.”

“Ha, good one! It was Ema here who… Ema, you want to show him?”

Ema used her finger and pointed at the boy standing right behind Tamryn Rogers. Myron frowned and bent down for a closer look.

“No need to strain your eyes, Myron,” Spoon said. “Not at your age. I can zoom in.”

Spoon started clicking the image until it got bigger and bigger. It was a good shot, taken recently and with a decent enough camera, but onscreen the pixels were starting to blur as he clicked. Spoon stopped. Myron stared again.

“So you think…?” Myron began.

“We don’t know,” Spoon said.

“I know,” Ema said.

Myron looked for the boy’s name and read it out loud: “Paul.”

The boy in the photograph had long, wavy blond hair-the prep boy trying to assert his independence. Patrick Moore’s hair was stubble short and dark. “Paul” in the photograph seemed to have blue eyes. Patrick Moore’s eyes were brown. Their noses were different too. Paul’s appeared to be smaller maybe, differently shaped.

And yet…

Myron wouldn’t have spotted it, not on his own, but now when he looked closely…

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ema said. “And I’d probably agree with you. Teenagers look alike. We all get that. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it except that this school is small. This sophomore class has twenty-three students. Patrick Moore goes out and meets with Tamryn Rogers. Why? He was lonely. We saw that when we visited him.”

Mickey nodded in agreement. “It’s too much of a coincidence, Myron. I mean, cut the hair. Do something with contact lenses to change eye color. Maybe some kind of surgery on the face, I don’t know. But Ema shows this to me and I’m looking at him and at first I don’t see it and then…”

Mickey pointed at the face on the screen. “I think Tamryn’s classmate Paul is now calling himself Patrick Moore.”

Myron sprinted back to the car. He got on the phone and called Esperanza.

“We need all we can on this Paul kid attending St. Jacques near Geneva in Switzerland. Last name is most important. Parents, whatever.”

“This won’t be quick,” Esperanza said. “The school is closed, it’s overseas, we have no contacts in Switzerland, plus, I imagine, this kind of place is pretty damned secretive.”

Esperanza was, of course, right.

“Just do the best you can. Spoon is going to email you the picture.”

“I already got his email before you called,” Esperanza said. “Did you know that the most common password for email accounts is 123456?”

“Yep, that would be Spoon.”

“I’m looking at the two pics-one of this Paul kid, one of Patrick at that TV interview. If I look closely, yeah, I can see the resemblance, but would you ever guess Paul and Patrick are the same kid?”

“No,” Myron said. “But that’s probably the point.”

“Oh, I found that fifth grade teacher. The one who taught Clark and Francesca.”

“Mr. Dixon?”

“Rob Dixon, yeah.”

“Where is he?”

“He still teaches fifth grade at Collins Elementary. I made an appointment for you to see him today at seven thirty.”

“How did you pull that off?”

“I told him you’d heard he was a great teacher and that you were writing a book about your experiences.”

“What experiences?”

“I didn’t say. Luckily, Mr. Dixon saw your documentary on ESPN. D-lister fame, baby. It opens doors.”

After they hung up, Myron called Win and told him what he had learned.

“So the boy is an imposter,” Win said.

“I don’t know. There’s still a chance it’s just two teenage boys who look alike.”

“And happen to know Tamryn Rogers?”

“Seems a stretch,” Myron said. “Just for the record, both Tamryn and Patrick-let’s just call him Patrick to make this easier-claim that they just happened to meet at Ripley’s.”

“Happened to meet?”

“Yep.”

“Today’s youth,” Win lamented. “You’d think they could come up with more credible lies.”

“To be fair, we did catch Tamryn unaware. How’s Brooke?”

“Blocking,” Win said. “Which is probably good. Right now, she is very focused on why her former au pair has returned to the United States.”

“Does she have any theories?”

“Not a one. So what’s your next step?”

“We keep gathering information,” Myron said.

“Whoa, slow down with the specifics.”

“Nancy Moore keeps insisting that the boy we rescued is her missing son, Patrick.”

“Correct.”

“So I’m wondering if these photographs of Paul will change her mind at all.”

“Is that where you’re headed?”

On the left, Myron spotted the Moores’ house. When he pulled into the driveway, he saw the Lexus sitting in the garage.

She was home.

“I’ve just arrived.”

Myron didn’t bother with the front door. The garage was open so he headed toward the Lexus. When he saw the door between the house and garage had been left open, he grew concerned.

He leaned his head in and shouted, “Hello?”

Nothing.

He stepped inside and crossed the kitchen. From upstairs he could hear a rustling sound. He wasn’t armed, which was stupid, but so far there hadn’t been much need for weaponry. He took the steps slowly.

Whoever was upstairs was not trying to hide their movements.

Myron reached the top step. The rustling was coming from Patrick’s room. He approached the door slowly, sliding his back against the wall, which might or might not be effective in cases like this. It was hard to say. He reached the door, waited a second, took a quick peek inside.

Nancy Moore was tearing the room apart.

“Hello,” Myron said.

She jumped at the sound of his voice and spun toward him. Her eyes were wide, almost maniacal. “What are you doing here?”

“Everything okay?”

“Does everything look okay?”

It did not. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t get it, do you? You think… I don’t know what you think. I was trying to protect my son. He’s fragile. He’s been through so much. How do you not get that?”

Myron said nothing.

“Do you know what it took for him to do what he did today? To relive the horror of what happened to him? To Rhys?”

“It had to be done, Nancy,” Myron said. “If it had been the other way, if Rhys had come home-”

“Brooke Baldwin would have done what was best for her child, not mine.” Nancy stood upright. “Make no mistake about it. A mother protects her child.”

Whoa.

“Even at the expense of another?”

“Patrick wasn’t ready to talk. We knew that. We just wanted to give him enough time to get his strength. What’s a few more days after ten years? Dr. Stanton was right. It was too much for him. And then, as if it wasn’t hard enough to get through that, as if it wasn’t hard enough to tell Brooke that Rhys was dead, you”-she pointed an accusing finger at him-“go after him. Patrick ran away because of you.”

“It’s not Patrick.”

“What?”

“The boy we brought home. It’s not Patrick.”

“It is Patrick!”

“His name is Paul.”

“Get out,” she said.

“Why don’t you get a DNA test, Nancy?”

“Fine, if that will get all of you to leave us alone, we will, okay? Now, get out, please.”

Myron shook his head. “I need you to look at these photographs.”

She looked confused. “What photographs?”

He reached out a hand holding the two printouts Spoon had given him. For a moment Nancy didn’t take them. She just stood there. Myron moved his hand toward hers a bit more, holding it there until she reluctantly let him pass the pictures to her.

“I don’t understand.”

“The group shot was taken at a boarding school in Switzerland,” Myron said.

She stared at it. “So?”

“There is a boy in that picture. His name is Paul. We don’t have the last name yet. But we will get it. The second photograph is a close-up.”

“I still don’t understand.” Nancy Moore’s hands were shaking. She slid the top photograph under the bottom picture. “You can’t think…?”

“Paul and your Patrick are one and the same.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“There’s barely a resemblance.”

“Do you remember me asking you about Tamryn Rogers?” Myron took the photographs back and put the group one on the top. “That’s Tamryn. The same girl Patrick met with yesterday.”

“We told you-”

“Right, they just happened to meet outside Ripley’s for the first time ever. I was there, Nancy. I saw them. There was no accidental meet. They knew each other before.”

“You can’t know that from just watching them,” she said, but her voice was weak now, defeated.

“I just emailed these photos over to a forensic anthropologist named Alyse Mervosh. She is going to compare the image of Paul to the tape of Patrick during that interview yesterday. She’ll be able to confirm that they are one and the same.”

She shook her head, but again there was nothing behind it.

“Nancy, let me help you.”

“You, what, think he’s an imposter? You’re wrong. A mother knows.”

“You said a mother protects her child,” Myron said, trying to keep his voice as even and gentle as possible. “Maybe that want, that need, can also warp perception.”

“It’s Patrick,” Nancy insisted. “It’s my son. He’s finally come home. After all these years, I finally have him back.” Her eyes lifted. She met him with a glare. “And then you scared him away.”

“Let me help you find him.”

“I think you’ve done enough. It’s my son. I know. I know. He’s not an imposter. His name isn’t Paul.”

She pushed past him and headed down the stairs. Myron followed.

“When he gets home, we can do a DNA test to shut all of you up. But right now, I have someplace to be.”

Nancy didn’t stop. She moved through the garage and out the door. She slid into her car and started it up.

“Don’t come back, Myron. Don’t ever come back.”

Win and Brooke sat in the Baldwin kitchen. The photographs from the boarding school in Switzerland were spread out on the table in front of them.

Myron was finishing up the call with Alyse Mervosh, the forensic anthropologist. When he finished, Brooke and Win looked at him and waited.

“In her opinion,” Myron said, “it’s the same kid.”

Brooke looked at the photograph again. Myron leaned over her and pointed as he spoke.

“This Paul kid cut and dyed his hair,” Myron said. “The eye color change is easy with contact lenses. The nose could have been plastic surgery.”

Brooke just sat there with the photograph in her hand. “And Nancy doesn’t see it?”

“That’s what she said. She insisted it’s Patrick.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I believe she believes it.”

“So she’s deluding herself?”

Myron gave a half shrug. “I don’t know.”

Win spoke for the first time. “So we need to figure out who this Paul is. We need to find out where he lives, who his parents are-”

“Esperanza is on that. But it’s going to take some time.”

“I’ll make some calls overseas. See if we can speed things up.”

“I don’t understand,” Brooke said. “Is he an imposter? Is he trying to con the family?”

“It’s possible.”

“I read about a case like this,” Brooke said. “When you have a missing son, you… Anyway, this was in the late nineties maybe. A family in Texas had their son go missing when he was twelve or thirteen. Three years later, some imposter from France said he was the missing kid. He fooled a lot of people.”

Myron vaguely recalled the story. “What was his motive?”

“I don’t remember. Money in part, but I think he got off on fooling people this way. It wasn’t his first time posing as someone else. He was warped. The family fell for it in part, I guess, because they wanted it to be true.” She looked up. “What’s going on here, Myron?”

“I don’t know.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“We need to know more.”

As if on cue, Myron’s mobile phone rang. He looked at Win. “It’s Joe Corless at the DNA lab.”

“Put him on speaker.”

Myron did just that, laying the phone on the table. “Joe?”

“Myron?”

“Joe, I’m sitting here with Win.”

“Whoa. Win’s back?”

Win spoke. “Please tell us the results.”

“Let me cut right to it,” Joe Corless said. And then he said something that surprised Myron: “The boy is indeed Patrick Moore.”

Myron looked at Win. Brooke’s face lost color.

“You’re sure?”

“The hair samples you provided are from a female. The DNA off the toothbrush belongs to a male. These two people are full siblings.”

“A hundred percent?”

“As close as you can get.”

The doorbell rang. Win started for the door.

“Thanks, Joe,” Myron said.

He hung up.

“He’s Patrick,” Brooke said. She kept her face steady, but there was a quake working the corner of her mouth. “He’s not an imposter. He’s Patrick.”

Myron just sat there.

“So why is Vada back? Why is Patrick meeting with this Tamryn girl?”

“It’s the other way around,” Myron said.

“What do you mean?”

“Paul isn’t someone posing as Patrick. Paul is Patrick.”

Before he could explain further, Win returned to the kitchen with Zorra. If Brooke was surprised to see the manly looking transvestite in her kitchen, she didn’t show it.

“Zorra has update on the au pair,” Zorra said.

Brooke rose. “Vada?”

“She calls herself Sofia Lampo now,” he said. “She flew into the country yesterday. She rented a Ford Focus at Newark Airport.”

Brooke said, “So how do we find her?”

“It’s already done, dreamboat,” Zorra said. “All rent-a-cars are equipped with GPS systems-in case the car is stolen. Or you cross state lines so they can charge you more. Reasons like that.”

“And they allow you to track it?”

Zorra adjusted his Veronica Lake wig with both hands and smiled. His lipstick was all over his teeth. “‘Allow’ would not be the word Zorra would use. But your cousin’s money. It is very persuasive.”

“So where is Vada?” Brooke asked.

Zorra took out his mobile phone. “Zorra is tracking her on this.”

He showed them the screen. A blue dot blinked the car’s location.

“Where is this exactly?”

Zorra pressed an icon. The map was replaced by a satellite image. Myron almost gasped out loud. The blue dot was surrounded by green. There was a lake that even from above looked familiar.

“Lake Charmaine,” Myron said. “Vada is at Hunter Moore’s house.”