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“Why?” Oscar is the one to speak first. “Does that mean my office is bugged, too? Why the hell would the offices be bugged?”
“Because our dad was a piece of shit,” Phoenix sighs. “They’re probably bugged. The first sign of a bug is thinking there’s a bug. Tell us more.”
I’m not going to beat around the bush. They already know I’m upset about something. I need to be straight with my brothers. They’ll be straight with me, too. Besides, maybe they can help.
“Have you heard of Project Sunshine?”
They both shake their heads. I’m not surprised.
“During an audit, I came across this project. It’s one that Allison manages.”
“That bitch,” Phoenix says. “I fucking hate her.” He does, too. Not that it takes much for Phoenix to hate someone. Out of the three of us, he’s the angriest and most jaded. He also hates our dad the most. “I know she was sleeping with him before the divorce. I know it.”
“I’m sure she was,” I agree.
“What does Allison have to do with this weird project? How does that relate to your office being bugged? And why do you care?” Oscar is the gentle voice of reason, once again. It’s got to be a little brother trait. Then again, Phoenix and I are convinced that Oscar really idolized our dad. Maybe it’s because we were older when Mom left, but we really have a much more jaded opinion of our father. He was a piece of shit in every way. I don’t miss him at all. I know Phoenix doesn’t, either.
“I asked her about the project because I couldn’t find any information on our servers or in our files about it aside from the fact that we give it a hundred grand every month.”
“Wait, every month?” Oscar suddenly seems interested. “That feels high for a project we know nothing about.”
“It is high. As far as I can tell, there are no holdings, and no real estate associated with it. No businesses, either. Allison told me it was to support animal shelters in the area.”
“Animal shelters?” Phoenix scoffs. “In what world would our father care about animals? Seriously.”
“I agree, so I started digging. I talked with Mom. She gave me her password.”
“Dad never deactivated it?” Phoenix suddenly seems surprised. It’s definitely an oversight on our father’s part. The only thing I can think of is that after the divorce, Dad was so enamored with his next wife that he was, well, distracted. Despite being one of the richest bastards in the world, our father was strangely distracted in many ways. You can do that when you have money, though. You just pay other people to deal with your problems.
“He didn’t. At first, I struggled to find anything.”
“Then you discovered a terrible secret, huh?” Oscar doesn’t sound sarcastic – just sad. He plops down onto one of the queen size beds and throws himself back against the pillows. “Lay it on us. Just rip off the bandage.”
“Okay,” I say. “I think our dad was stealing kids.”
I expect hell to break loose, but it doesn’t. Instead, Oscar and Phoenix both look at me with confusion on their faces. They definitely heard me, but the words aren’t registering.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Phoenix asks. “Stealing kids? Like baby goats?”
“No, asshole. Infants.” Oscar sits back up. “How many babies did he steal?”
“You’re both wrong,” I say. Then I look from one of them to the other. Finally, I close my eyes. This is a habit I developed when I was small. Most of the time, I’m able to be normal when I’m in front of a boardroom or holding some kind of meeting. Today, though, I revert back to that high schooler who didn’t understand his parents’ divorce or why he had to be sent away to boarding school. “He was taking kids from the foster care system and selling them.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Oscar asks. “Like, for nefarious purposes?” He looks like he’s going to be sick.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I don’t know if that’s any better. It just seems like he was taking kids and selling them to wealthy people who wanted to adopt a child.”
“Actually, what the fuck?” Phoenix turns eight shades of green.
“Here’s the info I have.” I hand them each a flash drive, plus printouts of the most important things I found. I don’t love having a physical paper trail, but flash drives are easy to lose or destroy, and I want them to see what I found. “It looks like 20 years ago, right around the time Mom and Dad split up, Dad had a business partner.”
“Jerry Anchorage,” Phoenix says. “I remember him. Weird guy.”
“Well, apparently, the two of them decided that they had a plan to clean up downtown Siren City. Do you remember the runaway kids who used to hang out around here?”
We all remember. Back then, Jerry and Dad used to complain a lot about the state of the city. They both bitched constantly about “ruffians” destroying downtown. Then one day, it was like everything stopped. It was around the time of the divorce, though, which meant I was at boarding school with Oscar, and Phoenix was sent off to some private college. When we came back to Siren City, things were different, but none of us really thought much about it.
“You’re joking,” Oscar says.
