A man and woman stood with two boys in front of them. One filled out, the other painfully thin.
Reese stepped closer.
Beside the family photo, another of the older boy on a horse. He had to be at least twelve. The next a hospital bed with the smaller version of him. He held a brightly wrapped box. Balloons were tied to the handrails.
Reese told himself he was seeing things or remembered wrong.
But the next picture left no room for error.
Koda’s shining face adorned with a graduation cap still had that boyish-but-on-the cusp-of-manhood look. In another photo, he stood with the boy who could have been his twin except for the age difference and sickly appearance. He wore the cap from Koda’s graduation picture but held it up with one hand to keep it from swallowing the top half of his head. They both smiled, and like their faces, they were almost identical.
The air in the room thinned.
Protect my brother. Protect Luca.
Reese’s toe caught on the edge of the sofa in his rush back to the bowl. He snatched up the wallet.
“Hey!” Barnaby hurried over.
Reese ripped open the flap. A couple twenties and tens fell out.
“Sir, you can’t touch that.”
Reese threw aside the credit card, the insurance card. The transparent sleeve held the driver’s license. Reese dug it out.
Luca Suarez DOB: December 8, 1999
Pain shot through Reese’s chest with every gasp of air.
“Dr. Dante?” Barnaby’s authoritative tone dropped to concern.
Reese stumbled and wound up leaning against the wall, unable to tear his eyes from the mundane photo. Dark hair, golden skin, dark eyes, and that same goddamned smile.
Koda’s brother. This was where Koda had lived. And those things, those things had been here because…
Protect my brother. Protect Luca.
Reese’s knees gave out.
*****
Three wrecks turned five hours in the van into ten. By the time they reached anything resembling a town, every bone in Luca’s body throbbed and any attempt to sleep resulted in a cramp.
He finally gave up and raised up the back of his seat. “Where are we?”
“Lynnview. It’s just outside of Louisville.”
Strip malls lined both sides of the road. “We should have been out of Kentucky hours ago.” Even with the holdup.
Nox muttered under his breath.
Luca folded his arms.
Nox drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. After a muffled curse, he said, “I got lost.”
“How can you get lost? You’ve got a smartphone with GPS.”
Nox made a turn onto a main road.