Free The Dream Runner by Kerry Schafer Page B

take her, easy. She looked like the spokesperson for the Hire a Summer Student program, much more interested in her smart phone than running interference for her boss.
    "I need to see Jenny Noland," I said, clomping right up to the desk in my motorcycle boots and leathers, helmet swinging from one hand. I kept my sunglasses on. "Now would be good."
    "Oh, is she expecting you?" And then the blue eyes widened and her mouth fell open over perfect little white teeth. "Wait—you're Jesse Davison, aren't you?"
    Now that threw me way off balance. I wanted to ask how she knew, but instead I just shrugged, keeping my face noncommittal. "Maybe. Can I see Ms. Noland?"
    "Absolutely. She's been expecting you. Follow me."
    All senses on high alert, head pounding with every step, I followed the child down a wood paneled hallway. When she opened a door at the end and gestured me in, I hesitated, looking things over.
    Jenny Noland was all about living large. I estimated her weight at 300 pounds, which was likely conservative, and she carried it with pride. Her flowing dress was a garden of giant red and yellow flowers, and she paired it with earrings that dangled to her shoulders and a necklace made of raw unpolished chunks of some sort of green stone—jade, maybe. No squeezing into too-small chairs for Jenny; her office chair was custom designed to accommodate her with ease behind a bastion of a desk.
    "Jesse, at last we meet." Her voice was a throaty contralto that thrummed inside my head like a plucked string on a cello. "Well, are you going to come in?"
    I did, leaving the door cracked behind me and turning a chair around so I could keep the back of it between us. Jenny clasped her hands loosely on the desk in front of her, the expanse of which held nothing but a vase of red roses, and looked me over with the sort of scrutiny a police officer might give a suspect.
    "You look like her," she said at last.
    "I look like my dad."
    "Your features may be his, but your expressions are your mother's and they shape you."
    Three petals had fallen onto the gleaming surface of that desk, crimson as drops of blood. Rose perfume invaded my olfactory system, triggering memories I wanted nothing to do with.
    "That I wouldn't know. I haven't seen her since I was ten. Listen, Jenny—this is not a social call for me. I didn't know my mother so I'm not grieving her death and I have zero interest in discussing her life and times. You sent me a letter that you wanted to meet with me. I'll sign whatever I need to sign, and then I have other things that need to be done."
    For a long moment she looked at me, her face giving nothing away. "Perhaps I was wrong; you really don't resemble her at all." Reaching into a drawer she drew out a folder, opened it, and turned it around to face me. "Sign where the tabs indicate, please."
    All I wanted was to be out of that office. Away from the cloying scent of roses, away from this woman who seemed to hold my mother in some regard. The pain had reached the stage where it felt like a metal band clamped around my brain, and the words I was trying to read swam before my eyes. I needed time to think, but if I didn't hurry up I was going to be incapacitated before I'd found out what I needed to know.
    Jenny handed me the pen. I'd already started signing when a thought that had been nagging at me all day shook loose from the muddle in my head and came clear.
    Â I stopped mid signature and laid down the pen. "How did you find me?"
    "It's not so difficult to track somebody down when you need them, Jesse."
    Â "That's not an answer."
    It was also a lie. I'd been gone for ten years and got around a fair bit during that time, taking care to stay off the grid as much as possible. A determined PI could find anybody, I suppose, given enough time and connections, but an attorney needed a damn good reason to persist to that extent.
    "It's all the answer you're going to get. Now—were you going to sign the papers? Or do you