Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

The river.

Reggie can’t believe she didn’t see it before. She navigates down the map, moving along the storm drain from the Glendale Narrows past Dodger Stadium, past the collapsed Main Street Bridge. Further south, tracking the river’s meandering path. Arts District, Pico Gardens, Redondo Junction, South Gate, Lynwood. Nothing jumps out at her.

She keeps an ear on the National Guard channel. Most of it is confusion, garbled shouts, requests for medical assistance. But she hears other things that worry her. Words like pursuit and can’t have gone far and heading south.

Morton. Lynwood Gardens. Hollydale. Reggie is about to give up and dive deeper, maybe see if she can run some facial recognition on any camera footage she can dig up, when something Africa said tugs at her memory.

And this boy, this person, Leo Nguyen, ya, he put his power into me, throw me back a hundred metres!

Leo Nguyen. Africa had been speaking so fast, his accent so heavy, that she’d thought it was a word in Wolof or French that she didn’t know. But it’s a name. It may be a false one, but…

For normal people, trying to find a particular birth certificate in the United States would take days, involving a search of fifty states’ Vital Records Offices. For Reggie, who can cut through the systems like a peregrine falcon diving for prey, it takes minutes. In the past six years, there have been 3,659 Leo Nguyens born in the United States.

What if he’s not American?

No time for what-ifs. Chances are good that this boy is as old as Matthew Schenke was. Four or five. That narrows the Leo Nguyens down to around 800 or so. Of those, 732 are currently registered for Pre-K schooling throughout the country. Reggie concentrates on the remainder, diving deeper and deeper.

Her diaphragm loosens up, her breathing slower now, almost effortless.

She starts with New Mexico, which is where Matthew Schenke came from. There are eight Leo Nguyens who aren’t currently registered for Pre-K. One is a long-term patient at the New Mexico Cancer Centre in Albuquerque. That leaves seven unaccounted for.

Reggie pauses, biting her bottom lip.

None of the Nguyen families she’s found are particularly wealthy. It’s not likely they’d have additional homes in Los Angeles. That means they needed a place to stay. A motel, an Airbnb, a friend, a family member.

It’s this last one she tackles, pulling up the details of the parents, and digging deep into the records to trace any relatives in the Los Angeles area. The fourth Leo Nguyen’s mother has a cousin in Santa Clarita, which makes Reggie’s heart leap – but only for a second. Santa Clarita is to the north, in the opposite direction to where Teagan is headed.

But the sixth Leo Nguyen’s father, Clarence, has a relative in LA too. A brother, with an address in Compton.

And Compton sits just to the west of the LA River.

Got you.

In moments, she has an address for the uncle. Now what the hell does she do with the information?

Giving it to Africa is out of the question – Reggie is not going to help him murder a child. So what, is she planning to go on down there herself? And do what, exactly, Warrant Officer McCormick?

She could go down to the address in Compton, all right, and wait for Teagan and the boy to show up. But if they were coming on foot down the LA River, she’d be waiting a while – if they even let her in the building. And that’s assuming Africa didn’t get to Teagan first. Or the National Guard, who are clearly on the hunt.

Reggie licks her lips, running her tongue gently over them.

There might be a better way.

The problem is: it’s completely insane.

If they’re heading where she thinks they are, they probably won’t get off the river before Rosecrans – the long east–west avenue that marks the border of Compton. If she can get to the river there, they’ll come to her.

Reggie pulls up the map, squinting. The 710 runs west of the river, and is going to be hell to get across in her chair. But to the east, there’s a park, running alongside the river for maybe a mile before it becomes a golf course. If she can get to that park…

The thought is intoxicating. It feels urgent, somehow – a call she couldn’t ignore if she tried.

And when she gets down to it, what else is there left to do? She’s lied to Moira, and that lie is going to collapse on her at any moment. Her team is unresponsive. She is sick to death of this office and this horrible apartment.

So why not dive in? Why the hell not?

It’ll be hard. Getting around LA when you’re an incomplete quad was tricky even before the earthquake. But Reggie McCormick once had to learn to breathe again, months on a machine struggling to take the tiniest sip of air unassisted. Getting around in her chair? It’s nothing. She’ll deal with it.

She reaches for her phone, wavers.

What is the endgame here?

If she actually does find Teagan and Nic, meets the boy they’ve stolen… what then? Is she going to persuade them to hand the child over to Moira Tanner? Help them find a safer place to hide him? What?

She honestly doesn’t know.

China Shop has folded in on itself, splitting into factions. Teagan and Nic – and, she presumes, Annie – want to save the boy. Africa wants to kill him. Moira doesn’t know about him yet, but when she finds out – and she will – she’ll want the boy for herself. Reggie still isn’t sure where she fits in all that, but as her fingers hover over the phone, she thinks there’s a way to find out.

If she goes into the field, intercepts her team, she can act as a peacemaker. She can bring everyone together: be the calm, cool centre, help everybody find a way forward. Before anyone else gets hurt.

Right now, this