Silent Run

moving?"
    â€œThat’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” He gazed back at the birth certificates. “You had these made in the past sixteen months, which means you had to see someone to get them -- either in San Francisco or here in LA. Since the names match up on several of the licenses done before Caitlyn was born, I’m betting it was the same person you’d gone to before, a long-term connection."
    Sarah picked up the cards and certificates and slipped them back into the hole, then replaced the vent and the rug and stood up.
    â€œWhy did you do that?” Jake asked.
    â€œUh...” she faltered. “What do you mean?"
    â€œYou hid everything away again."
    Sarah glanced down at the rug. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess. I wasn’t thinking."
    â€œMaybe your habits are the key to your past. When you’re not thinking, you rely on your instincts."
    â€œI guess.” She rubbed her temple with her fingers. Her headache had been steadily growing the past hour and was now a throbbing ache behind her left eye. “What do you want to do now?"
    â€œI think you should take a shower,” he said. “Change your clothes. Brush your hair. Clear your head. Take a few minutes for yourself."
    She was surprised by the suggestion. “Do we have time?"
    â€œWe’ll make time. You have a headache, don’t you?"
    â€œA little one,” she replied, dropping her fingers from her face. “It’s not important."
    â€œYou used to get headaches, migraines, when you were with me. You hated to take medication, and you wouldn’t go to the doctor. You always chose to tough it out. I guess you had to avoid any place where they might ask for insurance. When you had Caitlyn, I paid the hospital bill."
    That was probably true. There would have been questions to answer, papers to fill out, and she obviously hadn’t wanted to leave any kind of trail. It was hard to believe the facts she was learning about herself. She felt as if she’d stepped into someone else’s life. Then again, maybe that was exactly what she had done. Had the names and addresses on the fake IDs hidden away in the vent belonged to real people? Her head pounded with pain.
    â€œI will take a shower,” she said, heading toward the bathroom. She needed a few minutes to regroup and she needed to do that away from Jake.
    As Sarah closed the door, Jake pulled on his shirt and buttoned it up. He mentally ran down the list of people in their social circle, wondering whom Sarah could have contacted in San Francisco to make her fake IDs. But there was no one she knew that he didn’t. She’d been new to town, or so she’d said, when they met. After that, his friends had become her friends. Still, she had ventured out on her own during the day to do things all women did, get her hair cut, go to the supermarket, the post office, the bank. She could certainly have incorporated visits to someone else during those times. It wasn’t as if they’d been together every second.
    Checking his watch, he pulled out his cell phone, hoping Dylan had come up with some new information.
    â€œHello,” Dylan said a moment later. “I was just about to call you, Jake."
    The optimistic note in his brother’s voice gave him a lift. “I hope that means you have some news."
    â€œWell, I have a strong suspicion that Catherine Hilliard’s missing friend, Jessica, is Sarah."
    Jake felt a surge of energy run through his body. Maybe they were finally going to catch a break. “What have you discovered?"
    â€œCatherine doesn’t have photographs of Jessica, but she does have a portrait that she painted from memory, and the girl looks a lot like Sarah."
    â€œI don’t know, Dylan, a painting?” he asked doubtfully.
    â€œJust listen. Catherine’s friend Jessica disappeared eight years ago. She was living in Chicago at the time, but she was originally from California. About a week before she vanished, Jessica left a message for Catherine saying she was in some trouble. Like Sarah, Jessica disappeared without leaving any clues behind. She was twenty years old at the time of her disappearance. Which would make her twenty-eight now."
    â€œThe same age as Sarah,” Jake said.
    â€œYeah. I just got on the Internet, and I looked up the newspaper articles on Jessica’s disappearance. One had a grainy head shot that doesn’t definitively