SO MANY THOUGHTS. Sitting alone in my apartment, reality struck like lightning. Kent had never told me he was related to Zora, somehow. He’d talked to Stephanie. Zora had lied to me. Miracle had told me she had never met Jasper before. So many lies.
There had to be a connection. And I would find it. I pulled out my phone and opened my IMDb app. I typed her name in the search field, relishing every letter—ZORA MONROE. When I hit enter, I knew it was a long shot. Detectives and investigators never got credit on a film. Not in the database, at least. Unless they showed up on-screen. Something I could not imagine Zora agreeing to.
There were two hits for Zora as herself. Somehow, despite my doubts, I’d known they’d be there. I opened the first and dismissed it as a student film immediately. The second, however, nearly took my breath away. The short synopsis gave away the connection even before I saw Cassandra’s name as the director. It was the same project I’d found earlier. The one where a writer had used commercial DNA evidence to track down a serial killer.
“Wow,” I whispered.
Cassandra wasn’t the only one with experience using DNA to locate someone. I needed to search for one last connection. I could feel it even before I Googled “Zora Monroe” “Miracle Jones”.
My teeth ground together when page after page of results showed. I hadn’t considered their tie-in to the reports of Jasper’s ending. Sighing, I scrolled. Despite the deadline, I had all the time in the world.
“Zora” “Miracle Baby”.
It was the fifth variant I’d tried. When I hit enter, something immediately caught my eye. In the small slice of text below one link, a name stood out, just barely jogging my memory. Holding my breath, I switched back to my IMDb app and Zora’s results. The name from the search matched the director’s name on the student film I’d dismissed earlier.
Returning to Google, I opened the link. It led to an old screenwriters’ forum. The director had posted about a project he wanted to develop regarding the infamous “Miracle Baby.” In the post, the guy said that his friend Zora Monroe would be working on the story with him. He was asking if anyone had a medical contact he could use to discuss the baby’s miraculous survival. I didn’t care about that, though. Instead, almost salivating, I checked the date of the post. It was two years before Miracle Jones learned her mother’s identity.
For a while, I had thought that the other documentarian Miracle mentioned, the one who had contacted her before I ever did, was Cassandra. It wasn’t. But Zora had worked with the guy it really was.
I remembered that first night I’d met Miracle. The way Zora took her hand. The familiar looks that passed between them. I hadn’t missed it. At the time, it just didn’t fit. Now I knew. Zora had known Miracle long before all of this. Long before her pregnancy.
“I got you,” I said, laughing loudly.