The Pearls (4 page)

Zoe
enrolled at the music school about seven months ago. She goes in the mornings usually before Justine is even awake. She has a song she started about a month after she enrolled. The students had to do a project where they wrote all the music. That was hard for Zoe; she had never learned how to write music, she just played it. Zoe didn’t even know how to read music before she started there. But she has a very good and patient teacher, Mrs. Adams.

She
is a little old lady that is like a music god to Zoe. She has taught her so much. All the different styles that she can play around with, the different pitches, Zoe didn’t even know anyone could play like that. She always just put her fingers on the strings of the guitar and they had a mind of their own.

Zoe
wrote her song and had it all done in a month. To her it is very dramatic; it’s everything she can’t say out loud it’s her heart pouring out in the music. All the sadness and hate she feels for being abandoned, all the love she wants one day, all the emptiness she feels inside, it’s her walls broken down and shattered. Zoe has built so many walls in her twenty two years. Justine is her only friend, the only person who knows her.

The students
have a free hour to play what whatever they want in the mornings, Zoe plays her song every time, and she just pours everything she has into it. She gets lost sometimes in the song and it feels like she is floating, like she is reaching for something she can’t touch. Zoe hasn’t put words to it, she really doesn’t know if she wants to. There is a guy at school who asked if he could put some vocals to it, Zoe can’t remember but she must have been rude to him because he never asked again. She doesn’t even know his name. She is there to learn music and play her songs nothing more. She doesn’t want to make friends she doesn’t want to stand out she just wants to learn music and play.

The music is deafening as the lights jump around the room with the beat. The walls are a midnight blue with mirrors and curtains. The dance floor is full with bodies gyrating on each other. He sits in a booth to the back just watching.
The city life is starting to grow old on Kaiden and he is getting restless, he misses his home. All the bars and nightclubs and restaurants are all starting to feel the same, always the same crowd, the same conversations, everything is always the same. This is not him, he fits in well, but it is not comfortable to him. Right now he is in some fancy night club he doesn’t even know the name of and sees the same people that were here last night.

After an hour of watching h
e makes his way back to his apartment to do some late night research on the computer. He decides to do some searches on the names of the girl’s parents, Marcus and Elizabeth Devonshire. He has done many of them before but he is always looking for something more, something that will jump out of the screen.

Tonight he decided to go through records of birth and death maybe something is there. He pulls up the California vital records and ty
pes in Marcus’s name, nothing. He then does Elizabeth’s name and finds a record of live birth attached to hers, he clicks the link and it pops up a Birth Certificate for a Zoe Mechelle Devonshire, born October 7th 1990. That has to be her. This is the break he has been looking for he has a name to go with now.

He then type
s in Zoe’s name in the search bar and there is nothing there. No social page, nothing at all. How does she not have a social page or a photo, anything at all any high school links, nothing? This is going to be harder than he thought. Kaiden has never hired a private detective for fear that whoever is killing them off will discover her or him.

Kaiden spends the next week
of nonstop internet searches for Zoe and not one thing pops up. His frustration has reached a new high and he is just stressed out. “Am I ever going to find her?” He has taken up talking to himself this last week. He decides to try something new and heads to the library.

He finds a local library and goes to the front desk.

“Good afternoon ma’am, do you happen to have copies of old newspapers here?” He asks the receptionist.

“Why yes we do son, is there a particular year you are looking for?”

“1990” he replies excitement in his tone

“Well they are all in the back and some are even in the Microfiche machines, you should probably start with the microfiche dear.” The
Librarian points to the back of the library.

“Thank you Ma’am” He bows h
is head slightly and makes a bee line for the machines. He is practically running there.

There are shelves with the films on them
. He quickly scans the shelves for the year he wants, possibly the month of November, if he gets that lucky. He finds the year but no months are listed, there are also several different newspapers for the same year. He grabs all of them and sits down at the machine.

His Parents
brought him here, where they were killed, and where they were supposed to meet the Devonshire’s. He sees one for the area that her parents lived in at the time. He tries this one first, it’s a small paper so the reading is quick and the weeks just fly by. He sees headline after headline of bears shot, of fish caught, of hikers lost, and all the main things that happen in the small mountain towns. Then he is shocked by the one for the second week of November, ABANDONED BABY is the headline.

He slows down to read the full article. Apparently some crazy woman dropped her baby off with a family and took off. She left the baby on the door step
with a note naming the baby and that she didn’t want her. The paper asks if anyone knows any information on a woman who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who she names Zoe Mechelle, to please contact the police. Was this her? It had to be, the baby has the same name, same time frame that Zoe would have been born. He writes all the info down and calls Charles.

“I think I found her” he practically yells into the phone.

“What do you mean? You have seen her?” Charles asked excitement creeping into his tone.

“
NO NO, I looked at vital records online, found a birth certificate linked to Elizabeth’s name, it was a birth certificate for a Zoe Mechelle Devonshire, a baby girl born November 7th 1990. Mom’s letters said she was going to be born around that time right?” Kaiden asked running out of breath his heart going a million beats a second.

“I think so let me double check
, they are all right here” Kaiden hears papers being shuffled about. “Yes Kaiden, Elizabeth said here her due date was the 6th of November.”

“HA, I knew it, Ok, so I
searched her name like crazy and found nothing, not one thing Charles, how does a twenty two year old girl, who doesn’t know anything about us, not have any social media page? Everyone has one, but not this girl, anyway, that brought me to the Library. I looked up the newspaper for that year, 1990 the year we were both born, I got to November and on the second week the headline caught my eye. There is a front page article about an abandoned baby” Kaiden says breathless again.

“Wow, so was the baby named
? Was there a note on her or anything?” Charles asks confused

“Yep there was a note left stating the baby’s name as Zoe
Mechelle, no last name though, and the note said the mom didn’t want the baby.” Now Kaiden is confused “That doesn’t match the excitement in the letters Charles? She couldn’t wait to have that baby. Something is missing Charles, this doesn’t feel right to me” Kaiden is more confused now talking out loud than he when he was reading the article.

“Kaiden are you still at the machine?” Charles asks.

“Yep”

“Ok, go a little forward and see if there is anything else, like the family that found her or the family that took her in, they might have adopted her and she just has a different last name now
.” Charles tells him.

“See Charles this is why dad always kept you around you think of the things we forget.”
Admiration for Charles was written all over Kaiden’s face, even though Charles wasn’t there.

Kaiden starts slowly scrolling through the micro film and reading everything he can as fast as he can
, doing it aloud so Charles can hear. The next Sunday’s paper has a follow up story and states what hospital the baby was born in and the mother as Elizabeth Devonshire, who they can’t find anywhere. Her home looked to be abandoned her purse and everything was still there, there were still bottles in the fridge and lots of formula. They suspect foul play but with the baby being left on a door step with a note they had to rule that out. The baby was placed in a well known families care. The Family of John and Kay Camden, they have two children, Pete is ten and Carla is five.

“That’s the family you need to find Kaiden, find them and find Zoe.” Charles told him matter of fact.

“Thank you Charles, I am going to run home and run a search on all of them” Kaiden tells Charles almost slamming into a girl walking to the back. He hit the end button on his phone and slid it in his back pocket.

“Sorry ma’am, I wasn’t looking where I was going”

“Oh, that’s alright you can run me over anytime sexy.” she replied licking her lips

“Uh sorry I don’t have time for hit and runs
.” He tells her as he is trying to get to the door.

She just look
s at him like a deer in headlights. Guess she didn’t get turned down often enough.

When Kaiden got the idea to go to the library he didn’t even think about taking his car he just ran here, he kind of wished he took his car now
, but he has two feet that can probably get him there faster. The Library was only 4 blocks away.

He jogged home and ran up the stairs to his apartment; he had names to look up and maybe a road trip to plan. As he walked in the door he noticed the mess that he made in the last week of ordering take out and his nonstop searches. He decided to clean up the place real quick
, maybe a shower, he did kind of stink. He decides on the shower first.

Kaiden takes his time in the shower, he has the family she was left with
, and he has her name. Kaiden just stands in the shower letting the worry wash off him. All the frustration of the past week is washing away with the hot water. He feels relieved, he wants to cry, and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted. No more bars, no more swanky places she might have been, but never was. No more strangers, no more looking at every female that walks by. He doesn’t have to speculate and wander the streets anymore. He just has to find her now.

California is one big state. H
e hasn’t even been to every city in the last seven years. Actually he knows he hasn’t, he has only gone to the major ones, thinking that would be where he would find a young woman with money. Hmm, come to think of it the girl is an orphan. She has none of her family money. He hopes she was raised well and was never hurt, he hopes she is still alive and well. He hopes she will love him and believe him. That’s going to be the hardest thing getting her to believe she is a Dragon.

Kaiden stops his worrying,
steps out of the shower, dries off, and throws on a pair of loose fitting jeans and a white tee. He runs the towel through his wet hair and then his fingers. He doesn’t plan on going anywhere else tonight. He sits down at his table and pulls the laptop closer. The first name he searches is Zoe Mechelle Camden, there isn’t any social page but there is a high school link. Apparently she graduated at a local high school here this city with Honors in everything. There were no school photos available though. At least he was in the right city. Of course, she graduated in 2009, so in the past 3 years she could have left. Hopefully she didn’t, hopefully she was right here and he just hasn’t seen her yet. But he hasn’t felt a pull either, the one his mom told him about, she must have moved somewhere else he thinks.

Kaiden
wants to research the Camden’s next and find out what kind of Family she was raised in. He types in the parents’ names first John and Kay Camden and is shocked by all the links. He clicks on several to open in different tabs and starts reading the first one and is horrified at what he reads. Fear for Zoe’s safety spiking deep within his soul.

The son of the Camden Family, Pete, was arrested at 18 for rape and molestation of his sister, several of her friends, and a couple foster kids that the family has taken in over the years. He was finally captured after his sister became pregnant at
thirteen and had to tell her parents what was happening. No mention of the victim’s names but there is mention of the very first foster daughter they took in, she ran away one night and she tried to tell them, but they didn’t listen. Pete says he never touched that one she was too fast for him. Now that sounds like a full-blood Dragon. We all have exceptional hearing, incredibly fast on our feet, and excellent eyesight. Those are our inner Dragon instincts. Our eyes are not the only indication of a Dragon. It is also our speed and our hearing. It’s hard to pinpoint the eyesight unless its night time and you are running with one of us. We can see stuff you can’t.

Zoe
definitely got away from this Pete guy, but where did she go after that???? He knows she graduated from a local high school here in the city, but that is all he has. He is unsure of where to start now, what step to take next. He knows his facts, Zoe was placed in foster care after being abandoned, she escaped from this Pete guy, then no trace till she graduates and now nothing.