The mysterious meeting with Hunter Butcher

Leo had never spent much time in the Des Pontonniers Preserve. He was either on the field, or in the gym lifting weights, or with Amelia. He didn't know his way around and he didn't appreciate coating his Porsche's custom rims with mud. But now he was standing in front of a crackling campfire, exactly where Hunter Butcher had instructed him to meet, and if the guy didn't show within the next thirty seconds, Leo was done.

"I don't appreciate being jerked around," he called into the darkness.

"I'm here," a voice called out. Its owner sounded surprisingly young, maybe still in his twenties, and he was standing behind the fire in the shadows. Squinting, all Leo could make out was his silhouette, painted up to his shins with orange flames. He was tall, and trim, and that was all Leo could tell.

"I waited for you all night at that disgusting motel. Why didn't you show?" Leo said.

"I got held up. I couldn't make it," Butcher replied.

"That's not good enough."

"And yet, it'll have to do."

Though tired, Leo forced himself to stay alert and not get intimidated. Everything about this guy was wrong, and he'd been an idiot to take a chance like this. But things were so messed up. It was Max Blake's fault. The little twerp had turned into Superman on the lacrosse field, executing all kinds of close-to-impossible gymnastics to steal the ball and racing down the field so fast he had to be on something. Leo had called him on it, and next thing he knew, Blake's creepy drug dealer had shown up at school. When Leo had stood up to him, he'd grabbed him by the neck and, like, gouged him with his fingernails.

The cuts Blake's supplier had left on the back of his neck weren't healing. And Leo was having bad dreams. Terrible dreams. Okay, nightmares, all twisted and confused, like the ones drug addicts and little kids had. He didn't know how to explain what was happening to him. He was Leo Rupert, captain of the best lacrosse high school team in the state. Number one. He drove a frickin' Porsche. He had a hot girlfriend. Every guy at school wanted to be him. Except... who was he?

"Well?" Leo said, and his voice wobbled a little. He hated that wobble, hated betraying any sign that he was not in complete charge of the situation. Things had been fine before the start of the school year. Then it was almost as if Blake had concocted some kind of scheme over the summer to ruin his life.

"Well, we're here now, together, just the two of us," the guy in the shadows said. He called himself Hunter Butcher, but Leo doubted that was his real name. "Right? Because what I have to tell you is just for you. No one else."

"Fine," Leo said.

"And... you didn't tell anyone you were meeting me?" Butcher queried.

Leo wasn't an idiot. You didn't go assuring complete strangers - potentially dangerous strangers - that you didn't have backup. But on the other hand, this guy had already told him that if he, Leo, shared the contents of that note with anybody, the deal was off. There would be no information, no shared secrets from the lips of Hunter Butcher.

"Tell me what you have to tell me now." Leo glared at the shadowed outline. It was scaring him that Butcher wouldn't show his face. It was too much like his dreams of late. "Or I'm leaving."

"You sound so much like your father," Butcher said. He paused a beat and then added, "Your real father."

"My father is my real father," Leo said tiredly. That was what his parents had drilled into him ever since the day they had told him he was adopted. "We are your real parents. We're not your birth parents, but we'll always be here for you."

"Biological father, then," Butcher said. "The man in the picture I enclosed with my note."

Leo had found the note crammed into his locker, and at first he'd thought it was some kind of joke. But a few hints tossed around among his friends had put that to rest. The picture was a tiny square, and it lay in the pocket of the jacket Leo was wearing. In it, a guy was holding a newborn and smiling. And the guy looked just like Leo, only a few years older. But not many. Leo had studied that picture for hours in the motel, spinning a scenario that his parents had met in college; his mom had gotten pregnant, and they'd decided they were too young to raise a baby—So they gave me up.

After all these years, that shouldn't hurt, but it did. His mom had gone on and on about all the advantages she and Dad had been able to offer him that two poor, scared kids could never have. But what he heard under her chatter was, "We love you, and they didn't."

"So how did you know him?" Leo demanded.

"Do I know him. My dad knows him," Butcher said. "But they don't know about you. I put it all together myself. I was reading about the up-and-coming lacrosse players, and I saw your picture. You look exactly like your father."

Leo's mind reeled. He's alive? He's around? Did he live nearby?

"Prove it," Leo flung at him, trying to regain the upper hand. But he was thrown. He thought he had psyched himself up for this meeting, but until now, the claims of the "private detective" had been hypothetical.

"He was talking about this kid he gave up. He said he liked to call you Q.B. For 'Quarterback.' He had those daddy dreams about raising an athletic kid. He'd be proud of you."

Leo clenched his fists inside his pockets, careful not to bend the photo. "Q.B." sounded...right. It was almost familiar, a whisper against his memory, like when you couldn't bring to mind the name of a player on an opposing team but you knew that it would eventually come to you.

But his mom and dad had said they'd adopted him as an infant right out of the hospital. He couldn't remember something that hadn't happened. "Maybe my parents knew my father," he thought. He'd never asked questions. But then, they'd never offered answers. It had been a "closed" adoption, they'd said. Meaning that the birth parents hadn't wanted to be contacted, ever. But was that true?

"So you lied about being a detective," Leo said angrily.

"No, I didn't," Butcher replied. "I really am a private detective. Got a license and a job."

"You could have Photoshopped this picture and you know I'm in sports."

He felt so stupid, and so disappointed. Before the start of the school year, and Max Blake's crap? He wouldn't have thought about that note twice. "You don't have the money to pay for my information," Butcher said. "Do you." It was not a question.

"Don't worry about getting paid," Leo said, sneering at him.

Everyone wanted something Leo had. It was usually money or popularity. The secret? They were exactly the same thing.

"I'd feel better if you could give me a little sample of that money," Butcher pressed. Then he tossed something into the fire. Leo pushed on the balls of his feet, ready to retrieve it, but it was just a scattering of leaves.

"I need proof that you've got something to sell," Leo said.

"Oh, I do, Leo. Address. Phone. All of it."

Leo felt unsteady on his feet. If he could contact his father, would he? Was his mom still with him? He had a hundred questions, a million. If Hunter Butcher had answers, he'd get his money.

In the distance, there was a noise like the cracking of a twig. Butcher shifted his weight.

"I thought I told you to come alone," he said.

"We're in a forest," Leo shot back, his way of replying without really answering. All kinds of things lived in the forest.

Then suddenly he felt the absolute certainty that they were being watched. And by the way the hair rose on the back of his neck, he was equally certain that he should get the hell out of there.