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“No, it was a different name, I do remember that,” Carly said. “Though to be honest, I don’t remember either at the moment. I’m sure I could find them somewhere.”
“Please look them up,” Kilkenny said, and rattled off his email address. After a curt “Thanks,” he hung up on Carly.
“Our guy doesn’t want their name attached to the files,” Raisa said.
“No,” Kilkenny said. And then, slowly, his eyes dropped to Raisa’s phone. “In Texas.”
“What?”
“This is their hunting ground,” Kilkenny said. “They can’t have their name associated with any Department of Family Protective Services case in Texas. But what if they kept an eye out for cases across the country where they might intervene?”
The Parker family massacre had made national news. No one had thought Isabel was responsible, but if someone had been watching for stories about children and extreme violence, she fit the pattern.
“If they didn’t want to be connected to Texas, they might have used a different name when they went out of state,” Kilkenny continued slowly, like he was feeling out the idea himself as the words came out. “This was where they lived. This was where they wouldn’t want to be found out.”
“They might have used a name we’ll recognize.” Raisa finally caught up to his logic and scrambled for her phone. She pulled up Isabel’s file, the one Delaney had sent over.
There, as an aside, was a note that Isabel had met with a psychiatric consultant, an expert in children who’d experienced some life-altering violent event.
She stared at the name on the file, then grabbed for the list from Conrad’s interview in Houston. It wasn’t the exact same, but it was close enough.
Her laugh was one of shocked disbelief.
They’d finally found their match.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Shay
January 2014
Two months before the kidnapping
The world was full of sliding-door moments—instances where one tiny decision completely altered your future. Forgetting milk could mean making a run to the grocery store, which could mean getting T-boned by that car that ran the red light just before you pulled into the parking lot.
Or you could decide to suck it up and drink your coffee black that morning.
Shay tried to piece together the moments that had led her to this one.
She remembered the bar that first night, when so many people had been talking about the dead girl and Callum had sat on his stool and secretly judged them all. She thought about the moment he’d almost left and she’d wooed him with her stupid story about that ridiculous stuffed cat.
She thought about the gun she’d hidden, the one that had taken a life and made Max suspicious of Beau, and Shay suspicious of Max.
She thought about Billy’s funeral, where Kilkenny had wondered if there had been foul play involved.
She thought about Max’s trip to Seattle, which had brought Shay to Houston now.
Thought about how, because of all that, Shay had followed Beau to an empty house, where Xander Pierce had walked in twenty minutes later.
If any one of those things hadn’t happened, Shay wouldn’t have been standing in the parking lot of the Houston FBI office watching Beau jog off toward his truck.
She wouldn’t have almost dropped her keys when she heard a familiar voice call her name.
She wouldn’t have turned, eager and with a big smile to greet a friend she hadn’t seen in far too long.
She wouldn’t have let her eyes slide back to the FBI building and wondered, for just one minute, what Dr. Tori Greene had been doing in there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO