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“You already asked your question,” Isabel said, smug. “My turn.”
Raisa tilted her head in acknowledgment.
“Do you have nightmares about me?” Isabel asked.
Dark woods, a cold stream. The clearing. Pain and then black. Sweat-damp sheets and screams that died in her throat. A fervent hope that her neighbor was a deep sleeper.
She kept her expression neutral. “I don’t think about you at all.”
“Uh-uh,” Isabel said, a scold in her voice. “If you lie, the deal’s off.”
Raisa looked away. That had been careless, the lie too obvious. She should have spun something more believable.
“Yes,” she gritted out. Because it would make Isabel chatty, and Raisa had already admitted the worst of it, she tacked on, “Most nights.”
“Delicious,” Isabel purred. “The idiolect in the letters written to Kilkenny from ‘Conrad’ during the time Shay was supposedly being held don’t match earlier letters Conrad sent.” She gestured as best she could to Raisa. “Linguistically speaking.”
“What?” Raisa asked, even though she’d heard.
“Someone else sent them,” Isabel said, lifting one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “They were forged to make it look like Shay was a victim of the Alphabet Man.”
“How did the linguist not notice that?” Raisa asked, mostly to herself.
“Another interesting question,” Isabel said, signaling for the guard. “But I’m all out of answers.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Shay
August 2009
Four and a half years before the kidnapping
Shay should have seen the signs that the guy—Callum Kilkenny, according to that badge—was FBI. Or at least law enforcement. The cops cruised through her neighborhood enough times a week that she should have been able to pick one out from twenty yards away.
Her hands shook as she jammed her keys in the ignition of her car. The hotel room he’d taken her to had been a short jog from the bar’s parking lot, and she barely even remembered the trip, panic chasing her.
The rational part of her told her to calm the hell down. The G-man hadn’t been at the bar to question her—he’d been there to get a drink after a long day.
Probably he was in town for that girl they’d found at the Double X Ranch.
That made sense.
Hadn’t he made some disbelieving sound when one of the men had guessed she’d been killed in some satanic ritual?
Shay exhaled. Her brain was still a bit staticky from fear, but she was at least able to take in her surroundings now. Almost home. Almost,but not quite. She parked a street over from their sad little house, and kept to the deep shadows until she could see Beau’s car.
He was home, though that didn’t come as a surprise. Her half brother worked erratic shifts at the hospital, which left Max alone more than either Shay or Beau would like. But he was also the most reliable man she’d ever met when it came to getting back to their house after his shifts. He never stopped off at a bar to obliterate the memory of a hard day, even if Max would probably be fine if he’d wanted to do that a time or two.
That wasn’t how Beau was built, though. While Shay had to consciously choose to be responsible every day, it came naturally to him. Sometimes hisgoodnessmade her irrationally annoyed, as did the fact that he never judged her on the days that she was unable to consciously choose to be responsible. But mostly, she was just glad he was in her life, that they had been able to figure out this coparenting-a-sibling thing together.
Max seemed happy enough with them, even when they made mistakes. They were still probably better than her taking her chances in an overcrowded system that seemed designed to send kids into a terrible pipeline for violence and crime.
And it wasn’t like their mother, Hillary, was going to take her back in. She showed up about once every three months or so, asking for money and a place to stay while she passed through this part of Texas.
They’d learned long ago to hide anything valuable or hock-able when they heard her shot-to-shit muffler turning onto their street.
So, no, they weren’t perfect. But they were family.