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But it would give away all my secrets to tell you that one.
Why you, why you, why you? If you ever found the answer to that, you might also find me.
And I have spent my whole life making sure no one can ever do that.
CHAPTER SIX
Shay
September 2009
Four and a half years before the kidnapping
The dead girl was all anyone talked about for a month straight. And all Shay could think was that if people cared this much for the girls when they were alive, there might be fewer dead ones in the long run.
Shay couldn’t focus too much on all that, though, because there was another complicating factor taking up most of her attention.
Namely, the fact that Callum Kilkenny was back at her bar.
He sat at the end, looking half-hopeful and half-shamefaced, like he acknowledged that she’d snuck out on him while he was still sleeping a month ago, but believed she had a reason for it.
She did, of course. It was just one that he could never know.
Shay was the only person working, and so she couldn’t pawn him off on someone else. She took a deep breath, distantly wished she’d thrown on some makeup, acknowledged that thought as stupid, and then sauntered over to him, a bottle of Four Roses at the ready.
“You look familiar,” she said, squinting at him, hoping it was obvious she was teasing him. “Do we know each other?”
It took a second, but then he grinned, a quick there-and-gone thing that she might have imagined. “I think I just have one of those faces.”
Shay laughed and poured him the drink that proved that she really did remember the men she slept with. Not that there would have been anything wrong with it if she hadn’t.
“Nah, yours is memorable.” She studied it until the tips of his ears went pink. Adorable. “It’s a good one.”
“Wasn’t sure it was to your liking,” he said,with the way you leftimplied. He wasn’t being a dick—she had a metric shit ton of experience dealing with passive-aggressive men, and this wasn’t that. It sounded more like he was giving her an out. If she said, “Yeah, you’re right,” she was pretty certain he’d leave. In fact, he had one foot on the floor.
That was the reason she ignored the sirens wailing in her mind to tell him just that. Instead, she said, “It was very much to my liking.”
The night was a repeat of the last time. Only, she didn’t sneak out of his hotel in a mad dash to hide incriminating evidence that could send her sister to jail. Instead, she lingered, lounged even, as he got dressed in the morning.
“I, uh, might be in town a bit over the next few months,” he said, as he knotted his tie. An excuse not to look at her, she was pretty sure. He was nervous. She hated that she found that endearing.
Then she remembered why he would probably be in town. The dead girl.
She sat up, tugging the sheet along with her. “Well, there’s usually an empty barstool at Lonnie’s on any given night.”
He smiled at the ground.
Shay said no the next time he stopped by just to prove she could. As she’d predicted, he took the rejection easily. The next time he came in, he hovered instead of taking a seat.
“I can leave,” he said.
She studied his face again. She had been right—it was a good one. And with the panic about Max and the gun long receded, she shook her head and grabbed him a glass.
“Stay.”
He’d been back several times since then, but today was Shay’s first day off in more than a week. She wasn’t about to waste any more of it thinking about dead girls or Callum Kilkenny or the gun that hadn’t been found yet.
That didn’t mean she could spend the day at a swimming hole with a six-pack and a hot boy, like she would have done as a teenager. She had responsibilities, and Max had an appointment with her psychiatrist.