Page 48

Kilkenny sighed and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it in a way she knew he would hate at any other time. “Beau.”
Pierce grimaced at him. “Good luck.”
Raisa lingered even as Pierce took off toward the office to wrangle Kate Tashibi into compliance.
“Why Beau?”
“If Conrad knew Shay, Beau might have as well,” Kilkenny said.
“Do you need backup?”
Kilkenny shook his head. “You’re right—you should analyze the writing. We really dropped the ball there.”
“You could take someone else,” she said.
“No, I can handle Beau,” Kilkenny said, sounding confident enough that she stopped pushing. This was his former brother-in-law, after all.
“Will he talk to you?”
“Probably not,” Kilkenny said with a sigh. “But I’ve got to try.”
“Do you really think he might have something to do with Shay’s death?” Raisa asked. He’d said the siblings had been tight. He’d described Beau as both an old soul and reliable. A bit of a bastard, too, but he’d said that part with fondness.
Kilkenny’s mouth did something complicated, like he wanted to say no but couldn’t. “I don’t know why he would have lied about knowing Conrad.”
Raisa pressed her lips together. Neither of them needed her to state the obvious.
“I’d always thought there was no way Beau could have tortured her, no way he could have tattooed her,” he continued. “But ...”
“If he was Conrad’s accomplice, he wouldn’t have had to. Maybe he simply killed her, and left the rest to Conrad,” she said. “Did Conrad ever strike you as the type to have an accomplice?”
“Never. He was a loner.”
“Okay, so maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree with Beau,” Raisa said.
Kilkenny sighed. “I hate that I have to think either of her siblings had anything to do with her death. Those three ... Family was everything for them. The be-all, end-all.”
Isabel had been the same way. She was obsessed to a fault with both Delaney and Raisa. They were her sisters, and that meant every other consideration went out the window.
Raisa had never experienced that emotion from her own end. For her, family was a destructive, terrible thing that led to death and grief and despair. She hated the way those ties that bound them together could be so easily used as puppet strings, as a noose, as handcuffs.
But in the right light, it could probably be appealing. That kind of devotion, unwavering and unconditional.
“We both know how rancid that kind of thing can turn, though,” Raisa pointed out. Isabel could be exhibit A, Delaney exhibit B, and everyone they’d dealt with in their careers at the FBI could fill in the rest of the alphabet.
For a moment she was back in those woods, Isabel’s gun pressed to her back.
Isabel would have killed both her and Delaney, even though she professed to love them. And with Delaney, it had probably been true.
“Yeah,” Kilkenny said. “I think it’s time we try to find Max.”
EXCERPT FROM MAXINE BAKER’S JOURNAL
I went to see Billy today even though I wanted to smother him with a pillow the entire time. He was so vulnerable, just lying there like a hunk of meat. Beau wanted me to go, maybe like he could sense something. Like he wanted me to say goodbye before it was too late.
I never knew the bastard, but that’s Beau for you. He’d do anything for the people he considers family. Shay thinks it’s his best quality. What she never seems to acknowledge—or maybe even realize?—is that Beau is constantly testing us to see if we’ll do anything for him.
Dr. Greene says I do that, too. Test boundaries, push limits. Abused kid syndrome.