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TASHIBI:Any that made a lasting impact on you?
TASHIBI:Mr. Conrad?
TASHIBI:Okay, let’s move on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Shay
December 2013
Four months before the kidnapping
The doorbell rang.
Shay looked around Kilkenny’s condo—she still thought of it as his instead of theirs—as if someone else would be there to answer.
She didn’t have friends in Seattle, didn’t even have acquaintances. She certainly didn’t know anyone who would drop by unannounced.
A delivery,her foggy brain supplied. It had been six months since they’d lost the baby, and she still felt a step behind in her thinking.
Of course—it was a delivery.
Pulling her cardigan tight to hide her stained T-shirt and lack of bra, she shuffled to the door and opened it without bothering to look through the peephole. In the back of her head, she heard Kilkenny scolding her for lax security, especially when he was being targeted by a serial killer.
But she couldn’t really make herself give a damn.
Instead of a deliveryman, though, she got a dripping-wet Max.
“What on earth,” Shay said, because all other thoughts escaped her at the moment. She hadn’t seen her sister since the early summer, at her courthouse wedding to Callum. It had been the longest they’d been apart since Max was born. But Shay hadn’t felt like traveling after her miscarriage, and that had happened only a week later. “How did you get here?”
“What a way to greet your sister,” Max said, teeth chattering. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Yes, yes, get in here,” Shay said, tugging her inside and positioning her on the welcome mat so that she wouldn’t slip on the floor from the puddle she made. “Hold on.”
Shay grabbed her fluffiest towel from the linen closet, threw a mug of water into the microwave, and then wrapped Max up, rubbing her arms in that way mothers did for little kids when they came out of the pool.
Through sheer muscle memory, Shay dug out tea bags, dropped a couple in the boiling water, and settled them onto the couch.
“What’s going on, babe?” Shay asked once the threat of hypothermia had passed.
“I took a bus,” Max said, answering the first question that had tumbled out of Shay’s mouth. “I slept in a bus station in ... Colorado? Maybe. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.”
“I would have bought you a plane ticket,” Shay said.
“That would have been a whole thing.”
“And this isn’t?” Shay asked, trying to keep her voice as light as possible. Her fingers itched for her phone. Did Beau know where Max was?
“You know what, you’re right. This was a mistake,” Max said, shrugging off the blanket Shay had draped over her.
“No, no, no.” Shay grabbed her wrist, stopped her. Again, she asked, “What’s going on?”
Max hesitated, but then relented, reaching for her bag. “You can’t tell Callum about any of this.”
“Oh, Max,” Shay murmured, picturing the worst—another gun? That would explain why she hadn’t wanted to fly.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a psycho?” Max muttered, but she was distracted, pulling files and articles from her bag. Once she had everything on the table, she began rearranging them. “You have to promise not to tell Callum, or I’ll leave.”