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“But you’re less sure than you were ten minutes ago, aren’t you?” Max said. “I’ve been following this for years. How do you thinkIfeel?”
“What was the first thing?” Shay asked, because her brain had started working again. “That made you think:Beau.”
“You weren’t home at night. You didn’t realize Beau doesn’t always come back when he tells you he does,” Max said. “It wasn’t intentional. I just noticed that anytime a victim was found, the night before, Beau came in late.”
“That’s a coincidence, not evidence.”
“Good thing I’m not a jury that needs convincing,” Max said. “It happened seven times, Shay.”
Three times is a pattern,she thought.
A memory came to her. Her first night with Kilkenny, getting the gun, driving toward Galveston. That morning, when she’d arrived home, Beau had called her out on hooking up with someone and she’d fired the accusation right back.
He had flinched.
Shay’s eyes tracked to the room Callum had turned into a home office. Did he have files in there? Real files, not Max’s cobbled-together Nancy Drew effort. Real evidence, maybe, that Shay could point to and say,No, see, Beau can’t possibly be a serial killer.
She halted that train of thought as soon as it left the station. “Say you’re right about your father and Billy. Beau took care of them because he was protecting you. And maybe protecting himself, I don’t know. He loved Billy at the end ...”
“Billy was dating a woman with a son who was about ten,” Max said. “They were getting serious. Beau met them. The kid had a bruise the size of Billy’s hand on his wrist. Turns out it wasn’t just the booze that made him mean around kids. Two days later he drove into a tree. The woman didn’t stick around after that.”
“Why didn’t I know any of this?” Shay asked, her voice shaking.
“Because you’re just ... different than us,” Max said. “You’re ... nice.”
“Beau’s nice,” Shay said without thinking.
Max stared at her for a long time, then started laughing. “Jeez, girl, tell me what you really think of me.”
“You know you’re not nice,” Shay said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“It means you don’t like me,” Max countered.
“Not true.” Shay plopped down on the couch beside her. “I like you a lot. I was just always worried for you.”
“And all the psychologists who said I was fine?” Max asked.
“You’ll understand if you ever have a kid,” Shay said, and for the first time in six months didn’t tear up at her own careless words.
Max nudged her knee, her version of a comforting hug.
“You always worry about your kids,” Shay said, her smile wobbly, but there.
“Awww,” Max drawled out, mocking her but only because she didn’t like to show any real emotions. “But you’re proving my point. You’re too nice. Beau’s not going to tell you he killed two guys—you’d freak the frick out.”
She thought again of her nighttime flight to that junkyard. And the time she’d run out of the bar when Xander Pierce had shown up unexpectedly.
“Okay, fair, I would have,” Shay admitted. Her world had become solid again, because Max hadn’t really dropped as big a bomb as Shay was expecting. Beau might havetaken care oftwo people without telling her, but he’d done it for family.
You killed for family. You helped hide the body.
None of that changed who Beau was as a person.
“But you’re also proving my point,” Shay said. “Beau doesn’t kill for fun. He did it to protect you, and then he did it to protect that kid. He’s not kidnapping girls, torturing them, and dumping them naked in random fields all over the city.”
Max slumped back against the couch. “Have you ever read Beau’s DFPS file?”
“No, and you shouldn’t have, either,” Shay said. This was getting too much. Max had taken it upon herself to play amateur detective, and that kind of behavior got peopletaken care of.