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“Fine—you want to explain all that away, fine,” Max said. “But Shay. Where’s Callum right now?”
“Houston,” Shay said, without really thinking about it.
“Because they just found another Alphabet Man victim,” Max said. “Who was probably killed around the same time Beau came home with blood on his shirt.”
Shay shook her head.
“One thing is chance,” Max said, in a leading voice.
Shay had looked up the original quote back after that conversation in the kitchen with Callum. It came from Ian Fleming—a James Bond saying of all things—and then it had gotten bastardized as it entered common language.
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
But with all due respect to both Fleming and Callum, Shay wasn’t convinced. People liked to draw connections where none existed. And like she’d thought earlier, all this was about as convincing as horoscopes. She could even prove it. “I fit the profile just as well as Beau does. I’m a child who experienced trauma—no matter what you think, living with Hillary’s rotating cast of boyfriends wasn’t exactly a treat. I work in this area.” Shay tapped the bar’s location, near the hospital, now that she thought about it. Funny, that. Then she tapped the second. “I live in this one.”
“No blood, no missing nights when girls have disappeared,” Max pointed out.
“You don’t know that,” Shay challenged. “You’re asleep when I get home. The bar has a cellar. I could be holding the girls down there. They aren’t sexually assaulted—that could be explained by the killer being a woman.”
“You didn’t fly to Houston a few nights ago.”
“And you know that how?” When Max didn’t say anything, Shay kept going. “I’m sure you can dig up some damning psychological evaluation from when I was eight. I like word puzzles, too.”
“No you don’t,” Max said, but she sounded uncertain for the first time all evening.
Shay started to relax.
“Max, the blood could be from a bar fight,” she said, conciliatory now, not mocking. “He might be dating someone and not want to tell us, which would keep him out late. He went to Dallasa weekbefore the outside TOD for that first victim. Beau might kill for family, but he doesn’t kill for fun.”
Max just stared at her for a long minute before pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Oh my god, I really thought he was the Alphabet Man.”
Shay chewed her lip, but then Max let out a little hiccuping giggle, and Shay couldn’t help it. The next minute they were laughing, tears running down their cheeks, clinging to each other somewhere between hysteria and relief.
When they finally settled, Shay kept her arms around Max, feeling closer to her than she had in years. She kissed the top of her sister’s head. “I never thought you were a psycho killer.”
“You said that already.”
“I’ll say it as many times as I need for you to believe it,” Shay said.
“Shay?” Max asked after a minute.
“Yeah?”
“I think you should know something,” she said, and Shay braced herself, pushing away a little, though just enough to be able to look into Max’s eyes.
“What’s that?”
“Iwouldkill for you,” Max said. Some people might say that as hyperbole, but this was a promise.
You killed for family. You helped bury the body.
Shay nodded and said, “I wouldn’t hesitate for even a second.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Raisa
Now