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Instead, she drove by him, without looking, so he wouldn’t feel her eyes on him. She parked two streets over, where she had a view of the main street he’d turn onto, and she waited.
He took a left out of their neighborhood, and she scrambled to follow—not too close, not too far. It was a balance, one she’d never practiced before. She wasn’t sure exactly how she’d explain this to him if he caught her tailing him.
Max thinks you’re a serial killer, but I think we landed on the fact that you’ve only killed two people. Which is, you know, one short of most people’s minimum threshold for the label.
They were also bad people who maybe deserved to die—does that factor into the ethical calculus of it all?
Shay shook her head at her own ridiculous life.
Beau drove for twenty minutes, until they were in the southeastern suburbs of the city. She had nearly lost him multiple times, but in each instance, luck swung in her favor. When he finally parked in front of a darkened ranch house, she took a right.
She left the rental—it was a sleek little thing that she doubted would look suspicious to anyone in the neighborhood—and then she took off toward the corner.
Shay got there just in time to see Beau jogging up to the front of the house. He didn’t even pause at the door, just stepped inside and disappeared.
What had her argument to Max been? That Beau didn’t have a house where he would have been able to keep the girls in a basement?
Her heartbeat kicked up, and she wondered if she’d just cornered a serial killer in his den.
She laughed at herself, even if she could hear the mania in it. This was Beau. Max had been wrong about him. Whatever he was doing in that house had no connection to the Alphabet Man.
There wasn’t much cover on the street Beau had parked on, but she didn’t need it. She had spent her childhood sneaking out of wherevershe and Hillary had landed. And there were only a few chain-link fences between her and the house Beau had walked into like he owned it.
The rancher was flat to the ground, so when she got to it, she was able to peer in one of the back windows. All she saw was Beau’s profile and arm. He was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his phone.
She waited for him to do literally anything, but he didn’t move for five minutes, ten.
Shay chewed on her lip as she debated. And then, without letting herself think too much about it, went to the back door, tried the knob, and stepped into the house.
Beau shot to his feet, his hand reaching for ... something. A gun? Did he have another one?
Once he caught sight of her, relief crashed over his expression. Anger chased it almost as quickly.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked in a hissed whisper.
He didn’t wait for an answer, just crossed the room, gripped the fleshy part of her arm, and started hauling her toward the backyard.
“Hey.” Shay fought him, flailing so that it wouldn’t be easy to drag her. “What the hell areyoudoing here is a better question.”
“It really, really isn’t,” Beau said, and his anger had ramped up to fury. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice shook with the emotion, desperate to control himself and nearly failing.
“You’ve gotten yourself into something, haven’t you?” Shay guessed. “That explains the blood.”
He faltered at that. “What blood?”
Shay seized the moment of surprise and wrenched herself free just shy of the doorway. “On your shirt. Max saw it. She knows you lied about helping out in a bar fight.”
“Jesus Christ.” He stared at the ceiling for a long moment before looking at her once more. “What does she think?”
“That you’re the frickin’ Alphabet Man,” Shay said in that same hissed whisper, because maybe he was actually worried about people overhearing. Who that was, she couldn’t begin to guess.
He shook his head. “What is with you two and that guy? First you think Max is a serial killer, now she thinks I am. You guys have gone off the deep end with that.”
“I’m sorry ... you’re sitting in a dark, empty house alone, a place where you have no business walking in without even knocking, and you think we’re strange for being paranoid?” Shay asked. “That doesn’t even begin to cover what happened with Bi—”
“Shut up,” Beau gritted out, and she got it. That particular information shouldn’t be spoken out loud. It should go to the grave with all of them.
“Okay, but you know what I mean,” Shay said. “You think it’s really that wild to worry about you?”