Page 17 of The Missing Half

My world tips. I glare across the table at Steve McLean.

“You’re lying.” He has to be. Other than me, Lauren was Kasey’s closest friend. She may have turned into someone I don’t recognize, but that doesn’t negate what she meant to my sister.

“Uh-oh,” he says with a grin. “Struck a nerve, did I? No, but it’s all true. My hand to God. I don’t know why, but that chick hated Kasey.” Despite loathing this man, despite knowing he’s a liar and a misogynist, I don’t believe he’s lying now. He hardly seems to be thinking before he speaks, let alone using artifice. “Maybe that’s who you guys should be talking to, you know, if you’re looking into Kasey’s disappearance.”

“We—” But I stop when what McLean said sinks in. Kasey’s disappearance. He’s been acting like he only knew who Kasey was because of Lauren, but he knows exactly who she is and why we’re here. “You knew her, didn’t you?” I say. “Not knew of her. Knew her.”

“She was so feisty, you know? That kind of thing tends to leave an impression.”

“What—what’re you talking about?”

“I saw her one day in the parking lot outside the restaurant, crying and waving her arms around. It was quite the show. If I’d thought to sell tickets, I could’ve made a boatload.”

None of what he’s saying makes any sense. Kasey was the calm one, the one who always talked me down from my moods. And yet there’s still that look of guilelessness in his eyes. “Who was she talking to?” I say. “Was it Lauren?”

McLean shrugs. “Beats me. Whoever it was was standing behind a car. It was a shame though. The crying, I mean. Really fucked up her face, made her look all puffy and shit. Normally, she had such a pretty face.” He sips his beer, then licks his lips. “You look a little like her, you know? Thought so the minute you sat down.”

I shrink away from him. Has he known who I am this entire time? I think of that phony call earlier. He could’ve easily googled Jules and linked her to Kasey, linked Kasey to me. I did the family press conferences. My face is online. Or maybe he didn’t need the reminder. Maybe he knew my face, because my sister’s is branded into his memory—the face of the girl he took from the side of the road, the girl he killed.

“What did you do to her?” I say, my voice trembling with rage. “What did you do to my sister?”

McLean claps a hand over his chest, gives me a look of mock horror. “Don’t tell me you suspect me, Nic. I haven’t done a thing.”

I lurch up from my seat, my thighs bumping roughly into the table. Our glasses shake, our drinks threatening to spill. McLean laughs.

Jenna leaps to her feet, grabs me by the shoulders. “Nic, calm down. Let’s go.”

“What did you do to her?” I shout again, as Jenna pulls me from the booth. “I swear to god, if you touched her—”

This makes McLean laugh harder, and something inside me breaks.

“You should be in fucking prison,” I say. Then I spit in his face.

Jenna is shoving me toward the door, but just before she turns me around, I see the moment my saliva hits McLean’s skin. His laugh dies in his throat. His eyes turn cold.

—

“What the fuck, Nic?” Jenna says once we’ve slid into her truck and slammed the doors behind us. “What were you thinking?”

“He deserved it.”

She lets out a little shout of frustration. “You can’t do that. You can’t just do stuff like that.”

“Sorry,” I say, but I’m far from it. I wish that table hadn’t been between me and McLean, wish Jenna hadn’t been there to hold me back.

“Jesus, two weeks ago you didn’t even want to talk about our sisters’ disappearances and now you’re attacking someone because you think he might have been involved?”

“Two weeks ago, I didn’t think we had a chance at figuring out what happened to them. I didn’t think we had a fucking prayer. But I do now.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’m glad you’re finally invested, but what’s the endgame here, huh? If McLean is the one who took our sisters—”

“You don’t think he is?”

“I don’t know, but if he is, what did you just gain us? A target on our backs, for sure. Anything else?”

“I…” I turn to look at her, my ragged breathing beginning to slow. I imagine McLean following Jenna to her house, slinking in the shadows of the trees in her yard, stepping quietly to her bedroom window. “I—I’m sorry.”

She sighs. “Let’s just get out of here before he comes outside.”

It’s past midnight now, the sky black. As we drive, the stoplights blur to streaks of red and green. My adrenaline slowly fades, leaving shame in its wake. Jenna trusted me to do this with her, and all I’ve done is put her at risk by pissing off a dangerous man. For the millionth time in my life, I wish I were a different kind of person. A better kind.

When I meet people who’ve heard of Kasey, I always get the feeling that they think seven years is enough time to have moved on. Losing her is sad, of course, a tragedy, they’re so sorry for my loss. But before I can even finish thanking them, they’ve already switched topics. So, what do you do now? they ask with amnesiac smiles. These are the people who don’t know what real loss is, don’t understand how it worms into your brain and infects your blood. They wouldn’t understand how sometimes, even now, I pick up my phone to call Kasey, and when I remember, it feels like a hole being blown through my chest. They wouldn’t understand how nighttime turns every stranger into a stalker, a predator, someone to both fear and despise. Even now, I’m a hornet’s nest of anxiety, a knife’s slash of pain.

Jenna and I have been driving in silence for so long that when she speaks, it makes me jump. “Here we are.”

I look around and realize she’s pulling up to my apartment. “Right,” I say. “Thanks for the ride. And listen, Jenna. I really am sorry—”

She holds up a hand. “I know.”

I grab my bag, but don’t get out. “So, do you think what McLean said about—”

“Hey, Nic. I know we have a lot to talk about, but I’m exhausted. Can we just take a beat and go over it in the morning? Tomorrow’s Sunday. You’re not working, right?”

How could she possibly want to wait that long? Questions and suspicions are pinging so violently around my mind, I feel electric. “Sure,” I say. “Fine.”

I open the truck door. It’s isolated out here, in the southeast corner of town. Beyond my apartment complex is nothing but fields. Moonlight glints off a nearby power line tower. Overhead is a star-studded night sky.

I’m closing the door behind me when I stop, turn to face her. “Just one thing.”

Jenna sighs, but nods.

“Do you remember the way Wyler talked about McLean yesterday? He said, like, He’s the kind of guy who gets heated and slaps a woman when he thinks she’s out of line. ” I’m mimicking Wyler’s low voice. “ He doesn’t think this stuff up in advance, he just acts. ”

“Yeah…” she says.

“That was Wyler’s big reveal about why McLean wasn’t ‘their guy.’ But McLean knew who I was back there. He knew what we were doing. And he let us. He toyed with us a little, then dropped a bomb and laughed when we reacted.”

“I know,” Jenna says. “I thought about that too.”

The implication swirls in the silence around us: Steve McLean is way savvier than the police are giving him credit for.