Page 13 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TEN

Shay

January 2010

Four years before the kidnapping

Callum Kilkenny sat at the end of the bar.

Shay smiled at the sight of him, told herself not to, and then frowned for real when she saw the man next to him.

He was tall, broad shouldered, and dressed just like Callum. Not like Callum, she corrected. Callum wouldn’t be caught dead in that tie or jacket with its too-short cuffs.

But the man was in a suit, and he had the distinct, watchful air of law enforcement.

Xander Pierce. She hadn’t realized until that moment that Callum had talked about him enough that she could guess who he was without ever having met him before.

Shay ducked back into the kitchen, running into Melissa as she did.

“Hey,” the new girl said, startled as she ended up with an armful of Shay.

“Can you cover for me?” Shay asked, already heading toward the back-alley exit. “Just for five minutes.”

Just long enough to settle her nerves. She wasn’t made for this life of hiding crimes, not when she was dating an FBI agent.

“No, it’s Friday night,” Melissa called, panic in her voice. She wasn’t cut out for the bartending life, and Shay doubted she would last more than another few weekends. Lonnie had only hired her, off the books, because Shay had threatened to quit without a little extra help. In typical Lonnie fashion, he’d put in a half-assed attempt to make it look like he cared. Once the girl quit, Shay doubted he would fill the position again. And of course her threat had been empty. She needed the money.

But for now, in theory, Shay had backup, and she was going to take advantage of that fact.

The night air greeted her like a desperately needed slap in the face. Shay gulped in oxygen as she leaned back against the wall. The overhang protected her from the January rain, but her shoes were soaked in under a minute. Normally she loved a good torrential downpour, the water washing away all manner of sins.

Now it made her feel like she was drowning.

The heavy metal door slammed against the wall. Her racing heart stuttered and then revved, and spots popped in her vision.

When she got her breath back, she turned to bitch out Melissa for scaring the shit out of her.

Except that’s not who stood there, haloed by the weak parking lot light in the distance.

“Nathaniel Conrad,” she said, and his lips twitched up. As if she wouldn’t have remembered him—he looked like Brad Pitt in his prime.

“I saw you fly out of there,” he said, grabbing a cigarette pack from his back jeans pocket. “Wanted to make sure you were okay.” He paused, ran a hand through his hair. “Beau would want me to.”

He added that last part like he was feeling self-conscious about the decision to follow her.

She exhaled a shaky laugh and took the cigarette he’d lit for her. “I didn’t even see you come in.”

“It’s busy,” he said, with a careless shrug. “The feds spook you?”

“No.” It came out too quick to be the truth, and they both knew it. She made a face. “So you spotted them, too.”

“They might as well have been wearing neon signs.”

“Right,” Shay said, relaxing enough to laugh. “My mom gets into all kinds of trouble.”

“Makes you nervous around law enforcement,” he guessed.

“Yeah.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the truth. It was what she could offer him. “And she’s been calling around a lot lately. Asking for money we don’t have. As if we’re not raising her kid for her.”

Beau hadn’t been clear about how close he and Nathaniel were. Maybe she was sharing too many secrets with someone who was nothing more than a distant coworker. But there was something about the rain and the night and knowing so many people were behind them, locked away by that thick metal door, that had her wanting to confide in him.

And maybe there was something about Nathaniel.

“I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” he said, which was essentially the perfect response. He hadn’t offered to swoop in and save the day; he hadn’t offered pity. Just gentle sympathy.

He flicked his cigarette to the ground despite the fact that it was far from done.

“Trying to quit,” he admitted, staring at the butt for a second before bending to pick it up. He tucked it into his front pocket, a move she found incredibly endearing. “We all have our vices, I guess.”

Shay gestured to her own, determined to savor it, and the nicotine, as long as she could. She rarely smoked, but when she did, she made damn sure the experience was worth it. “There are worse things in the world.”

Something flitted across his face, but it was gone too quickly to tell what emotion it had been. Amusement, maybe. Or a distant cousin to it.

They stood in silence for a few minutes before Nathaniel dug in his pocket once more, reemerging with a set of keys. “I’ve got a full tank of gas and a map to Mexico if you want to flee the feds.”

“Rain check,” she said, and he laughed. The nervous energy had been burned out of her with amazing speed, and she knew who was responsible for that. “Thank you.”

“Hey, it’s a selfish offer. It would have made for a fun story,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding her gratitude. But she knew he knew she was thanking him for more than just an escape plan.

“You headed back in?” she asked, going for the door.

“Nah, I’ve had enough fun, I think, for one evening,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up with that same fleeting emotion from earlier. Again, it was gone before she could really process it. “You watch your back.”

“Always do,” Shay said, as she stepped inside, tossing a wink over her shoulder.

The door closed on Nathaniel watching her.

Melissa had tears in her eyes when she ran into Shay in the kitchen.

“They’re animals out there,” Melissa all but wailed, the heels of her palms swiping at her cheeks.

“Oh my god, take five,” Shay said, knowing at this point Melissa would be more trouble than she was worth.

“I’m taking fifteen,” Melissa said, as she headed toward the exit. Shay rolled her eyes at the girl’s back, then put her out of her mind.

Shay took a deep breath before heading toward the bar.

Six customers in various states of irritation waited for her, so it took another ten minutes to work her way down toward Callum and the man she guessed to be his colleague.

“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked Callum, leaning into the cheese of it to cover her nerves.

“Hey, don’t talk shit about my favorite place in Houston,” he said, the hint of a dimple teasing her, and she laughed, finally relaxed enough to turn her attention to the other man.

A cowboy, had been her first reaction, and she stood by it. He was all limbs, long and rangy, his face tanned, almost leathery, from a life spent beneath a Texas sun. He must be local or from the south, at least.

His build leaned toward skinny, but she could tell it was more than that—he’d lost weight recently, his cheeks hollow, his skin stretching over his bones. If he was who she guessed he was, then the answer as to why was obvious. By now these two had probably been hunting the serial killer for the past four months straight.

“Well, you look like you do belong in a place like this,” Shay said to the man she assumed was Special Agent in Charge Xander Pierce.

That surprised a laugh out of him, some of the hard lines in his face going soft. Callum ducked his head and smiled, as if she’d made him proud with the banter but he didn’t want to be obvious about it.

“Fair enough,” the man said, and held out an enormous calloused palm. “Xander Pierce, pleasure to meet you.”

So Callum had told him who she was.

“Shay,” she said, skipping the surname. He probably already knew it, but there was no reason to just hand it over on the off chance he didn’t. “Looks like you’re ready for another.”

“Nah, I’ll head out,” he said. “Early start tomorrow.”

Callum still had half a drink left, so it made it easy for him to linger. He nodded to Pierce and then settled even more comfortably into the spot that had become his. Normally, he’d strike up a conversation with one of the regulars, but he was quiet tonight.

Shay was too busy to babysit him, but she made sure to pour him a club soda after he’d finished his whiskey. He smiled his thanks, his thumb brushing over the knob of her wrist in one of those tiny gestures of intimacy that Shay had always pretended she didn’t want.

“Hard day?” she asked later. They were in his hotel bed, that same generic, budget place that was technically walking distance from the bar. She was glad he’d driven that night, though. The rain hadn’t let up.

He wasn’t allowed to talk about his work. Sometimes he alluded to it, and they both knew why he was in Houston. But he was professional to a fault.

There was an aura about him tonight that had her pushing, just a little bit.

“They gave him a nickname,” he said. The room was dark, and the storm raged against the windows.

Shay rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “I’m shocked it took this long.” When he didn’t say anything, she cleared her throat. “Is it ‘the tattoo man’?”

He huffed out a breath. “That might be better. The Alphabet Man.”

She made a face that he wouldn’t be able to see. “Not exactly clever.”

“Easy to say, easy to remember,” Callum said. “It’ll stick.”

He sounded so resigned about it, she reached out and laced their fingers together.

“I just hate when they get names,” he continued, the words spilling out like he couldn’t physically contain them any longer. “It means people will talk about them forever.”

From her tally, this serial killer had taken at least six victims. Nickname or not, he was going to be infamous. She didn’t bother to point that out. Callum knew.

“He’s killing so fast,” Shay said.

Callum shook his head. “No, we’re just finding bodies that were already dumped.”

That made more sense. He must have felt her relax, because he rolled up onto one elbow so he could stare down into her face.

“You should start carrying Mace,” he said, after a long moment. “Or a gun, if you feel comfortable with one.”

“Mace,” she said, as if it were a promise, though she wasn’t sure she’d fulfill it. “Should we all be terrified right now?”

“No, you should just be smart,” Callum said, like the professional he was. “Listen to your instincts, don’t walk alone at night to your car. Things like that. Things you’ve been trained all your life to do as a woman in this world.”

When he said that kind of stuff, Shay wanted to get up and walk away from him. Because if she didn’t now, how would she do it after she’d already fallen hard?

And she had to walk away from him, because the only way this ended for her otherwise was heartache.

What was he going to do? Move his entire life down to Texas for a bartender who shared custody of a twelve-year-old girl who may or may not be a psychopath?

Normally, now was the time she’d get up and get dressed, flee the emotions that nipped at her heels. But there was a serial killer out there, and the bed was warm.

So she stayed.

Shay didn’t expect to see Callum the next day, and she didn’t. The bar was so busy she would have only barely noticed him anyway.

“Where’s my help, Lonnie?” Shay yelled the one time the man deigned to make an appearance.

“Hey, get off my dick. I didn’t fire her—she just didn’t show up,” he said, trying and failing to hide a smug smile. “No one can handle tough work these days.”

Shay thought about Melissa’s tear-streaked face, and how overwhelmed she’d been from a normal Friday-night crowd.

She rolled her eyes. She would never say it out loud, but just this one time she agreed with Lonnie.