Page 3 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TWO

Shay

August 2009

Four and a half years before the kidnapping

Shay Baker sucked in her breath to get the button on her lucky Levi’s to go through the hole, then tugged her white tank top down to reveal the lacy cup of her bra. She needed the extra tips tonight. Their electricity would be shut off in two days if she didn’t somehow magic up the hundred bucks she owed.

Her choppy blonde hair was freshly washed, her blue eyes rimmed smoky black, and her mouth smeared red with the last of her cherry lipstick.

If she squinted, she almost looked hot. Not pretty, not like the girls who sometimes slummed it in the bar with their cardigans and tasteful makeup. Shay would never be the girl you took home to Mama, but she might be the girl you tipped a twenty because she made you feel like you were eighteen and sexy and suave.

That’s all she cared about.

The CD player blared from the living room, and Shay shook her head as she grabbed her purse.

Max was rapping along to Eminem’s lament about losing his spaghetti due to stage nerves, spitting beats and not missing a single note, when Shay yanked the snapback from her head. Her sister ratcheted up the performance, gesturing to their own dilapidated house and stagnant life.

Just because it had Shay rolling her eyes didn’t mean she could resist the song that had become their anthem. She plopped the snapback on her own head and took over the rap, the fast part about normal lives being boring, about a father not knowing his own daughter. They were her verses, even though they were Max’s verses as well.

They both hit the da da dum dum dum hard right before the last chorus. Max jumped, one hand in the air, as Shay hair-banged like the child of Nirvana she was.

Shay dropped the hat back on Max’s head as the outro played and then went to make sure there was one more box of mac and cheese left. Max was probably sick of it, but it was better than nothing. It sucked that Max had experienced too much hunger in her short life.

“Beau said he’ll be home around ten. Until then, Mrs. Marlow will be next door if you need anything,” Shay said, even though Max already knew. Shay and Aida Marlow had long ago come to an agreement where Shay brought home a couple of cartons of Marlboros a month and Aida kept an eye out in case Max accidentally started a fire in the couple of hours that Shay’s shift overlapped with their brother’s. As Max’s legal guardian, Shay felt compelled to add, “Read a book or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Max waved a hand at her. She’d had the attitude of a teenager since she’d come out of the womb, but she was really embracing the I’m over it all vibes as she stared down her twelfth birthday in a few weeks. Before Shay had even stepped out onto the dust-covered steps, Max was already rapping the next song.

Shay worked at a shithole bar where the bouncer, Craig, had to throw someone out more nights than not, and she was fairly certain the owner was deep into some laundering and/or drug scheme. But he had been the one to hire her nineteen-year-old ass six years prior, willingly pretending her fake ID was decent. There was some built-in loyalty there.

Also, the other bartender was a fifty-year-old man with an impressive beer belly. Shay got a lot of tips, even if they were off three-dollar beers.

Except she’d had a bad streak recently. She blamed the heat advisory. Everyone was too goddamn sweaty to heft themselves out of the trajectory of their fans and go to a place that didn’t have AC. And Lonnie refused to invest that laundered and/or drug money in making the place slightly more bearable in the Texas summers.

But for some reason, the place was busy when Shay got there for her shift. She raised her brows at Lonnie, who just shrugged and scuttled like a cockroach back into his broom closet–size office. She wouldn’t see him again until closing, and she was fine with that.

“Didya hear?”

The question buzzed like a mosquito through the crowd at the bar all night. For the first two hours, Shay was too busy to loiter and ask any of her customers what they had heard—she was just grateful for whatever it was. Big news brought people down to the watering hole to wag their jaws about it. She was going to be able to keep the lights on in their little house. A small accomplishment to most, a big one to someone who felt like a failure most hours of the day.

“. . . a girl . . .”

“There were tattoos on her body ...”

“They found her in a field.”

When Shay finally had a minute to breathe, her brain started piecing together the tidbits. She sidled over to two regulars who had set up camp at the end of the bar, two Shiner Bocks in front of each of them.

“What are they saying about a girl?” Shay asked, wiping away a nonexistent spill.

Bobby Dole grimaced around his toothpick. “Dead girl found up at the Double X Ranch yesterday. The foreman all but tripped over her.”

“Lost his lunch in the process,” Tim Stuebens added with a snicker. He worked as a hand on the ranch right next to the Double X, which explained his newfound popularity tonight.

Shay swallowed hard. Dead girls meant cops. Or worse, feds. She’d never exactly been fond of law enforcement, but as of late, her general distaste had ramped up to paranoia. She’d even stopped speeding just so she wouldn’t be pulled over.

An image of Max from a few hours earlier, rapping away to some ridiculous, misogynistic song, flashed into her mind. Then the memory shifted, and all she could see were Max’s hands covered in blood, her eyes defiant.

Her sister—always one blink away from the worst version of herself.

“A suicide?” Shay asked now, daring to hope. Murder would be the worst option. Cops might start looking around. They might hear some of the rumors that swirled around Max, might wonder why she had to see a psychiatrist who specialized in violent children. They might even find the gun hidden beneath Shay’s porch.

“Nah, that’s the wild thing,” Tim said. “It seems like one of those serial killers got her.”

Shay tried to hide her relief but probably did a piss-poor job of it. Of course, that kind of murder was terrible in the grand scheme of things. But it meant she could relax.

“A serial killer?” Shay asked, giving up all pretense of work. Lonnie was in the back room anyway, and there were only two people trying to get her attention. It didn’t get overwhelming until it hit five. “What are you talking about?”

“She had letters written all over her. Maybe it was some kind of satanic ritual instead.”

A man a few seats over cleared his throat. It hadn’t been to get their attention, though, because when Shay glanced over, he was staring down into his glass. Four Roses, neat. He’d looked like he needed a double pour, so she’d given him a splash more than she should have.

He could not have been more out of place if he’d tried. His suit was expensive and impeccably tailored; his haircut had probably cost more than what she owed for her electric bill for the entire summer; he spoke without an accent and said Please and Thank you . She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten both.

“Something to add?” she asked as she finally moved toward the two—well, now four—people waving dollar bills in her direction.

The man just slid her a look, seeming to understand the question had been rhetorical.

Smart, then, too.

Shay had barely made note of him before, beyond hoping he tipped better than most of the rich boys who ended up in that seat slumming. But for the rest of the night, she felt his eyes on her.

It wasn’t in a sleazy way, either. He wasn’t ogling her ass or her chest like every other red-blooded male in the joint. He seemed to be studying the way she moved, her face, who she talked to.

When she lifted the Four Roses in his direction, brows lifted in question, he hesitated, eyes flicking down to his empty glass and then to the door. He knew he shouldn’t stay.

But then his attention returned to her, and she could see the decision made behind his carefully controlled expression.

Shay had to admit she was glad he wasn’t leaving. It had been a while since a man had lit a fire in her belly. She could admit he did, even though he wasn’t her usual type. He was too polished, too professional looking. Not a hair out of place. But she couldn’t deny that this made her want to get her hands on him, to muss him up and see if there was anything beneath that perfect facade.

She sashayed on over to him even before he nodded, and she poured him a real double this time. He inhaled like he was about to sink beneath some waves.

Then he handed over two fifties. “Keep the change.”

Shay made the bills disappear. She didn’t really want to be dealing with money and him right now, not with how she was already thinking about just how long it would take to get him out of that nice suit. “You don’t think it was a Satan worshipper?”

His mouth tightened and he looked away. She knew immediately she’d misstepped. This time he stared at the door longer, as if he really might change his mind.

“Our Satanic Panic came, like, ten years after the rest of the country,” she said quickly. “Like everything else here, we’re late on the trends.”

He was still hesitating, toying with his glass instead of drinking the pretty liquor inside it.

“Yeah, it came about when Sabrina the Teenage Witch debuted,” Shay continued. “The moms all held a rally to burn stuffed black cats. Like Salem, on the show.”

He laughed, then looked immediately surprised that he had.

Oh no. She could become addicted to that sound.

“Fictional teenage witches, not okay,” he said. “Promoting animal abuse is fine, though.”

He was joking, and she liked it.

“That’s what I said.” Shay grinned at him. “I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper and everything.”

“Did anything happen?”

“Someone threw holy water on my mama at church, and so she whooped my ass,” Shay said, still amused. But she must have revealed too much, because his face softened with sympathy. She didn’t want that—she wanted him thinking she was hot, not sad. “Don’t worry. I was a brat. I held a little memorial for all the lost cat souls. It made the school paper. I never quite shook the witch allegations.”

Someone a few stools over called, “Witch or b—”

“Oy,” she cut them off. It was Jimmy Thatcher, who grinned at her, pleased with his own joke. He was playful and kindhearted, so she just rolled her eyes and flipped him off.

What mattered more was that she’d successfully wiped the pity from Four Roses’s face. He was back to watching her with that careful expression that seemed to hide something fascinating beneath it.

He nursed that drink for the rest of her shift and was still sitting there as the last of her inebriated regulars staggered out.

“You don’t have to go home,” she said, as the other bartender, Harry, started closing down the place. He’d snark at her tomorrow about doing her share of the work, but for all his griping, he was a fairly solid wingman. She liked to think she’d returned the favor enough times that they were even.

“But I can’t stay here,” Four Roses said, and then nudged his long-empty tumbler in her direction. When she’d offered him a third pour earlier, he’d declined, but he hadn’t left.

His eyes slid to Harry, then back to hers. “Well, have a good night.”

Shay gaped at his retreating back, and stopped him only when he put a hand on the swinging door. “You put in all that time just to say good night?”

He turned back to her. “It beat an empty hotel room.”

“Yeah, but so do a lot of things,” Shay said, untying her apron strings. She glanced at Harry, who gave her a thumbs-up without even looking in her direction. “Like a not-empty hotel room.”

She would never call it her smoothest line, but Shay was attractive. She didn’t need to be smooth, she just needed to indicate that she was interested. The other party usually did the rest of the work. That was no different with Four Roses, who politely ushered her into a nice sedan that was more budget conscious than she’d been expecting.

“Rental,” he murmured, the tips of his ears pink. And, again, she thought, Oh no. It was easier to know he was passing through, though. No need to get anything but her body involved here. Her heart could take the bench for tonight.

His hotel room was standard fare, but again on the budget-friendly side. She wondered what had brought him to the suburbs of Houston. Work, of course, considering that both the car and hotel were probably the level they were because the trip was being paid for by a tightfisted CEO.

But they didn’t have much in these parts besides suburbs and ranches and trailer parks. They were caught in a weird limbo between three big cities, their outskirts creating a Bermuda Triangle that seemed to transport those in it back at least a decade in time.

Shay didn’t bother to follow up on her curiosity. The less she knew the better.

And it was fun, so much fun. She liked laughing during sex, but he also had this uptight intensity that was kind of endearing. She half expected him to murmur I love you , but for once she didn’t find it cheesy when a man told her they wanted to watch her face.

He fell asleep after, as most of the guys she’d ever been with did. But Shay wasn’t about to be vulnerable with a stranger.

She went to the bathroom, collecting her clothes along the way. She shimmied back into her jeans and tank top, thinking about how she’d done so earlier only worrying about the tips the outfit would get her.

It had been a far more successful night than anticipated.

Shay smiled to herself as she crept through the darkened room. The curtain was open a sliver, and moonlight poured into the room. Something gold glinted on the dresser. His wallet.

But that didn’t make sense.

She shook her head. It was probably his watch—or a wedding ring, even. At that thought, she couldn’t help but take a step in that direction. Just out of curiosity, really.

Her head went light and the world tipped sideways as she realized what the gold actually was.

Not a watch. Not a ring.

Her heart pounded in her throat, in her wrists, in her teeth, as she reached out a shaky hand.

Before she could touch it, she snatched her fingers back, not wanting to leave prints behind.

Still, the thing was easy to see and understand.

Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, but she concentrated on her breathing and it receded. The worst thing she could do was pass out right now.

Because the flash of gold? It was an FBI badge.

Oh no, she thought for the third time that night.