Page 38 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Shay

January 2014

Two months before the kidnapping

Shay talked her way into Callum’s next trip to Houston.

He didn’t want her to come, but she needed to help iron out the Beau and Max situation. Even from Seattle, she could tell the two were on rocky ground. How could they not be? Max had thought Beau was a serial killer for years, and even if she hadn’t confessed to that thought, Beau would still have been able to tell something was off.

As Shay had done all her life, she decided to simply go to Beau.

Except when she pulled into the neighborhood in her little, nondescript rental car, Beau was headed toward his own sedan at a light jog. He checked up and down the street—his eyes skating over her Honda—and then ducked into the driver’s seat.

Shay hesitated, her foot coming off the pedal. She could beep, wave, and get his attention. If he had plans, he might invite her along. If it was work, then at least she’d know he was about to start a shift.

But she didn’t do any of that.

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 wherever she 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 are you doing 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?”

“What would you have done if you’d walked in and I had a girl tied up?” Beau asked.

“This isn’t funny,” she said, shoving at his shoulder.

He held up his hands. “You’re right, sorry. Just ... what was the plan, Shay? Asking me to stop torturing my victims and tattooing them and leaving them in random fields all around the city?”

“I didn’t have a plan,” Shay admitted, and Beau rolled his eyes at the obvious statement. “I’m trying to help you, dumbass.”

“I know.” Beau sighed. “That’s what I hate about this.”

Before Shay could say anything else, the front door opened.

She met Beau’s widening eyes, panic slipping into her own veins at his expression.

“Go,” he mouthed.

But before she could get her feet to move, a silhouette emerged from the hallway, taking the shape of a person.

The man stepped into the room, and Shay inhaled sharply as she recognized the craggy cowboy face of Xander Pierce.

They all ended up at the FBI field office, the darkened house ruled too much of a liability to stay at with all three of them there.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on,” Shay demanded once Pierce had shepherded them into his office. “Isn’t there a crime scene you should be supervising?”

“Yeah, I had to step away,” Pierce said, tapping at his phone as if there were a flood of updates. “This was important, too.” He checked his watch even though he’d probably seen the time on his phone. “I can’t be gone much longer.”

“So, did I interrupt a lovers’ rendezvous?” Shay asked, so baffled at what this could be that she wouldn’t be surprised if that hit the mark.

Beau flushed, and Pierce raised his brows at him before answering, “No.”

He didn’t sound offended, but there was a definite finality in his voice. So, they weren’t covering up a tryst.

The blood. It had something to do with this—she was all of a sudden very sure of that.

“Look, when you started dating Callum, Pierce became interested in our family,” Beau said.

Pierce had the good grace to look somewhat guilty, but his chin also tipped up in defiance. “I’m not just going to let him—”

“Slum it with a bartender?” Shay asked dryly, their conversation at the Christmas party all of a sudden making so much more sense. He hadn’t been hitting on her; he’d been trying to drive a wedge between them. “Can’t have that.”

“No,” Pierce said again, the guilt gone. “We had just stumbled onto a serial killer who Kilkenny profiled as being someone who would want to find an in on the investigation. Then he met you and the family you came with.”

“People like us can’t be trusted, huh?” Shay said, snide and mean with it. She knew she hadn’t liked him.

“Shay, sheath the claws,” Beau murmured. “He wasn’t wrong.”

“The more I dug, the more I found out about Hillary Baker.”

“What? What does our mother have to do with this?” Shay asked, thrown for the first time. She had genuinely expected him to throw Max’s past in their face, had been bracing for it so that she didn’t accidentally reveal that Beau was the guilty party instead.

“She’s into some bad stuff now,” Beau filled in. “She keeps her head above the mess, but her boyfriend is shady, and we’re pretty sure Hillary’s hands aren’t as clean as she wants law enforcement to believe.”

Shay stared between the two of them. “Are you ... Is this a sting? For Hillary?”

The idea was so far from what she’d been imagining that it took her a moment to rearrange her world. Beau wasn’t the Alphabet Man, and for that matter, neither was Xander Pierce. She’d never really contemplated the latter, of course, but still, it was now a fact she knew.

“This has nothing to do with the serial killer?” she clarified.

Pierce’s eyes went a little wide at that. “No?”

The contrast to his earlier certainty had her nearly laughing at the absurdity of this situation. “You recruited my brother to help figure out how much criminal activity our mother is involved in and you haven’t told Callum any of this?”

That last part she was guessing, but from the twist of Pierce’s mouth, she knew she’d hit the mark.

“Perfect, wow, just perfect,” Shay said.

“You can’t tell him,” Beau cut in. “This is an ongoing investigation. You can’t jeopardize it.”

“Oh, you’re law enforcement now?” Shay asked. She didn’t know if she was doing a good job conveying how ridiculous she found that—given the two bodies in his wake—but she gave it the old government try. “You?”

“I want Hillary to stop hurting people,” he said quietly. “She’s lived her life like a wrecking ball. Every decision leaving casualties in its wake. Everything she did to all of us? That was small potatoes. I’m tired of her not facing any consequences for her actions.”

She had never realized before how much Beau was driven by this sense of fairness. You did bad things, you had to pay for them. And if no one else would take care of that, he was going to do it himself. Maybe he couldn’t make himself kill Hillary—or maybe he thought he wouldn’t be able to get away with it a third time—but she could see in his expression that was the kind of justice he wanted. For himself, for his family. For whoever was currently carrying the bruises from Hillary’s actions.

“Okay,” she said, with a sigh. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Pierce looked between them, nodded once, and then headed for the door. “You two can find your way out.”

“Hey,” she called out to stop him. “Is this why you warned me to stay away from Callum?”

For a second, she thought he might lie. But he studied her face and then met her eyes.

“No,” he said. “I wanted you to stay away because I don’t think you’re good for him.”

Shay absorbed the judgment and nodded. “That makes two of us.”

“Asshole,” Beau spit out, and took a threatening step toward him, but Shay grabbed his arm.

Pierce barely spared them another look before ducking out the door.

“Well,” Shay said, staring at Pierce’s desk. He must not keep anything of importance in here if he had just left them alone. Still, she couldn’t completely snuff out her urge to snoop.

“Shay,” Beau chided when she rounded the desk, but the reprimand was perfunctory. He was as nosy as she was.

But her initial assessment had been correct. There was nothing to see on Pierce’s desk, and opening drawers seemed a step too far.

“All right, let’s go,” Shay said, eager to get out of this place. She wasn’t going to be able to tell Callum about this, and she was already itchy at the thought of lying to him like that.

They made their way to the parking lot.

“Hey,” Beau said, nudging her shoulder, “I appreciate that you were going to confront me instead of siccing Callum on me. When you thought I was the Alphabet Man.”

“It wasn’t exactly a smart decision,” Shay admitted.

Beau laughed. “I didn’t call it smart.”

And then he took off to his car without a backward glance. Shay watched him go and felt both stupid and fond about him.

She was just pulling out her own keys when she heard a familiar voice.

“Shay?”