Page 42 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Shay

January 2014

Two months before the kidnapping

The world was full of sliding-door moments—instances where one tiny decision completely altered your future. Forgetting milk could mean making a run to the grocery store, which could mean getting T-boned by that car that ran the red light just before you pulled into the parking lot.

Or you could decide to suck it up and drink your coffee black that morning.

Shay tried to piece together the moments that had led her to this one.

She remembered the bar that first night, when so many people had been talking about the dead girl and Callum had sat on his stool and secretly judged them all. She thought about the moment he’d almost left and she’d wooed him with her stupid story about that ridiculous stuffed cat.

She thought about the gun she’d hidden, the one that had taken a life and made Max suspicious of Beau, and Shay suspicious of Max.

She thought about Billy’s funeral, where Kilkenny had wondered if there had been foul play involved.

She thought about Max’s trip to Seattle, which had brought Shay to Houston now.

Thought about how, because of all that, Shay had followed Beau to an empty house, where Xander Pierce had walked in twenty minutes later.

If any one of those things hadn’t happened, Shay wouldn’t have been standing in the parking lot of the Houston FBI office watching Beau jog off toward his truck.

She wouldn’t have almost dropped her keys when she heard a familiar voice call her name.

She wouldn’t have turned, eager and with a big smile to greet a friend she hadn’t seen in far too long.

She wouldn’t have let her eyes slide back to the FBI building and wondered, for just one minute, what Dr. Tori Greene had been doing in there.