Page 110 of The Truth You Told

“What wasIdoing there?” Tori asked on an easy laugh. “What were you?”

“Oh, my husband works for the Bureau. I thought I mentioned that,” Shay said, not bothering with the intricacies of explaining Kilkenny’s fly-in, fly-out position. And she definitely wasn’t going to go into whatever was going on with Beau and Pierce.

“Of course, that’s right,” Tori said, before turning toward the waiter and ordering for both of them, like she used to do every time. Back when Shay had been dating, that kind of behavior had pissed her off. But she liked when Tori did it.

Tori turned back to Shay, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Are you still enjoying your tall, dark, and handsome drink of water?”

Shay hadn’t told Tori about the baby. There was no reason she would know that Shay wasn’t living in that typical honeymoon bliss. And this wasn’t the time to correct her, either. She forced a smile. “We’re happy.”

But she forgot she was talking to a psychiatrist. “Uh-oh. Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Shay admitted, taking a too-big swallow of what was probably too-expensive wine to be gulping with such abandon. “Are you doing consultation work with the Bureau?”

“Mmm.” Tori hummed the nonanswer. “So, what are you doing in town?”

“Oh my god, it’s so stupid,” Shay said, burying her face in her free hand. She debated if she should tell Tori anything, but she wanted to talk about it with someone who wasn’t Callum or her teenage sister oreven Beau and all his baggage. Just an abbreviated, sanitized version that left out the active investigation of whatever the hell Hillary was doing.

“Max decided she wanted to play detective,” Shay said.

“Not another serial-killer box.” Tori laughed. “It’s my job, and I’m not even as fascinated by them as she is.”

“What?” Shay asked.

“What, what?” Tori said, eyes still crinkled in amusement.

“I thought you worked exclusively with children who had violent histories,” Shay said, her head going a little bit buzzy. They’d flown in that morning, and then everything with Beau had gone down. She should probably slow down on the wine. Instead, she finished her first glass.

“Yes, and they sometimes become serial killers,” Tori said, some of the humor fading from her face. “You knew that.”

Shay blinked and remembered a night almost identical to this one, perhaps even sitting at this exact table.

“To my knowledge, no one has ever really been able to pinpoint the moment in someone’s life that sets them on an irreversible course.”

“Right, yes, of course,” Shay said, shaking her head to get rid of the whisper ofsomethingcreeping along her skull. “Anyway, Max got it in her mind that—get this—Beau was the Alphabet Man.”

“What?” Tori asked, again on that same burst of laughter. “Why would she think that?”

“She’s sixteen,” Shay said by way of explanation. “I came down to do some sibling relationship repair.”

There was no need to fill Tori in on her own amateur sleuthing habits. The less said about that embarrassing hour when she’d also thought Beau really might be the Alphabet Man, the better.

“She must have foundsomething,” Tori prodded. Lightly, but there was an edge to her voice.

Shay frowned down at her now-full glass, glanced at Tori’s empty one, and wondered if she’d switched them without Shay realizing it. Then she shrugged. It was something she’d done with plenty of peoplethroughout the years when she could tell they needed it more than she. And she could call Callum to come pick her up. Or take a taxi.

“Oh, she had some maps and was talking about the hospital,” Shay said. She squinted at Tori, remembering one particular visit with Billy. Tori had stuck her head in as a surprise hello. “You work there.”

“What?” Tori asked.

“At the hospital,” Shay said, her mouth operating faster than her mind.

“I don’t work there,” Tori said, that laugh of hers going completely brittle. “I have admitting privileges. And I’m called in every once in a while for a consultation ...”

“Oh, right.” That made sense, of course. It was the same with Nathaniel. “Is that what you were doing at the FBI building?”

Shay wasn’t sure why she was so fixated on Tori being there, but she also wasn’t sure why Tori hadn’t answered yet. Even a patI’m helping with a casewould have been enough for Shay.

For some reason, she remembered what Pierce had just said when he’d explained why he’d felt the need to look into Shay’s family.

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