Page 64 of The Truth You Told

“I think it’s possible he might have,” Sasha said. “Or he saw an opportunity and let it happen. The report says the firefighters foundhim outside. He said he went out his bedroom window. And it was open. So.”

She tried to remember the details of Conrad’s childhood. “Was there ever any chatter about Conrad poisoning his family instead of his father doing it?”

Sasha shrugged, his barrel chest rising and falling. “They said he was a child. But in hindsight it seems possible.”

Raisa stared at their empty glasses as her mind tried to slot all this into something that made sense. But all she could think about was that while Marchand and Stahl had strikingly similar childhoods to Conrad, there were two other people who fit that bill.

Shay’s siblings.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shay

December 2012

One and a half years before the kidnapping

It felt strange attending a Christmas party with attendees who were all trying to catch a rapidly escalating serial killer.

If this were a movie, they would be locked in some mood-darkened office, with weeks’ worth of takeout debris scattered around them, the pictures of the victims taped up over every inch of wall space.

But here they were, getting boozed and stuffing their faces with tiny appetizers, and Shay couldn’t fault them for it.

Especially since this was the first time she’d seen Callum without his permanent frown in months.

It had been more than two years now since that first body had been found, and at least from where she stood, they hadn’t seemed to have made any progress.

Shay slipped Kilkenny his refilled whiskey glass, and smiled as his hand settled on the small of her back in thanks. The free bars stocked well liquor, but Shay had known one of the guys serving the drinks, and talked him into a couple of splashes of the good stuff hidden away from the masses.

Callum sighed in appreciation after the first sip.

Shay wasn’t drinking. She hadn’t told Callum why yet, hadn’t told anyone why, but he sometimes looked at her with a softness in his eyes that made her think he’d guessed. He wasn’t dumb.

She smiled as she tucked herself fully into his side and tried not to think about their future. Callum had put in a request to transfer down to the Houston office—he was there so much anyway, he literally got invited to their Christmas party. But he’d been denied.

No one had given him a good reason.

Her eyes found Xander Pierce, and she wondered.

He was a schmoozer, and she’d known too many of them to be charmed by his outgoing personality. He had his eyes locked on the director position, even if that was decades away.

Callum liked him, and he tended to be an excellent judge of character. This one time they’d have to agree to disagree.

Part of her wondered if Pierce was threatened by the attention Callum was getting because of this case. Pierce was the lead agent, and yet most of the profiles that talked about the hunt for the Alphabet Man focused on Callum instead. That was the nature of the narrative, and it was one the Alphabet Man himself had set up. But that didn’t stop Pierce from resenting it.

If she had to guess, that would be why Callum hadn’t gotten the transfer. Pierce wanted to keep him in Seattle, away from his own spotlight down here.

“Okay, give me the goss,” she whispered in Callum’s ear and got a little thrill when his lip twitched into an almost-smile. Sometimes she thought about that first night they’d met, how he’d laughed when they’d had sex, how he’d smiled so freely afterward.

That laugh, that smile, had been why she’d agreed to go back to his hotel against her better judgment the next time. And now they both made such infrequent appearances, she celebrated at the hint of one.

She touched her lower belly. Would he laugh with the baby?

Would he smile when she told him?

Would Beau? Would Max? They had to know it meant her leaving Texas. She’d be back; she could just travel along on some of the dozens of trips Callum took down here. But it wouldn’t be the same. She’d have a baby to contend with.

Neither of them would come with her, either. Callum had made sure Shay knew Max could live with them if they ever moved in together. But Max was like a cat—more attached to the place than the person who loved it.

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