Page 165 of Heresy

“No.”

“Then you don’t know where he is.”

After pacing back and forth, a few steps right, left and then right again, Shane hits a button on his phone.

“I’m calling Taylor anyway.”

He stalks off into one of the four bedrooms, and I follow after him.

For every step he takes, it takes me three, his stride long because he’s angry to learn this new information.

Really, he has nothing to be angry about.

While it did occur to me back when I first learned my father was missing that he may be at that house, I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust anybody with that information.

Not the governor and not Shane.

I was being protective.

But then after everything that happened over the last couple of days, I was too busy dodging traumatic events to really give the issue with Dad more thought.

Not until the silence of the drive between South Carolina and here, and the boring hours stuck in a parking lot watching Shane work on the car.

In truth, I hadn’t really hidden anything. It completely slipped my mind.

“Taylor,” Shane barks, “you’re on speaker. Listen, Brinley says her dad has a safe house in Georgia somewhere. I need you to find it.”

“Safe house? How safe are we talking?”

Shane tosses the phone at me. “You tell him.”

Rolling my eyes at his clipped tone of voice, I relay all the same details to Taylor that I’d given Shane.

Taylor makes an odd noise like he’s thinking, then I hear the distinct sound of his fingers tapping his keyboard.

“It’ll take some digging. They don’t call these placessafefor no reason. Everything is listed as something else and usually set up to have no connection to the person at all. Do you know when he got the house?”

At first I draw a blank, but then a memory pops up in my head, a story my mom had told me about when she’d first moved to Georgia on her own and the tiny house she’d bought that had been a happy place for her.

Mom had attempted to recreate the feel of that home in the new one she moved to after marrying Dad, but I could tell in her expression and voice that she’d never quite succeeded.

There is another fleeting memory of my mom that is right at the edge of my thoughts. There and then gone again. Despite how fast I chase it, though, it manages to escape.

“It’s possible my mom owned it.”

Shane scowls at me when I give that new information to Taylor. Ignoring him, I continue.

“From what I know, she sold the home after marrying dad, but—”

“He may have bought it back or kept it without telling her,” Taylor finishes for me.

This guy is nothing if not quick. The rate he processes information, and his intuition in reaching logical conclusions, is astonishing. I first noticed that about him when I met him.

More tapping against the keys then he says, “I’ll run with that and let you all know what I find out. Either way, I’ll be down there tomorrow. Damon and Ames should be arriving in an hour. I’ll text Shane where to pick them up.”

Shane takes the phone back and ends the call.

We lock eyes as he slips it in his pocket, his head slightly shaking with distrust.

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