The two scantily clad women keep touching me. I’m ready to throw something heavier.
Even though all I want is Jenna, she’s glaring at me from across the room, hurt and betrayal on her face.
“Don’t worry, we’ll go. Sounds like Jenna needs to hear some hard truths. Maybe buy her something nice to make her feel better, poor thing.” Sable strokes my jaw before I can stop her.
Jenna’s chin wobbles. She turns and runs up the stairs, Truman’s ears practically dragging on the floor as he hops up after her.
Crawford grabs me before I can run after her and hauls me to my study. “Salinger’s right. You’re out of fucking control. It’s worse than he said.”
“I didn’t—”
“I don’t want to hear a half-baked explanation from you,” he sneers in my face.
My teeth grind. “Good, because I don’t apologize or make excuses.”
I don’t explain to him that I didn’t tell those two girls to come over, because I don’t care what he thinks of me. “I thought you flew back to Boston. Did you decide you missed me after all?”
Crawford hits my cheek lightly. “You and your nutcasery? Hell no. I’m already at my quota of dumb little brothers needing shit from me.”
“I don’t need shit from you,” I say automatically.
“Really? So you don’t want the good news?”
“You drowned Brock in the bay?”
“Figured out why he’s in the building. Turns out Brock’s rich family bought a unit in the building, and he’s been in and out of there, ‘visiting an aunt.’ We’ve got eyes on Brock, and we’ll make sure he doesn’t come back here.”
“Unless you’re going to dump him off in South America, I don’t want to hear it.”
Crawford turns to my murder wall. He whistles. “You monitoring all these people? That’s expensive.”
“Someone’s after her.” I show Crawford Jenna’s phone, which I’ve swiped. “Most of the numbers were blocked or from VOIP when I’d traced them. Unfortunately, I don’t own the telecom company, or I’d break every law to get the names.”
The text messages clog the screen, scores of them, each one worse than the last—violent AI images, threats, insults.
“These aren’t from the same person, you know.” He swipes through the phone.
“Yeah, no shit,” I tell Crawford.
He stands in front of the wall of images. I stand next to him.
“Jenna doesn’t think any of them are dangerous.”
We scan the photos, the timeline I’d made like I was hunting down the killer in some criminal-mastermind movie before the end credits rolled.
“Nathan’s the obvious choice,” Crawford finally says.
“Not Brock? It’s an escalation of behavior. Besides, I haven’t heard shit from Nathan.”
“Once they leave the guy, that’s when it gets dangerous.”
“Put a team on him.”
“Ain’t free. And no friends-and-family discount either,” he warns. Crawford doesn’t leave, though. He continues to stare at the board, rubbing his chin. His nails make a faint sandpaper sound over unshaved stubble.
He takes a breath. “My gut, McCarthy, is that it’s one of the stepfathers.”
We contemplate the sheer number of boyfriends Jenna’s mother has had.
