August twisted his fingers, something he rarely did as an adult but had done frequently as a child. “I find it hard to believe that someone just randomly stumbled onto Dad’s family secret and then sided with Shane, no matter how much of a psychopath this random stranger might be. If it was about money, he would have already outed Dad when he didn’t pay, or he would have kidnapped the girls to force his hand…but he didn’t. It’s almost like hewantsa confrontation. He wants us to find him. That screams personal and that screams some kind of attachment to Shane.”
It was infuriating. If the guy wanted something, why didn’t he just make his move already? Had he not anticipated Thomas would tell his family? Had he not anticipated him closing ranks? If he didn’t want revenge, what the fuck did he want?
Aiden sighed. “It’s staring us right in the face but, somehow, we still can’t see it.”
Thomas took a sip of his orange juice, then glanced down the table to Calliope. “You didn’t manage to find anything on any additional family Shane may have had?”
She gave him a pained look. “Now that we know his stepbrother is definitely in Japan and his sisters are living their best suburban mom life on the opposite side of the country, I’m out of options. I mean, short of a DNA sample that I could run through a database that may or may not pinpoint some random secret family members we don’t know about, Shane’s family is a dead end. Literally.”
Like Jericho, Aiden had been banking on it being Shane’s secret child. It made the most sense. Well, it made no sense, really, in the grand scheme of things, but it did in the fucked-up mind of a psychopath. And nobody knew psychopaths better than the Mulvaneys. All roads had led to Shane.
Aiden had seen first-hand how his brainwashing could leave someone with mixed feelings about what had happened to them. While Thomas would never paint Shane as a hero, he still frequently made excuses for his actions and worked hard to put the blame on them both equally. As if they’d both been in the wrong. It wasn’t hard to imagine Holly spinning a fairy tale for her baby to try to fool herself. Denial like that was common.
Aiden was temporarily pulled away from his thoughts when Asa and Zane appeared, both of them looking smug enough for everybody at the table to know exactly what had kept them from breakfast.
Atticus rolled his eyes. “Where’s your doppelgänger?”
“Avi?” Asa asked reflexively.
“No, your other twin brother,” Atticus quipped.
Aiden felt his whole body go hot then cold as the answer he’d been searching for crashed into him like a big yellow school bus. Jesus. He was right, it was staring them in the face the whole goddamn time. “It’s the other one.”
They all turned to stare at him, their confused expressions almost comically similar. “What?” Mac asked.
“It’s the other one,” Aiden said again, nodding as he got more confident that he was correct. “We were right. Well, not a hundred percent right. Right theory, wrong fucking person. It was the fucking other one.”
“What is he babbling about?” Avi asked, entering the room with Felix.
“He does this,” Lola said with a wave of her hand. “He’s had some kind of epiphany but you’re just gonna have to let him talk it out.”
Aiden was right. He knew he was fucking right. “Shane. Fucking Shane. We were right, but we were wrong.”
Lola twisted in her chair, giving him a dubious look. “Are you trying to say that Shane had a twin or something because that’s a little too fucking soap opera if I’m being honest.”
Aiden huffed out a breath through his nose, trying to gather his patience and his thoughts so he could explain it to them. “No. Not another Shane. Another Holly.”
“Holly had a twin?” Felix asked, looking at the others like it was news to him.
“Another victim,” Thomas said, finally seeming to catch on.
“Yes,” Aiden said, a little too triumphantly considering it was just a theory. “There was another girl who reported being raped by Shane after Holly, right?”
Thomas looked dumbstruck. “It was the reason I broke things off with him. How could I forget about her?”
“Because of the fucking handle on the internet. AlwaysChristmas equaled Holly, but what if it didn’t? What if it’s just a significant date to this guy? Something that mattered only to him? We had the right concept, we just had the wrong victim.”
“Well, shit,” Jericho said. “Do you know the girl’s name?”
Thomas frowned. “No. The school protected her identity because she was a minor. I don’t know if she ever went to the police.”
Aiden made a frustrated noise. “Fuck. I cannot believe we don’t have her name.”
“I do,” Lucas said. “At least, I think I do. When I was going through the boxes last night, aside from this guy’s hatred of Thomas and women in general, I was getting a T name.”
“That’s about as helpful as a psychic hotline,” Asa said, earning a dark glare from August.
Lucas sighed. “Terry? Tara, maybe?”
