I twirl in my office chair, then stop. “Are there men you’ve dated that aren’t on the memorial list?”
“Of course,” Carolina flips her hair over her shoulder. “Not every guy I dated is dead. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, that’s something,” I point to the list again. “What do these guys have in common that the ones who are alive don’t?”
Carolina paces and stares at the photos.
Paces and stares.
Paces and stares.
Then, she stops and flushes a deep red.
I raise my eyebrows. She knows what it is.
I wait.
She won’t say anything.Oh shit, it must be something embarrassing.
I turn to the tiny hacker in the room. “T, will you give us a moment?”
Tatiana grumbles about this being her office, but she picks up her coffee and walks into the hallway, closing the door.
“Carolina? Whatever it is, we need to know.”
She places the heels of her hands in her eye sockets. “I know. I know. It’s… so embarrassing.”
I move toward her, removing her hands from her face and pulling her into a chair, facing me. “I don’t want to make you more embarrassed, but even the smallest thing could help find a murderer if someone is killing your boyfriends.”
Carolina folds her hands in her lap, looks down at her fingers, and sighs. “I know it’s important, but I’m too embarrassed to tell you to your face.”
I grin. “Well, puffin. It’s a good thing I know how to learn secrets without staring you in the face.”
“Something you learned working here?”
I shake my head and turn my back toward Carolina. “Nope. Raising a teenager. Okay. See? You don’t have to look at my face.”
She doesn’t speak for a moment. Then the smallest voice comes out of her. “They all ghosted me before we had The Sex.”
I whirl around. “Wait. What does that mean?”
“You said I didn’t have to look at your face!”
“Ugh,” I turn back around. “Fine. Tell me what that means.”
“It means each one of those guys took off before we had The Sex. I was going to punch my V-Card with Nate, but then there was his accident,” Carolina sighs. “Then… some other stuff happened, and I didn’t think about The Sex for a while. And the guys who came along after. Same thing. Right around the three-month mark, they disappeared.”
I frown as I turn back to Carolina. “Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”
Thunderclouds roll over her face, and she stares me straight in the eye. “Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?”
“I’m not a virgin because someone stole that from me.”
Chapter 28
“He’s onlymostlyfreaked out.”
