She waited for Shona to remove her hand, but she didn’t. It felt like a handcuff, like she was trapped. She wanted to flee out the door and run back to her apartment.
The guilt rose up in her like bile again, fierce and acidic, the coffee surging up into Vivian’s mouth. She jerked her hand away and covered it, managed to swallow the bitter brew back down, the sting of it lodging in her throat.
“You okay?” Shona asked, her voice like sunny lemonade.
Eleven months had gone by since they’d found Ryan in his room, gone from this world forever. Vivian would always remember that phone call. She would never stop going over it.
What if she had stayed outside that bar, ignored the chill in the air and the cold seeping through her boots, and talked to him? Really listened? What if she had called her mom and demanded that she go pick him up, insisting that he was in danger? Would her mom have done it? Or would her father have instructed her to stop babying him?
And what if she had told her parents about the brooming? Would they have gotten the appropriate help for Ryan?
The questions plagued her. Like a rogue mudslide, they dragged her down. Suffocated her. She’d never know the answers. But what she did understand, deep in her heart, was that she’d failed Ryan. She’d betrayed him.
Vivian stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I need to get back. So much studying.”
“Oh, I know, right? But before you go, I have something for you.” Shona looked around in her backpack and pulled out a sheet of paper and held it out. “It’s a list of resources. Like I mentioned.”
Vivian took it, thanked her again, and walked back to her place.
Chapter 23
“One of them is close,” says Greene. “Here in the Flathead.”
“One of them who?” I say.
“One of the more active participants in the social media chatter,” says Alderson. “Our tech guys spotted it.”
“Where?”
“The public library,” Greene says. Her moss-colored eyes return to a duller hazel in the kitchen light. “We don’t know who he is yet or if he’s the same person who’s posted the sketches online, but his behavior is suspicious. The comments? They have a ring of righteousness to them, and they’re all defending the killings.”
My gaze drops to the grooves in the wooden table. Dread feels like the worst case of nausea.
“And it’s closer than we expected. As we mentioned, the sites where the killer’s dropped the actual sketches have been at least a good day’s drive or a flight away from where they ended up committing the crimes. So, this could be a good thing; if they’re staying in the pattern, it could mean it’s not our person. But if he or she is breaking the pattern, well, not so good. But obviously, any activity in northwest Montana worries us.”
“Any keyboard warrior could jump on the righteousness bandwagon, especially these days.” We’ve settled at my kitchen table, which looks small against Alderson’s hefty frame. “What makes this guy so suspicious?”
“The number of times the user shows up,” she says. “It’s excessive. Obsessive, even. Same generic username with numbers, but different IP addresses. Doesn’t post from the same place. In fact, we’re having a hard time locating the user.”
“But have you pinpointed where the sketch was dropped from in the first place?”
“No. And that’s why we have orders to get you somewhere safe.”
“And where would that be?”
“A safe house.”
“A Motel 6? What?”
Greene stares at me flatly, but Alderson half smiles. “Something like that.”
I pick at the Band-Aid on my thumb covering my mangled skin. Heat rises in my face as I think of leaving my home and hiding out. How helpless wouldthatfeel? Pacing and killing time in some depressing motel room?
No!I want to yell.
“For how long?”
“Until we feel the threat has passed.”
