Boyd gave Shay one last look—half-glare and half-regret—and went. He jabbed the button to call the elevator and waited for it to make its slow way up. A young doctor, sample bottle in one hand, joined him. Boyd absently rubbed his arm, and they steadily didn’t look at each other.
The doors finally opened to let them in. The doctor was going to the second floor. Boyd hit Lobby and stepped back to claim the corner. Before the doors could close all the way, Shay stuck his arm between them to stop it.
“Wait,” he said as the bumpers of the door bounced off his forearm. For a second, Boyd thought he was going to apologize. Maybe Shay thought that too, from the expression on his face as he stared at Boyd. Instead he licked his lips and squared his shoulders. “Tell Morgan that he knows what the right thing to do is. If he tells the truth about who did this, it’ll pay off for him.”
He stepped back. It was Boyd’s turn to stick out his foot to stop the elevator from leaving the floor.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Shay shrugged. His face was more or less unreadable as he stepped back, set in the stiff mask that meant he wanted to hide something.
“People who do the right thing reap the rewards,” he said. “That’s all. And the sooner this is over, the better. Right? We can put this behind us.”
Boyd took his foot out of the door. “Some things you can only take back once,” he said.
For the first time, Shay let something like regret touch his face. “I know.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE COVERofMissing Eight-Year-Olddidn’t depict the grainy security-camera still of Sammy Calloway that Morgan had gotten used to. Instead it was a picture of him on holiday somewhere, tanned and happy, with a gap in his grin where he’d lost his baby teeth.
“… went to Yellowstone one year with me and my dad,”Boyd had said, his voice faintly wistful. Maybe the photo had been taken then. If it had, it couldn’t have been long before Sammy disappeared. The kid in the photo looked like he could be seven or eight.
Morgan snorted to himself—like he could tell a six-year-old from an eight-year-old without some sort of field guide—and stuck the book back on the shelf. It slotted in neatly between the other books in the “Bad things happen to kids” section.
“He’s from here, you know,” someone remarked at his shoulder.
Morgan flinched in surprise, an ache in his ribs a reminder it had been a bad few days, and looked around. It wasn’t the bookstore clerk. He was still hunched down over the computer he’d spent the last fifteen minutes focused on in a determined attempt not to acknowledge that customers existed. Instead it was a wiry-looking older man with faded blond hair and an angular, curious face. He was in running gear, T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and smelled of sweat and nearly overwhelming cologne.
“Ben Sullivan,” the man explained off Morgan’s blank look. He leaned in—and Morgan shifted to the side as his skin crawled at the warmth of the man against his side—and tapped a finger against the spine. It left a wet print against the paper. “He was born and raised in Cutter’s Gap before he left for the big leagues. One of the town’s golden boys, the ones you always knew would make something of themselves.”
“Didn’t ask,” Morgan said.
The man chuckled and stepped back. He slicked his sweat-matted hair back from his face, wiped his hand on his shirt, and stuck it out.
“Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” he said. “Nate.”
Morgan glanced at the damp, soft hand, a muted gold wedding ring on the relevant finger, and curled his lip. He’d always been catnip for old closeted guys, although what they wanted from him had changed after he grew out of twink.
“I’m not interested.”
Nate mugged a look of surprise that didn’t quite reach his eyes—he didn’t expect Morgan to believe him; it was just plausible deniability—as he turned the handshake into a wave at the books. “You were just looking at his books? Unless you’re more interested in the story, but round here, that’s old news.”
“Not on Twitter,” Morgan said.
Nate chuckled, shifted position, and scratched the back of his neck. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes either. “Well,” he said, “the masses’ appetite for the sordid is insatiable. That doesn’t mean we have to feed them any more than we already have. Ridiculous, isn’t it? We have lawyers and doctors in town, even a few heroes, but it’s the boy who ran away from home who’s got two books written about him.”
For a second, Morgan let himself smirk. His jealousy of a dead kid was twisted enough that it was weirdly satisfying to hear from someone else who didn’t think Sammy Calloway was all that. Maybe Nate wasn’t that much of a small-town dickhead.
“Yeah, well, they’ll lose interest sooner or later,” Morgan said with a shrug. “It’s not like the kid was a Kardashian.”
Nate rubbed his finger along his lower lip and stepped into Morgan’s space. The smell of his sweat cut with something woodsy and green wasn’t strong, but he was too close to ignore it. Morgan grimaced and resisted the urge to shove the man away. He talked as though he was one of those doctors or lawyers, and Morgan had enough trouble with the cops.
“Do you know who did it?” Nate asked as he tilted his chin up to look at Morgan. His voice was casual, amused, but his light-gray eyes were still sharp with interest as he touched Morgan’s arm. “Or you still in the dark?”
“I thought the whole point was nobody knew.”
Nate chuckled and leaned back. “Everybody knows,” he said. “It was the mother. Trust me. I’ve seen plenty of cases like this, and it’s always one of the family.”
