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I squinted at him, my head tilting as I considered that.

Mateo dragged a chair to the other side of the desk, so we could both face the computer monitor, and dropped into it. “I’m having cognitive dissonance. Wiping your existence from the internet isn’t so easy. It’s not something the average dude with a laptop can do. Wearing a logo to a stabbing…that was dumb. Really fucking dumb. And he did it twice.”

I frowned. My gut told me Mateo was right. Something wasn’t adding up. “He’s arrogant. He hit her, burned her, and stabbed her with dozens of witnesses, and he got away with it. He thinks he’s untouchable.”

“In the first place, he wore that hoodie before he got away with it. In the second place, he didn’t get away with it because he was smart or careful. He got away with it because of inattentional blindness.”

“What’s inattentional blindness?” I asked as I plugged in the hard drive and pulled up the photos.

“It’s like wearing blinders. Back in the nineties, Harvard psychologists ran an experiment. Participants watched a short video of basketball players passing the ball to each other. All they had to do was count the number of passes made by players in white shirts. Halfway through the video, a person in a full-body gorilla suit walked into the center of the frame, faced the camera, beat his chest, and walked away. How many people do you think noticed it?”

“Noticed someone in a gorilla suit in the middle of a basketball game? All of them.”

“Half. The other half were too busy counting passes. It probably works the same for people hailing a cab at an airport, or ordering a drink at the bar, or getting the perfect photograph at a workshop.”

I leaned back. “What are you saying? Are we dealing with someone who’s dumb but lucky, or smart but fallible?”

“I’m saying something’s off with this guy, and I want to know what it is. I don’t like it when the pieces don’t fit.”

Of course he didn’t. He was used to being five steps ahead of everyone. I snorted and clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to what life is like for those of us operating with seventy-five percent of your brain power.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got eighty percent, at least. Don’t sell yourself short.” Mateo pushed up his glasses with a little smirk.

I clicked on the first image and maximized it to the full screen. “We look at every single person before we move on,” I said. “Check the face to see if they match with someone from Lila’s circle. Check the height and body build. Check the hand for the ring and the freckle. We’ll mark each one that we clear with an X. None of that inattentional blindness shit.”

“The term you’re looking for is biased perception, actually. But I get what you’re saying,” he added hastily when I shot him a look.

We went slowly, studying each person thoroughly before moving on to the next. My jaw clenched as each new image brought us closer and closer to the moment Lila was attacked. She was gorgeous in these photos, her red curls piled high on her head, her cheeks flushed with excitement. She loved geeking out over the principles of photography, and it showed in her animated expressions. She was glowing.

Mateo glanced at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. No.” I blew out a breath. “I should have been there.”

“Even if you hadn’t fucked things up with her, you still wouldn’t have been there,” Mateo pointed out. “This was her job. You can’t be with someone every second of every day. You—wait. What the fuck is he doing there?”

I was already on my feet, phone in my hand, stomach clenching as I waited for Lila to answer. I shoved a hand through my hair, pacing to the door and back again.

It went straight to voicemail.

“Fuck,” Mateo whispered.

I broke into a run.

33

LILA

“Put your shoes on.” Clay kept his gun trained on me as he jerked his chin to my boots by the door. “And your coat. Hurry.”

I did not hurry. Partly because my shaking hands were clumsy with fear, and partly because what the fuck did he want me to hurry for? So he could shoot me faster?

I suspected Clay did not have my best interests at heart.

“Tell me what’s going on.” I struggled to keep my voice calm as I tied my shoelaces. “Why are you doing this?”

His expression was inscrutable as he watched me. “Why do you think?”

I blinked up at him. It was a question I’d asked myself a thousand times since the day at the airport when he’d walked up to me and slapped me across the face. Why did someone hate me enough to hurt me? What had I done to deserve that? I didn’t have any enemies that I knew of. There was no one I had wronged in some horrible way. Seb suspected an ex-boyfriend, but even before that had taken him to a dead end, that theory had never felt right to me. Twisted love wasn’t driving these attacks. It was pure, unadulterated hate.