“Did we go to high school together?” he continues.
I turn to him, surprised that that’s where he’s placing me from. I study his face back, searching the recesses of my mind for a memory of him.
“I had Mr. Glaid for physics,” he says, trying to help me place him.
“Me too,” I respond, even though I don’t recognize him from class. He holds the drink out in my direction again, and when I still don’t make a move to take either one, he smiles, lifting one cup to his lips and taking a sip, and then doing the same to the other cup.
“You can have either one,” he says. “I just filled them out of that keg right there.” I follow the movement of his nod back to the kitchen behind me, where a shiny silver keg of beer sits on the countertop.
I take a cup from him, lifting it to my nose as if I’d be able to smell if it were laced with something. I eye Maeve and Stella across the room, both of them drinking beers of their own and seeming just fine. Pressing the cup to my lips, I sip the drink cautiously.
“Are you always so…” Max’s sentence trails off, his eyes watching the cup in my hand.
“Careful?”
“I was going to say paranoid, but yeah.”
My gaze trails up and down his body. “Yes. Especially about strange men offering drinks to women they don’t know.”
His lips lift into an easy smile, and he takes another sip of the drink in his hand. “I can see how that would be a bad move, but we’re not exactly strangers. You did kick my ass at the alley the other night.”
All three of the men we played against at the bowling alley were noticeably handsome. Tall, dimpled, strong jaws, and easy smiles. I just personally don’t have eyes for anyone but Colin Mills.
“Your friends look like they’re having fun,” Max says, straining to carry on a conversation with me. He lifts his cup in the direction of the living room. Maeve looks like she’s having fun for sure. The man whose hand was draped over her shoulder a minute ago is now standing next to her as they get ready to start a beer pong game as partners, a wide smile on her face. Stella, from the couch, is angling her face up toward the group Stoneis talking with, smiling and nodding like she’s actively participating in the conversation, though I can see the bit of distance in her eyes.
And here I am, brooding by myself like I’m a watchdog with a bone to pick.
“And I don’t?” I ask Max, as that’s what it seems like he’s implying.
He shrugs. “If parties aren’t your thing, we could go out back, sit next to the pool. It’s quieter.”
I eye my friends again, hesitant to leave them. But fresh air does sound nice. As does quiet. So I make eye contact with Stella and indicate to her that I’m going out back. She nods in understanding before I follow Max to the pool.
11
Colin
“We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Tyler,” Alex says to Lily for the second time. Lily sniffles, her gaze cast down at her hands in her lap. She’d asked us to come by after eight so she could put the kids to bed, and even though this time of night is cutting into my Chloe surveillance hour, here we are, delivering a death notice.
We’ve told her that her husband appears to have been killed in a cougar attack, which is something that hasn’t been seen in this entire county in decades. It has happened, so it’s not entirely impossible, just something that makes my instincts come alive.
“Was it common for your husband to spend time in that area?”
Lily shrugs. She hasn’t made eye contact with us much since we’ve been seated on the couch, but I didn’t miss the fading shiner on her cheek bone. Or the multiple half-assed patches littering the drywall around the house.
“He’s a runner. Mostly trails,” she explains. “I’m not very familiar with his routes.”
Alex and I share a glance, because that’s just a tad abnormal.What spouse doesn’t know where their partner usually runs?
“Your husband’s employer reported him missing,” I say gently. “When we started following up on that report, we had a hard time locating you.”
I think back to the video we have of Lily and her kids getting onto the bus that runs to various locations throughout town.
Lily nods, staring at her lap. “The kids and I were at Hope House,” she says, so softly I almost don’t hear her.
I share another glance with Alex. Hope House is a local domestic violence shelter.
In the employment photo provided by Grayson’s boss, he looked like your typical family man. Late thirties, handsome guy, professional. A picture can say a thousand words, and to me, it didn’t say anything about him being abusive. But in my time as a cop, and then a detective, I have come to realize that you don’t always get the full picture when you’re on the outside looking in. Sometimes you only see what people want you to see.
