Rebecca Frost

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Part Seven: Release Day

Art looked around when he came in, but the tables were empty. “Nothing?” he asked, almost incredulously.

Nell shrugged. “What did you expect?”

“Him to fold like wet cardboard.” He came around the counter and went right to the espresso machine.

“The guy who played a long game and wrote an entire freaking novel?”

“Dahmer folded,” Art argued. “Bundy folded. There’s a long list of people who murdered for years and then …” He snapped his fingers.

She didn’t think that was the sound of wet cardboard folding.

“Kent and his dad out fishing or something?”

“Fishing?” Was he so distracted that he’d forgotten where they lived?

Art waved that away. “Some sort of male bonding whatever. Two dudes off doing dude stuff.”

“I’m not sure where they are or what they’re doing, but yeah, Owen’s hanging out with him today.” Possibly discussing Donna and how they, as a group, were going to handle everything moving forward.

At least Owen called them Kent and Nell. He’d been thinking of them that way for years, which gave him a head start on the rest of his family, and maybe he’d also tried to explain to Donna why, exactly, they couldn’t just flip back to their old names.

Art sighed. “Sorry. However frustrated I am with all of this …”

“Some of us have been frustrated with the lack of progress for years now.”

He shook his head slowly. “You’re, um … you’re good at keeping secrets.”

“Alternately, you’ve only known me frustrated, so you’ve got nothing to compare it to.”

Art tilted his head, considering. “Fair. Plus, well … you had every reason to keep your secret. Getting close to someone could get them killed.”

She shivered and crossed her arms, shaking her head to forestall his apology. “Like that hasn’t been on my mind this entire time, either. This whole thing is just …” But she didn’t have a way to finish that sentence.

“It’s entirely too unbelievable that it would wrap up?” he suggested.

Nell nodded slowly. “And, even then … God, I just …” She glanced around, but there wasn’t anyone here, and if the place was bugged, it wasn’t like she’d see the mics. “Even prison doesn’t feel sure enough. He could still … someday …”

Art nodded like she wasn’t telling him anything new. “Even having that photo … I’d be worried I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him on the street.”

“Hard same.”

“But there’s probably, uh …” Art set his cup on the counter and leaned his elbows next to it, eyes on the door. “There’s no proof then, huh? Or else …”

“Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty.”

He sucked air in through his teeth. “A life sentence?”

“Eligible for parole after ten or fifteen years.”

“Damn. And he’s pretty young, right? So ten or fifteen …”

God, she actually felt herself relax at his response. All it took was his frustration and she was validated. Kent felt the same way, sure, and she was pretty sure Owen did, too, but those guys were practically required to feel that way. They were supposed to be protective and ready with teeth and claws. The fact that Art joined in, though … that helped a lot.

“So …” Art picked up his cup and swirled the contents. “What can I do?”

“Sorry?” She looked around like maybe she’d forgotten to wipe down the tables.

“I don’t know, to make this easier, or make time pass faster, or something. Just … what can I do to help? You want more hours to distract you, or less, or just …?”

Nell blinked as something occurred to her. “Hey, so what’s up with the book launch tour, then?”

“The …?” Art blinked, too, and shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything. Haven’t asked, either. Maybe I should, but …” He frowned. “Everyone thinks he’s just been arrested for the assault, right?”

So he was going to get out on bail or something and still be able to do his cross-country tour? Nell pulled out her phone and Googled Bentley Beckett. They had to be speculating about why he assaulted an agent, right? Especially since they were speculating about whether they should really continue to #FindRosie and all the rest. If Rosie were real, and if the real Rosie was wanted for murder, and then Beckett went and beat up an FBI agent badly enough to land him in the hospital …

She didn’t find what she wanted after a quick scroll so she tried Bentley Beckett book tour instead. That search pulled up a list of locations and options for buying tickets, followed by a couple questions about whether the first nights were still on, but …

“Looks like they haven’t canceled anything yet,” Art mused. “They’ve put so much into him, though, so I guess I’m not surprised.”

At some point serial killer had to outweigh massive investment, right?

“I’ll email and cancel anyway, though.”

“Is that going to cost you something?” Had they asked for some sort of down payment?

Art snorted. “He was caught ready to take a standing lamp to an agent in this very state, so I’m pretty sure they’ll just say okay, thanks, and that’ll be it.”

She looked out at the walls, both the pending connections and the pending food, the second emptier than the first. They really could’ve used the free advertising, but …

But. The Loneliest Number was about an author who wanted to #FindRosie so he could … well. Nell didn’t think Beckett wanted to kill her, but he’d certainly hurt her, and justify it to himself in the process.

That was really the most insidious part to her: that he could justify it. Could, and did, for five murders, and she’d be damned if she wanted to give him a chance at any more. Honestly, he’d already taken so much from her, and there was damn little left. If Kent hadn’t come with her, just dropped all else and thrown everything into the two of them …

Art nudged her shoulder with his own. “Help me think of some new advertising campaign.”

“Yeah? What’s your budget line read for that?”

“There’s no line. No room for one, either. Our plan’s got to be less than cheap—I’m thinking free.”

“Something that takes up your time and energy isn’t actually free,” she sniffed.

“Fine, then think of something that takes up someone else’s time and energy.”

Nell shrugged. “We should hook up with the library and do a blind date with a book thing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You wrap up books and write fun things on the outside to hint at what they are, so people check them out and unwrap them. We could pair them with drink recommendations and then just … I don’t know, people hang out and read here for a while.” She shrugged again. “At least I’m pitching.”

“No, I like it. The …” He pointed to the connections wall. “It fits. Wouldn’t they have to check them out at the library?”

“There has to be an app. If other places have bookmobiles, there’s got to be a way we can do this.”

Art nodded slowly. “I’ll ask Brandon. He owes me. Although …” His grin was a little wry. “Maybe not as much as he did when we all thought C. J. O’Connell was just some author with a much-hyped book.”

“Yeah, I think he’s still working through the stages of grief on that one.”

“There’ll be another moving bestseller to tug at his heartstrings that wasn’t written by a murderer. He’ll get over it.”

Nell laughed. “Still might be a while before you can get him on board with the blind date thing.”

“Brandon’s a romantic who wears rose-colored glasses and his heart on his sleeve. If we call it blind dates, he’s in.” Then, at her raised eyebrow, he laughed. “I’m not romantic in the least, but I’ve made studies.”

“Studies.” She almost didn’t want to know.

Art smiled. “I’m not saying my Google history has a 3 a.m. search for how to convince a romantic of something he doesn’t want to do, but I’m not saying I’ve never looked that up, either. Blind date with a book,” he repeated, nodding slowly. “That’s good. We should make it just one part of a whole …”

“Scheme?” she suggested.

“Marketing plan,” he countered, smile broadening. “Keep thinking on it. I’m sure we’ll get something better than that damn book.”

Nell rolled her eyes. “What, like it’s hard?”

Art grinned. “Oh, good. You’re back.”

Was she? Or was she just back to whatever sort of normal she’d been before he’d ever handed her a copy of Since You Went Away? It wasn’t really possible to go all the way back, was it? Not while Beckett’s sentence was pending and he would, one day, be released.

Maybe Art caught some of this on her face because he hesitated, but he went on back to his office when she shook her head to tell him no, she didn’t want to talk about it just now, thanks.

It wasn’t something she’d ever really want to talk about.

---

Chapter Forty – coming February 9

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Ben’s lawyer took off his glasses—rimless, quite thin, possibly worn only for theatrics such as this—and took his time polishing them. Seriously, they didn’t merit all this attention. The flourish with the polishing cloth, the continued circular motions, the squint as he held them up to the light … pointless. Clearly the man needed a prop so he could do his thinking, and Ben didn’t feel all that reassured by a lawyer who needed props.

This wasn’t a courtroom. Surely his own client didn’t merit such a performance. Besides, he was court-appointed, so it wasn’t like he could use his faux-dirty glasses to pad his billable hours.

“Mr. Beckett …” Like he was a paying client with deep pockets. “What, exactly, is your goal here?”

He blinked, but that didn’t seem to work, so he blinked again.

“The assault charges will stick. We might be able to plead the sentence down on that one, but, since they’re after you for the others, I doubt they’ll be cooperative.” He sighed and checked his watch. “They don’t have any evidence tying you to the string of murders, so it’s unlikely they’ll charge you, but …”

But. Why was there a but?

“Your book.”

Ben blinked again, even though that hadn’t helped yet. “My book.”

“Your book doesn’t confess to any of the murders, but it does tie in the two they suspect were committed by the same person, so you’ve put yourself in a tough place there. Because most people would’ve read the newspapers and stopped at three.”

It wasn’t a confession. Obviously it wasn’t a confession. “The agents already suggested that I was just … perceptive. And those two have been solved.”

“By the local police,” his court-appointed shithead agreed, like he was just humoring him. “The FBI wasn’t involved back then, but now they know you’re name, and they really want to know why you beat up one of their own, so …”

“Past crimes—if they actually existed—can’t be brought up as proof of guilt for an alleged crime,” he protested.

“Mr. Beckett, your alleged past crimes form the motive for the one with which you will be charged, because they have plenty of proof for it. So either you and I need to come up with a reason for that attack that is not ‘Why yes, I killed the others for Lida-Rose Dawson and finally found a way to track her down,’ or you capitulate, tell them everything, and at least a chance to talk to her.”

He straightened his shoulders and felt something in his spine crackle. “I don’t think it’s fair to say those are my only options.”

“Oddly enough, the state of Michigan couldn’t care less about what you think is ‘fair.’”

“Now you just—”

He forgot himself. That was the only explanation for it: why he jumped to his feet, tipping the chair over behind him, and leaned across the table, and pointed directly at this shyster lawyer in a gesture that did indeed seem to be threatening.

That was why there was a guard on his feet, yelling something, and pointing a gun at him.

Wasn’t he allowed to speak to his lawyer alone? And, barring that, did the guards really need to have guns in here? Ben was already handcuffed—and raising those cuffed hands, thank you very much—and he wasn’t actually going to do anything to this lawyer, whatever the fuck his name was, who sat there across from him, polishing his glasses and checking his watch instead of helping.

And this, now? While Ben stood here with his hands in the air and a gun directed at his chest? The bastard sighed and checked his watch again. “I’ve got five more minutes for him, Hopkins, but I’m not going to complain if you decide he doesn’t deserve them.”

“Are you going to stay on that side of the table?” the guard more barked than asked.

Ben started to nod, then thought better of moving. “Yes.”

“When you right that chair, it’s not going to come more than one inch off the ground.”

He hesitated, but that seemed to be his cue to ] move, and he made sure the back legs didn’t actually lift at all.

“Now sit.”

He sat.

The guard holstered his weapon and retreated back to his stool in the corner. God, seriously? It was like a bad prison movie where they hadn’t bothered to consult with any actual prisons.

The lawyer raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Beckett? You had an opinion to express?”

Fuck him. The man clearly wanted to bait him and make him jump up again … and for Hopkins to fire this time. How fair could anything be when your own lawyer wanted you bleeding out on the cement floor? “If I say nothing, then all they’ve got me for is the assault charge.”

He nodded once. “Twenty years.”

“Twenty …?”

“Felony assault on a federal officer using a dangerous or deadly weapon, maximum sentence. And you know they’ll go for the maximum sentence.” He shrugged easily, because it wasn’t his neck in the noose. “And they’ll figure out any number of other charges they can heap on that one, just to be sure. Plus you’ll never see her. Ms. Dawson.”

He shook his head. “They can’t keep her away.”

“Ah, well, see …” Instead of polishing them, the man simply resettled his glasses on his nose. “They don’t have to approve her in the first place. Or allow her letters through.”

“They can’t stop me from calling her!” Except—damn it, he’d let it all get to him—he didn’t have her phone number.

The lawyer shrugged. “You put a federal agent in critical condition and you’ve failed to adequately explain the reason behind your actions. You’re clearly a danger to everyone around you. Have they allowed you the newspapers in here, Mr. Beckett?”

“The …?”

“Newspapers. Because you’re being painted as Norman Bates, and public opinion is clearly against you. Honestly, at this point … you’ve got nothing going for you.”

“What, so you think I should just … fake a confession to serial murder?” he snapped, heart pounding in his throat because he’d almost left out the word fake. He’d almost just said confess, and seriously, what was wrong with him? Why was this man getting to him so effectively?

Sighing, he put his legal pad—still virginal, since the idiot hadn’t even taken any notes—back in his briefcase and pushed the catches closed. “I’m saying that plea bargains only happen when you have something they want, so you need to think long and hard about whether you do, and what sort of future you envision for yourself, Mr. Beckett. Hopkins, he’s all yours.”

“Not that we want him,” the guard grumbled just loud enough for him to hear. It was supposed to provoke him—and at least he knew that, but it wasn’t worth going after some nothing guard, anyway. He followed the barked orders and, back in his cell, he lay on his bunk with his hands folded on his stomach, trying to think.

It was going wrong. All of it was going wrong. As soon as he’d come out of that back room with the lamp in his hands and seen the woman’s face, he knew it was going wrong.

Except apparently he hadn’t realized how wrong it was.

The damn lawyer was working against him. Trying to compel a confession. The man was supposed to be on his side, and it was his own damn fault he was a public defender. That wasn’t a position you just accidentally fell into, so it was a choice. Choice meant culpability meant fault. Ipso facto.

God, he had to get it together.

Everything was for her. He couldn’t help her if he was locked up in prison. And that meant …

Shit. It meant the lawyer might know what he was talking about. Plea bargaining meant trying to spend less time in prison, which was certainly Ben’s own personal goal, except the things they were asking him to plea in order to complete the bargain …

Right now, they had him for assault. With a deadly weapon, yes, fine, but that wasn’t serial murder. And he really, seriously doubted they’d get him for either the bus driver or Number 17, because those trials were over. People were already behind bars. Even if Ben came right out and said he did it—and proved it somehow—it wouldn’t be that easy. So maybe they’d be after him for the three, and even then …

Phillips. They’d laid down that photograph of Heidi Phillips and tried to pin that on him. Shit, he’d have to ask the dumbass lawyer about that—if they could really trace cell phone movements that far back. But even then, it wasn’t like she’d carried a GPS in her pocket. They could say she was in the range of whatever towers, but they couldn’t place her in his apartment.

That was the whole point. Nobody had ever been able to place them together. He figured she didn’t want anyone to know—that she was embarrassed to be seen with him—but that didn’t matter, because it got the result he wanted. Heidi suggested that the roommates should keep tabs on each other, which meant he’d known when the apartment was empty so he could check on his bugs. That right there—the whole relationship with Heidi—was the perfect example of doing something you didn’t like because it got you the results you needed.

But, if he did that this time … if he confessed and somehow managed to prove he was telling the truth … that didn’t guarantee him a single second with her. They were holding her up like a carrot, but he didn’t trust silver platters.

Ben frowned slightly, even though he was pretty sure there was a camera watching his every move and he really didn’t want to give them a thing. He was desperate, yes, but couldn’t he say the same thing about them? They’d thrown Phillips at him and flung all those unsubstantiated accusations.

Ever so conscientiously he smoothed out his forehead and let his thoughts continue to explore this new idea.

---

This is the end of Part Six.

Chapter Thirty-Nine – coming February 8

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Part Six: Rhymes of Yesterday

The number of times they asked Ben if he understood was insulting. Yes, he understood his rights as they read them to him. Yes, he understood that they wanted him to tell them everything. Yes, he understood that they were accusing him of more than the attack on Hillier, which they were hinting was a murder, but they could lie. They were always allowed to lie in the interrogation room, and he would be punished if he tried the same.

]Correction: if he tried the same … and was caught.

Hillier, yes, fine, he’d probably made mistakes there. Although he’d also made mistakes here, because he’d believed the address, and the scripted fight, and he’d been caught red-handed with the standing lamp held like a weapon and two more lamps bugged. Not to mention the crowbar by the door.

They hadn’t missed it. It had in fact been their cue.

The woman wasn’t right at all. He supposed that’s how it was always going to be: people reading the book and imagining their own Rosie, because author’s descriptions always worked best when they left enough spaces for each reader to individualize the characters. Sure, he supposed her hair was blonde, but her build was wrong, and he’d noticed her voice wasn’t right even as he was looking for a weapon to use to defend her.

The irony. The one time he was actually there, the woman in question—not her—didn’t need defending.

He didn’t have access to the news, which bugged him more than the continued attempts to get him to talk. She was still out there, somewhere, and he didn’t know what they were telling her. What she thought she knew. He supposed they might contradict whatever made it into the news, and argue that of course they knew better and were telling the truth, or maybe they simply kept the news from her so she had no idea what was going on. Maybe she didn’t even know that he’d tried.

Maybe she still thought she was alone. Alone, and forgotten.

It was always the same two men, but it wasn’t the two from before. And it could’ve been—Jack and Tyler could’ve squared off against him—because Ben was back in Michigan. The paperwork reason was Hillier, which trumped any sort of breaking and entering in Iowa, but they’d already told him the real reason when they demanded he confess to everything.

These two either hadn’t given their names, or he hadn’t been paying attention when they did. It didn’t matter. None of the words coming out of their mouths mattered. He’d fallen for their trap, gone haring off to finally save her, and she hadn’t been there. They’d played him, and the way to make sure he didn’t get played again was to keep his mouth shut. He’d get what he got for Hillier, but that would be it.

That was the whole point. There was no evidence connecting him to any of those murders—which was a small miracle, considering something they hadn’t even thrown at him as a guess. If they knew that, then maybe there was a problem

He didn’t have a problem. This was a delay, but it wasn’t a problem. Really, he hadn’t lost anything. He didn’t know where she was, but he hadn’t known for years. If they put him in prison, fine, he’d do the time and then get out and start over. But, if they put him in prison for Hillier, that meant the book money would still be there when he got out. They could allege and accuse and cajole, but until they sentenced, it was simply a strange connection. Some deep insight that put all five together when everyone else thought there were only three. Instinct, or author’s creativity.

They brought Ben into the room again, the big, empty one with the obvious camera. He wasn’t handcuffed, but he was in a jumpsuit and little paper booties, and he’d been searched very thoroughly—perhaps even overly intrusively—more than once. The only weapons he had were the ones stored inside his head, and that was behind an unpickable lock.

The two agents came in, and they didn’t say hello this time. It was rude, and it was also worth noticing, because they’d greeted him all the other times. They’d even tried asking him how he was doing—did you sleep well, how are they treating you—but he didn’t answer any of that. No response was the best response, and didn’t they deserve the best?

But today they didn’t talk, and they each looked exhausted. It wasn’t just in the pulled-down ties or the lack of suit jackets with shirt sleeves rolled up, which could all be—and probably was—part of an act. The light in here was stark, and the dark patches under their eyes were real. Neither had a five o’clock shadow, which was probably against regulations, but to his calculating eye they both looked about beaten.

Good. He could keep his mouth shut for as long as necessary, but it was annoying to continually be brought in here and have questions barked at him.

One of them carried a thick folder, probably for show, and started laying out printed sheets of paper in neat columns despite his apparent exhaustion. He dropped his eyes to see if he could make out any of the lines of text from here, but it was too small, and he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of making him lean in. Let them wait in silence until they broke and started to explain, and then—

The last image was a black and white printout of a photo of Heidi Phillips.

That was fine. There were plenty of photos of Heidi Phillips. A big fan of documentation, Heidi Phillips. She hadn’t had the face for selfies, but she’d taken them, anyway.  She’d hook an arm around someone’s neck and force them to lean in, nearly cracking skulls, and hold out her phone and order you to look at the camera—not the screen, the camera, because she’d re-take it if your eyes went elsewhere—and click away, baring her teeth the way a chimpanzee did as a warning.

It was fine. She’d kept her phone in the car. He’d insisted. He was a very private person who didn’t want his face out there where anyone could take it and use it, and that hadn’t even been in the era of generative AI. He wasn’t on social media, and he wanted things to stay that way.

This photo was from Facebook. It had been her profile picture when she died. The fact that they had a copy didn’t mean anything, because that particular image had been everywhere. Even in the paper, which he knew, because that was in his own folder of printouts, so …

So. He looked back up at the agents, fighting the thought that maybe he’d been staring at Heidi for too long.

The agent who’d displayed Heidi’s picture reached out to push it just a little closer to Ben. “You know who this is.”

It wasn’t a question, so it definitely didn’t deserve a response.

“You latched onto the two other murders, but you missed something major about this one,” the agent continued. “Which is weird.”

He just looked across the table, breathing easily, blinking when necessary.

“The night she was murdered, she’d told her roommate—your Rosie—that friends were going to pick her up for the weekend.” He tilted his head. “That’s why Lida-Rose Dawson’s boyfriend came down for the weekend. He got there, Dawson left with him to go get dinner, and it was the two of them who found Phillips’s dismembered body.”

Uh. Well. If they said so. Ben tried not to let that thought show on his face or flicker across his eyes. He wanted to tell them that, if it hadn’t made it into the paper, then no, he didn’t know it—and besides, not everything that made it into the paper ended up in the book—but he also didn’t want to tell them anything.

The second agent opened a folder, holding it so Ben couldn’t see what, if anything, was inside. “Dawson’s been told she can’t see you until after you talk to us. She’s not happy about that.”

His heart rate jumped before he could try to stop it. They were probably lying to him. They were certainly allowed, and if they were already trying to poke him with Heidi’s picture …

The first man sighed. “This is basically your shot. You tell us, or she’s off the table.”

He didn’t think they could really do that. Maybe she’d be denied visiting privileges, but she could write to him. She’d know where to find him, after all. If they censored everything … Well, if that happened, he’d get a lawyer. Except that probably wasn’t the best way to approach this, was it? He wasn’t going to talk about Kalamazoo no matter what, and they wouldn’t—shouldn’t—be able to get him on anything else but Hillier, but the law didn’t work well for people who were one step behind and just trying to catch up. It was better to get on top of things if they were already threatening to keep her from him. To not let her see him, even when it was what she wanted. When they knew it was what she wanted.

He took a slow breath, and it was clear they were desperate for anything from him because that was all it took. He didn’t straighten up or move appreciably—it was just the slow breath, and they were both putty in his hands. “I want a lawyer.”

Well. Not quite putty. But he went back to his silence and waited them out and did his best not to smile.

---

Chapter Thirty-Eight – coming February 7

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Nell was almost asleep on the couch in front of the television, head on Kent’s shoulder, when she sat up suddenly. “Oh my God.”

“Nell?” That wasn’t just curiosity. Kent’s voice was overloaded with concern.

“No, I …” She pressed her fingertips to her temples like her skull needed the extra force to keep her brain from exploding it into shards.

Kent sat up and paused the movie, almost hunching over her protectively but literally biting his lip to keep himself from spewing a torrent of questions.

Her drowsing thoughts drew the connections, but Nell forced them to surface more fully so she could test them. Make sure everything actually did lead into everything else. God, she needed a calendar … their old emails … it might still work without proof, but if they could actually back this up …

Nell fumbled for her phone and checked the time. Still early enough, maybe, that he’d answer, but if he’d been in the car coming back from Des Moines today … she hit dial anyway, and then put the call on speaker as Kent shifted, ready to grab her in a bear hug like it would protect her from whatever she was thinking.

“Hello?” Adam answered, but she couldn’t read him as well as Kent, so she wasn’t sure if she’d woken him up or if he was concerned or annoyed or what.

“I just thought of something where, if it’s true, you need to hit him with it.”

There was a pause, but Nell and Kent waited it out. Then Adam said, “Okay, go.”

“Someone needs to figure out how many weekends Heidi told me she was with her friends back home, and if she actually was with them at any of those times,” she started, forcing herself to speak slowly even though her heart was still jackhammering. Then she waited, in case Adam was taking notes.

After a short pause, he said “Okay” again.

“I don’t think anyone checked that except for the last weekend, but if you have those dates …”

“What are we doing with those dates, Nell?”

“First you have to see if you can prove he was in Kalamazoo all those weekends. O’Connell.” She shook her head a little. “Beckett.”

Kent swore softly under his breath.

“And then—was there anything in our apartment that seemed weird?”

Adam cleared his throat. “Define ‘weird.’”

“Anything that wasn’t from one of us. Anything …”

“From Beckett,” Kent finished. “You think Beckett was secretly dating Heidi.”

“If he was, there doesn’t have to be anything in the apartment,” Nell continued, “because maybe he didn’t come over. Maybe he fed her some sort of story that means she’d hang out with him.”

Over the phone, Adam sighed. “You said she didn’t go out evenings. All your friends came over. Heidi had no social life.”

“Outside of those weekends she told me she went home,” Nell argued. “Did anyone ask her parents if they actually saw her? Because that was more than once a month. And some weekends, when I was gone … I don’t know if she was there or not. She didn’t text me that she’d gone anywhere, but that hardly means anything.” She blinked and shook her head. “Can her phone be traced? After all this time?”

“Nell …”

“Because that’s how you’d need to do it.” Nell took a deep breath. “You’d have to lay out all the evidence and outline the gaps. Prove there are gaps. If her phone says she was in Kalamazoo the whole time … if it pinged the towers where he lived … you could nail him with it.”

“Nail him with the gaps.”

She shook her head a little to keep Kent from saying whatever he’d drawn in a quick breath to say. “I never shared my location with Heidi, but she’s the one who asked me to text her about my plans. She’d know when I was in the apartment and when I wasn’t, and when I had an alibi if something went down and it got connected back to me.” Even though it hadn’t even gotten all connected to itself until after Heidi died. “You’ve got copies of those texts, right? Or maybe you could pull more? Longer, for the whole year …”

“To prove you’d spent senior year keeping your roommate appraised of your whereabouts?”

“And you’re going to tell Beckett you know she only did it because he asked her to. Check her records. See if you can prove she never asked anyone else.” A thought struck. “Sienna. Find Sienna and ask her if Heidi was ever like that when they roomed together.”

“People are allowed to change, Nell.”

“Sure, but if you’ve got that, if you can hit him with it … all of it at once, just laying down the evidence …”

More silence, but this time Kent didn’t try to speak, either. He caught Nell looking at him and nodded slowly, the sort of respectful acknowledgment given to geniuses lucky enough to be recognized in their own time.

“Okay,” Adam finally said again. “I don’t know how much of this we’ll really be able to get, but I’ll pass it on. Off the record, though …”

As though any of this was actually on it.

“You believe it?”

Her half-sleeping subconscious clearly did, but Nell took a moment to truly consider the question. “It’s always bugged me,” she finally said, “that Heidi lied about where she was supposed to be that weekend. That nobody missed her.” Maybe that second part more than the first, because people deserved to be missed. “She told me that her friends were picking her up, the same way she’d told me before, but nobody was there. You guys tracked them down, and they said no, they hadn’t seen Heidi in ages.”

“True, but she wouldn’t be the first person to lie to her roommate.”

Nell sighed. “No, but they never figured out why she was lying. Did they.”

“So now you think it’s Beckett.”

“You’re going to have to do a lot of research before you can convince me it’s not.”

“Fair enough. Except I’m not the one who’ll be doing it, but … I’ll make sure they do. Anything else?”

“That’s not enough?” Kent snapped, unable to hold it back any longer.

Adam actually laughed. “It’s plenty. And creative. I think you were just so adamant back then that she didn’t have a boyfriend … or a social life …”

“Shouldn’t they have looked into it anyway?” Kent countered.

“Lots of things should happen, but don’t. But this one will now. If that’s it, I’ll call them right now.”

“That’s it,” Nell confirmed.

“I’ll keep you updated.” That was Adam’s way of saying goodbye, because the call ended and the screen of her phone lit up momentarily with that news before dimming again.

Kent settled back into the couch, but she could still feel how tense he was. She’d really startled him. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I just …” He tried out a grin. “I’m not really convinced we can relax, so I’ve been even more on edge than before. Which doesn’t make any sense.”

“Makes sense to me.” She tucked herself up against him. “Mammal brains don’t adapt well to change, and just because we like to think humans can reason better than any other species …”

“Are you calling me a monkey?”

“You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals.”

That made him laugh and kiss her hair. “They do it on the Discovery Channel in front of cameras, and I can’t say that’s my thing.”

“But otherwise sure, let’s go again?”

This laugh was more of a chuckle. “I think you wore me out last night. I need some more time to recover.”

“Recover, huh? Are you getting old?” she teased.

“Older every day. You know, a lot of things always bugged me about Heidi,” he said abruptly, making her sigh inwardly and sit up properly again so they could have a serious conversation when she didn’t fall asleep in the middle. “She was weird around you.”

“She was weird around you,” Nell countered. “The very few times she saw you.”

But he shook his head. “You’re the last person in the world who’s going to diss someone in an email and even you had trouble writing about her. You’d say she was weird about chores because you didn’t want to call her ‘controlling.’ And you never admitted how much of yourself you put into a little box around her so that she didn’t explode. That’s classic abuse right there.”

“It was fine.”

“Nell …” Kent shook his head once. “That’s not okay. You were stuck, and that made it worse, but it wasn’t okay. She wasn’t a very nice person, but we definitely couldn’t say that after she was dead, so maybe a lot of that was just … left alone after she died, because we left, and it went cold, and just … even knowing all that, even thinking all that about Heidi, I wouldn’t have jumped ahead to ‘she was actually helping the killer.’”

“I don’t think she knew she was,” Nell countered. “Especially not her own killer. And she would’ve been pissed if she was with someone who would rather talk about me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So she dated Beckett, but he …?”

“Hid it. Serial killers are great at hiding things. That’s totally the definition: they go back to normal life between the murders, and everyone’s like oh, no, he was such a nice neighbor.”

Kent suddenly straightened, holding up a wait a minute finger as he got to his feet. He came back with the laptop and set it on the coffee table, waiting impatiently for it to wake up so he could go to Google and type in Bentley Beckett’s name.

Nell shook her head a little, because she hadn’t thought of doing this before, and leaned in when he let out a low whistle.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s going the ‘such a nice neighbor’ route,” Kent observed as she read the headline: Man accused of assaulting federal officer described by acquaintances as ‘Norman Bates.’

“Acquaintances,” she murmured.

“Huh?”

“Not friends.” Nell reached over to search for that word, instead, and read the sentence with the highlight: “I don’t think he ever had any friends,” Halliday continued.

Kent wrinkled his nose. “So we’re feeling bad for the poor friendless man who beat the crap out of a guy he thought was my dad?”

“Oh, I’m not feeling bad for him,” she protested. “I think they’re more painting him as the sort of guy who’d totally do this, and if they let him off with a slap on the wrist, he’d totally do it again.” That was, of course, the sort of man he’d always been to her, even before he had a name: the kind who wouldn’t stop. The one who’d just keep being a threat.

Her husband cleared his throat. “It’s up to twenty years. Assaulting a federal agent with a deadly weapon.”

Up to, but not a certainty. And that came with the risk of getting out early, didn’t it? And even then … In twenty years, Beckett would be about fifty. According to her Nell Green birth certificate, she’d be forty-three. If they had kids, not all of them would be adults by then.

His arms held her tight. “I think you need to dose up on melatonin and try to sleep.”

“I’m not sure melatonin’s going to cut it tonight.” But she got up all the same when he let go, reaching back for his hand to make sure that he came with her, because having Kent nearby was worth more than a whole bottle of sleep gummies.

---

This is the end of Part Five.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Nell groaned when the bell jingled shortly after Kent and Owen left, Kent to go to work and Owen to follow him and maybe sit in a slightly more comfortable chair for a while. “I really don’t want to see you,” she told Adam.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really want to be here.” He came up to the counter instead of taking a seat. “I’ll take a large latte with an extra shot, but please don’t throw it in my face.”

“Tell me now, when I don’t have a hot drink in my hands.”

“Beckett wants to talk to you.”

Nell stopped moving, but she didn’t freeze. She wasn’t pure stone, either. There was magma running just under the surface.

“That’s not a surprise,” Adam admitted, “and nobody’s told him yes.”

“What have they told him?”

“That it’s absolutely off the table until he gives us a statement telling them everything they already know.”

She just looked at him.

“It’s not coercion,” he said, suddenly defensive. “First, we don’t even have to tell the truth, and second, they’re not telling him what they already know. Just saying they know it, so they’ll know if he starts and then leaves something out.”

Nell waited.

“And nobody’s committing to you agreeing, either. They’re just saying there’s no way he’s seeing you without doing all the rest first.”

She considered a moment longer and then turned to start the latte.

“They don’t actually know it’s you. They just know I’m the contact.”

And how long would it take someone to realize that Adam was spending a lot of time with her lately?

“Nell … I want to repeat that you’re safe, and this is over, and you don’t have to play a role in any of what comes next. You don’t,” he repeated when she turned back. “I don’t even have to keep you updated if you’d rather not know. All I have to tell them is that no, you won’t participate, and I’ll repeat it as many times as they need to hear it.”

Nell returned to the latte, and maybe it was the noise of the machine, but neither of them said anything until it was done and she put it on the counter. “I think you should keep me updated, and tell me how it’s going, but if I do come out and say no, then it’s no.”

Adam nodded. “Fair.”

She waved for him to put his wallet away. “You’re fine.”

“Can’t take favors.”

Nell gestured to the wall. “Grab a chip, then.”

“Nell.” He held out a twenty.

After a moment she took it, handing him both his change and his receipt. “Don’t tip me.”

“What if I take a chip and put it in the jar?”

“Then I take it and put it back up on the wall.” She nodded at his drink. “Is that all you came for?”

“I’m actually on my way home. They called me out to Des Moines.”

Her eyebrows went up and she swallowed back the protests—wait, when? Last night? And this isn’t on the most direct route back—but hey, beneath the haircut and the suit, he was still human. He wanted to tell her what he’d heard, because it wasn’t necessarily good. They’d caught Beckett, yes. Excellent. Well done. But Beckett wanted to talk to her.

They should have seen it coming, honestly. A man obsessed with her enough to first kill a string of people and then write a freaking novel wasn’t going to just say oh, okay, I guess that’s it, then.

She blinked. “Wait, does the publisher know what’s up?”

“Not from us. Officially, he’s in custody because of the assault. If he’s told anyone, I haven’t heard it.” Adam cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “But they’ll find out soon enough, won’t they? When they go to meet his plane and he doesn’t show up to the first reading or whatever.”

Nell closed her eyes. “It’s just a whole new facet of the marketing. He doesn’t show, they can’t find him, where is he …?”

“Rosie found him first and murdered him?” Adam suggested, raising his cup to take a sip and then wincing. “Right, so … I wouldn’t leave town for a bit if I were you.”

“Kent’s mom thinks we should’ve moved back yesterday.”

“Um.” Adam cleared his throat. “Kent’s, uh … I mean, I know the ages thing isn’t … but he was a grown-ass adult long before I ever met him.”

Nell shook her head. “He’s her baby, and his sibs haven’t moved away. I stole him.”

“The guy who called his dad without consulting you and asked if there was anything he could do.”

She nodded.

“Because Kent’s first instinct was to pick you, except to him it didn’t even feel like picking you, because there was no other choice.”

Nell tilted her head.

Adam shrugged. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen the way he looks at you.”

“… point.”

“I don’t even know if witness protection takes couples, and I was ready to argue it, but …” He shrugged again. “One look at the two of you and there’s no contest.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Unless you’re Donna.”

“Sure, because if she sees it, she’s no longer the center of his world. Owen, though … he’s got it figured out?”

Nell nodded.

“Good. Okay. I’ll update you when there’s something to update. Text if you need me to reassure you there’s nothing to pass on.”

What, now he was showing a high emotional intelligence? “Thanks.”

He raised his cup. “Thanks for the coffee. Do you think Kent will want me to swing by the library and tell him what’s going on?”

“I think he’s far more likely to need a punching bag after hearing it, so I’ll tell him later.”

“Fair. Okay. Don’t panic if you don’t hear from me for a while. Just, you know … live life.”

Now there was a loaded sentence. Nell nodded and waved, but what did that even mean? Maybe Donna thought Kent should’ve been in a holding pattern these past few years, but, in a way, hadn’t they been? They’d married, but that wasn’t exactly as planned, and they hadn’t turned the discussion back to kids because there was that almost-spoken agreement that they’d keep up with both the pill and the condoms until this thing was solved. Imagine the faceless stranger showing up when Nell was pregnant, or using their baby against her. The risk just hadn’t been worth it, but now … even last night …

Okay and maybe she didn’t need to be thinking about last night when she was out in public and a customer could walk through the door at any moment, catching her daydreaming and then blushing furiously. It was probably a good thing that thinking about Kent still made her feel this way, after all this time together, but she didn’t really need everyone to know where her mind was going.

Especially when that next person was Art. “Any visits from your suited friends today?” he greeted her.

“Yeah. Both, individually. One’s headed back to his office and one’s camped out in the library.”

“Are you still under surveillance or …?”

Nell slouched over the counter. “Kent’s mom thinks we should’ve moved back yesterday, his dad realizes we actually have lives here, and Adam’s waiting for the official request for me to speak to Beckett.”

Art paused and seemed to run that through his head again. “The serial killer. The guy who killed a bunch of people, forced you to …” He gestured vaguely around them. “And wrote that whole book. That guy. They’re going to let that guy talk to you.”

“Adam thinks they’re going to use me as a carrot to get that guy talking about killing a bunch of people, because I don’t think they have a single scrap of evidence for any of them.” At least nothing that would conclusively point to Beckett. Maybe they knew the killer wore gloves or something, but there were already two people sentenced for two of the murders, and one of the remaining deaths had been filed as an accident.

“And does Adam think you should be a good little carrot?”

She shook her head. “He said he doesn’t even have to pass it on when they ask him if I don’t want him to.”

“But you haven’t said no yet.”

Nell raised an eyebrow.

“That’s your inside line into figuring out what’s up,” he explained. “You want to keep that open until you’ve got the confirmation, and then you can slam that door. Although I, for one, hope you aren’t actually looking at moving.”

She shook her head. “Kent doesn’t want to, either.”

“Good. Because a lot of us like you right here.”

“Even though we’ve lied to you?” Nell hadn’t exactly planned on asking, but it seemed to be pulled out of her.

Art just shrugged. “You had a damn good reason. And lying about your past doesn’t necessarily mean lying about who you are today. Right?”

Nell nodded, but she wanted to protest, even if that meant arguing Art should change his mind.

“And, look, Nell …” He tilted his head. “It’s not like we’ve really talked about that stuff.”

No, she just gave him her new paperwork instead of the old.

He considered her for a long moment. “Do you have family back home?”

“A grandmother. That’s it.”

“And Kent’s got a bunch, it sounds like. All close.”

She nodded.

“Okay. You’ve hardly ever taken time off, so … when the family reunion happens … just let me know what hours I have to fill.”

Nell wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure I’m invited to that reunion.”

“Too bad for his mom that Kent shows up with you, or he doesn’t show up at all. You two missed game night last week. Are you coming tomorrow?”

“I don’t know how long Owen’s staying.”

Art laughed. “I almost told you to bring him along. Just let me know.”

Nell nodded, but a group of teenagers came in, laughing and talking in the newest TikTok slang, so Art hustled into his office and she turned to them to ask what she could get started.

---

Chapter Thirty-Six

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Nell had work in the morning. Bentley Beckett was identified and in custody, and neither she nor Kent had gotten much sleep the night before, but her alarm still went off, and she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower, and dressed the same as she always had here, and got herself on the bus just in time. Thank God she could help herself to all the coffee she wanted. Today she’d probably need to augment it with some espresso, but she’d make it through.

Bentley Beckett was identified and in custody. Nell hadn’t checked the news since hearing from Owen, and she didn’t have time now, but she already felt so much lighter. Like all the muscles in her chest had been tense for years and now they finally relaxed and let her take a full breath.

It was easier to see in Kent, maybe, because she spent so much more time looking at him than she did looking at herself. She still basically felt like the same person inside, and the changes to the outside—haircut and dye job, quirky dresses instead of jeans—felt minor. She was still herself, and maybe that’s why she picked a name that could be shortened to Nell, because she still basically felt like Ellie. The person she’d been before hadn’t been a mask, or a cage, or an old skin that was too tight but she hadn’t been able to molt. Awful things had happened, but it hadn’t been the same for her.

She also knew that Kent felt a bit guilty about how her tragedy was his big chance. In case she needed the reminder, he wasn’t going to get out from under his family’s expectations without something like this: cutting them off completely and finally trying to decide for himself what was right and what was unacceptable. Maybe she’d been a little worried that all the big changes would end up being too much, but they’d had months in limbo, and he hadn’t actually started getting the tattoos until they were in Iowa and those tattoos were officially associated with Kent Harris. It wasn’t that Nell didn’t want him to get tattoos, but that she didn’t want him to regret them. Or regret anything he did in the name of changing his identity for her. Regret doing it at all.

Except she’d known that Kent struggled with it. The fact that she’d had to force it out of him over Christmas break—how no, teaching wasn’t going anything at all like he’d thought it would, it was worse than student teaching, and he didn’t think he wanted to do it anymore, which made him a quitter—at least meant he knew she’d seen it, but he’d still been hesitant. What if I do this? What if I do that? Always with the subtext: will you still love me?

Donna had him in khakis instead of jeans since he was in second grade. He hadn’t even owned a sweatshirt when he was in college. Kent fit himself to her expectations because he didn’t think he had a choice. He didn’t think she’d still love him if he tried something different.

Kent thought he was pushing the boundaries of Nell’s love when really she just wanted him to go ahead and push his own. She’d finally told him outright that she couldn’t see him making any sort of decision that would make her second-guess things, because he wasn’t going to get tattoos of hate symbols or start abusing her, so she wanted him to push things and see if it was a stretch or if it was actually just him relaxing into his true shape.

Okay and she still felt pretty proud of her wording, especially since it worked, and he had been able to relax. It probably helped, too, that his first instincts were indeed the things that actually fit him. By the time they’d moved down here, he was used to his new clothes and his new walk and his new reflection.

It was just Colton this morning, and they waved as usual before Nell got things ready to open. Art didn’t have to worry about someone bad from Nell’s past showing up because Owen had shown up, looking so much like Kent despite all those differences, and told them it was over. Now they just had the rest of their lives to figure out.

The door jingled shortly after she’d turned the sign to open, and Owen came in and immediately ducked his head and raised both hands. “Paying customer. We don’t have to talk. I just …” Sighing, he dropped his hands. “I don’t really believe it yet.”

“Are you going to go chill in the library once it opens?” she asked, not really sure if she was teasing. If Owen was the sort of person you could tease.

But he chuckled. “Guilty. It’s like when he was a baby and I’d just watch him sleep. Which … sounds kind of creepy, I guess, when I word it that way.”

She hesitated, but she saw more people on the sidewalk so Nell said it because he wouldn’t really have a chance to respond: “Sounds like love to me. Are you a drip coffee kind of guy or can I get you something started?”

Owen blinked and asked for a latte, then one of the breakfast sandwiches, and he took up a seat along one wall where he could look up from his laptop and … well, not quite stare at her, but they weren’t exactly glances, either.

And seriously, she didn’t know how dads worked. Or maybe she just didn’t really know how men worked. He’d look up and, if she caught his eye, he’d smile. A smile that, of course, looked a lot like Kent’s, and Kent also smiled a lot when she looked at him. It was … ugh, because this was her best comparison: it was like a cat who didn’t want to be too clingy but still wanted to be in the same room with you, because being able to look over and see you was enough.

The flow of customers was consistent and kept Nell distracted, at least until Mary came in, stopped dead, and faced Owen directly. “Are you really Kent’s dad?”

He looked up at her and nodded once in recognition. “I am.”

“Then why haven’t you been around before?” She cocked her head. “That’s what dads are supposed to do, right? Be around?”

To his credit, Owen didn’t look to Nell for help. “Sometimes it’s complicated and we can’t be there every way we want to.”

“So if it’s still complicated, then why are you here?”

“Because it’s a different kind of complicated now.”

Mary considered this before tossing her head at Nell. “We all think you didn’t want him marrying her.”

“People are allowed to be wrong.”

Nell had to hide a smirk because Owen meant Mary and the others, but Mary thought he meant himself.

“Uh-huh.” Mary turned to Nell. “You okay with him being here?”

She smiled before she could stop herself, which was enough of an answer for Mary, who nodded, turned her back on Owen, and went to select her plastic tags from the wall. She completed the rest of the transaction as usual, except for a raised eyebrow at Nell, who nodded to reassure her, and Mary went away satisfied.

There was a break in customers, so Nell came out to wipe down the other tables. “Need another one?” she asked Owen, nodding at his latte.

“It’s a want more than a need, but …” He finished the last little bit and moved his mug closer to her. “She’s protective of you.”

“I think …” Nell sighed and took a seat at the table next to his. “People who’ve been through hell keep an eye out for fellow travelers.”

Owen nodded slowly. “Your boss, too.”

“Yeah.”

“But not Kent’s.”

Nell tilted her head. “I think maybe you have to admit it was hell you were going through. Brandon hasn’t had a perfect life, but he pretends it doesn’t matter.” The honey badger thing meant he had to see himself a specific way, or else admit weakness.

“Fair.” Owen almost smiled. “Donna thinks he put her through hell. Choosing you. Which is how she sees it.” He closed his eyes. “That’s not coming out right.”

She shrugged. “I knew that part already.”

“Right. Yeah. So.” He looked out toward the street and then back at her. “I don’t expect the two of you to move back. She thinks Kent’s life has just been on hold for five years, and he’ll want to come back like nothing’s changed, except …” Owen gestured toward his face. “She can’t look at him and think nothing’s changed, so maybe he’s his own person who makes his own decisions and doesn’t need her, and that’s hard. The others have stayed close, and they aren’t her firstborn, anyway, so … I guess my point is, if you need me to step in there, I will.”

Nell was pretty sure he already had, but she nodded. “Thank you.”

He gestured to her hair. “Has it always been pink, or have you done other colors?”

“I started with blue, but that faded really quickly and just looked weird. For a while I had a stylist who’d do it for a discount if she could practice on me, so it was rainbow, and two tone, and just … probably the wildest. But it’s been pink for a while now.”

“It does make you look younger.”

Nell tried not to grin. “I’m not sure it makes me look younger as much as you expect only young people to have brightly-colored hair.”

Owen nodded a concession. “Touche. It is kind of jarring, though. I mean …” He looked back out at the street again to make sure no one would come in. “You two really do pull off that ten-year age gap, and it’s kind of creepy. So … good job, but yeah, I need to get used to it.”

If he needed to get used to it, then he didn’t expect their appearances to change.

“Oh, hey.” Owen nodded to where Kent was walking up from the bus stop.

Nell got up and took his empty mug, waiting for her husband to come in so she could give him a kiss. “Red eye?” she offered.

“Can’t you just fill up one of those giant mugs with straight espresso?”

She tilted her head. “I can. I’m not sure the health department would like it.”

He kissed her again. “Red eye. And two of the bacon things. And then maybe another red eye. Morning, Dad.”

“Morning, Kent.” Owen raised an eyebrow. “Sleep well?”

Kent grunted as he sat down, and Nell went back behind the counter to get her husband some caffeine and some breakfast, but not fast enough that he didn’t roll his eyes at her for laughing at him.

---

Chapter Thirty-Five

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Nell left them in the living room and went back to their bedroom to try to make a call of her own. Gran didn’t answer numbers she didn’t know, and she didn’t always listen to her messages, either. Sometimes she just let the machine fill up and ignored it a while so you couldn’t leave one even if you wanted to. She had a cell phone, but Nell didn’t have that number memorized, so instead she tapped in the one that she’d put on so many forms as her emergency contact, took a deep breath, and hit the icon to dial.

Leaving a message after the beep was a level of hell even when you weren’t calling up someone who hadn’t heard your voice in five years, and certainly wouldn’t expect to hear it today, so—

“Owen?”

Nell blinked.

“That’s an Iowa area code,” Gran explained matter-of-factly. “Owen, is that you?”

“No.” It came out weakly, and Nell shook her head. “No, Gran, it’s me.”

There was a pause—God, she hadn’t shocked her into a heart attack, right?—and then “Ellie? Sweetheart? Is it … it’s really you?”

“Yeah, Gran. Uh …” She laughed and sniffed and shook her head. “I didn’t stop to think of, like, a password or anything. Owen’s here. He’s talking to—well. We’re Kent and Nell now.”

“Nell?”

“Short for Penelope.” Okay, and yeah, she got how Kent felt with Donna: offering up something new, something personally important, and seeing if it would be rejected.

Gran laughed. “You went from Ellie to Nell just to be something of a tongue twister, didn’t you? Nell and Kent,” she repeated to herself.

“Owen said they got him. It’s over.”

“Well thank the Lord for that! He told me he was going to Iowa, because it was almost over, but that was days ago and he made it seem like it would’ve been over a lot quicker.”

“I’m pretty sure he thought it would be.” Nell realized she’d curled up, not because she needed protection, but because this was a comfortable conversation and Nell when comfortable, curled up. “Our guy—Adam—only told us what was happening back there today, and he seemed worried he didn’t have any more updates.”

Gran clucked her tongue. “I’ll never understand men. Owen said the other one is all proud he could take such a beating. And I’m grateful to him, I am, but did he really have to let it go that far?”

“I thought the same thing.” There was a tapping at the bedroom door. “Hang on, Gran, sorry.”

Kent poked his head in. “Dad’s off to find a hotel.”

“Is that him?” Gran called from the cell phone. “I need a picture. The one I’ve got of both of you is five years old.”

Kent laughed as Nell switched her phone to speaker. “Dad said you don’t know how to FaceTime.”

“Now what’s so wrong with emailing me a photograph, young man?” Gran sassed. “I’m sitting right here at my computer desk.”

“Yeah, hang on.” Kent got into bed with Nell, tucking his arm around her and taking a selfie. “Good enough?” he asked Nell.

She nodded and traded phones so she could type in Gran’s email. “Okay, I’m sending it,” she announced. “It’s from Kent Harris.”

“Harris,” Gran repeated. “Kent and Penelope Harris. I really feel like I’m the sort of grandma who’d call you Penelope. It’s so much prettier than—wait, should I just not say your other name?”

“Probably not,” Nell agreed. “But yeah, if Nell’s too close to the other one, you can be the grandma who uses my full name.” Because she wasn’t the grandma who just reverted to their old names.

They heard a chime. “Ooh, an email! Let’s see …”

Kent kissed Nell’s hair as they waited for the verdict.

“Well, dearie me! How many motorcycles does Kent Harris own and how many side chicks does he have in bars around the country?”

They burst out laughing, partly in relief and partly because Nell didn’t know her grandmother knew what a side chick was.

“No side chicks,” Kent reassured her. “And no motorcycles.”

“You know, I think that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen you smile,” Gran mused.

Nell glanced at Kent’s face and snuggled closer, not saying anything. Not embarrassing him by driving the point home further.

“Well, so—you just found all this out, so maybe you don’t know … are you coming back for a visit soon, or should I book a trip to Iowa?”

“Um.” Nell licked her lips.

“My mom seems to think we’re going to drop everything and move back,” Kent offered, “but it’s not that simple. And …”

“You’ve got a life there,” Gran agreed. “Friends and everything else.”

Nell squeezed her husband’s hand. “It might be better if we don’t come back right away. I’m not sure Donna’s going to really get the message, but …”

“Ooh, and we can get back to our weekly calls! Unless that doesn’t fit into who Kent and Penelope Harris are?”

“Uh, so, about that …”

Nell laughed. “We told everyone I was eighteen and he was twenty-eight when we got here, and we ran off to get married because our families didn’t approve.”

“So maybe your stodgy old grandma’s gotten more forgiving in her old age?” There was a pause, and then: “Wait, you were supposed to be how old when you came after my granddaughter?”

“I think the story is I’m the one who went after him,” Nell corrected. “But nobody ever actually asked me about that until this past week. So.”

“I figured, if the guy ever somehow found us, he’d have to pass us over because that really wasn’t the background he was looking for,” Kent argued. “And … yeah, nobody’s ever really called me on that. We showed up married … she was happy with me …” He tilted his head. “A lot of people did say she was rather mature for her age.”

Gran laughed. “That all sounds so confusing.”

“You don’t have to keep track of all of it at once,” he assured her. “The story is our families haven’t spoken to us in years, so you’d have to get all caught up, anyway.”

“Gosh, I just don’t want to mess this up.”

“It …” Nell took a deep breath. “It doesn’t actually matter if you do. Not anymore. They’ve got him. He’s not going to find us.” Her voice trembled because maybe she believed it this time.

“Oh, honey …”

Kent carefully shifted to pull her into his arms without completely losing the phone.

“M— Kent, you, uh …” Nell heard Gran sniff on the other end of the phone. “You take care of her, would you? I’ve got your phone number, you can call any time … either of you, okay? I also need … need some time to …”

“Love you,” Nell managed.

“Oh, honey. Love you too. Love you both.”

She closed her eyes and waited for Kent to set her phone aside and wrap himself around her before all but burrowing into his chest. Nell didn’t think she was going to cry—she didn’t particularly want to cry—but this was big. This was huge, and she couldn’t get it to fit the space between her ears just yet.

The man who killed Heidi, who killed more than just Heidi, was in custody. His name was Bentley Beckett, he’d worked as a janitor, and he’d been obsessed with her back then. Kent and Owen were right to uproot them and move them and make so many changes because Beckett was still so obsessed he’d written a freaking novel, which was coming out on Tuesday, about that awful year. Those terrible months. God, she didn’t want to think about what that meant for Since You Went Away, because she could barely think of what it meant for the two of them right here in this bed, but this wasn’t really over.

She tried to bring herself back to right now, just this moment: Kent’s arms around her. The comforting scent of him in her nose. His breathing, maybe not quite steady, but constant. The way his hand slowly trailed up and down her back with comforting pressure and presence. It took a while, but he didn’t stop. He just waited for her to take a deeper breath and shift enough to look up at him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Not particularly, no. Not right now.”

Nell nodded slowly. “I think I’m wearing too many clothes.”

A grin spread across his face. “I think you are, too.”

She pushed him over on his back, kissing him open-mouthed and shivering at both his moan and his hands gathering up enough of her dress to pull it off her.

---

Chapter Thirty-Four

Catch up on the previous chapters here

They had the spare bedroom, but it was turned into an office, so there was no space for a spare bed. Owen drove them back to their apartment anyway, because Nell didn’t think they’d be able to separate him from Kent for a while yet. The last time father and son had seen each other, Kent’s hair was short, his face clean-shaven, and his skin free of tattoos. He’d filled out since then, not just muscle, but previously—back when his name had been Martin James Cooper—he’d looked like a ninety-nine-pound weakling. The classic nerd. He hadn’t actually worn pocket protectors, but that was what the imagination used to add. Not leather jackets and motorcycle boots.

Okay, the tattoos were still pretty nerdy.

Kent’s hand was all but clamped down on hers as they sat in the back seat of the dark car with its tinted windows, but aside from directions, he didn’t say anything. So maybe he wanted to go back to Michigan and … God, how would that even work? They’d have to change their names again, and what would that do to their marriage license? And things like taxes and just …

It’s over.

Kent left his family for her. Even though it wasn’t supposed to take this long, he’d turned his back on them, agreeing to only communicate through letters, so he could stay with her. Join her in this new life, which quickly just became her life, and now … Wait, was she thinking she couldn’t follow him back? Maybe it would help if she actually believed it was over.

“Pull in here,” Kent told his dad. “That’s our car, so you can block us in.”

Okay and now Owen was going to look at the apartment she’d put together with his son and … judge it. Even if he didn’t mean to judge it, he would. The lack of old photos … the size … the general emptiness … most days it didn’t feel empty, because Kent filled it up, not just with his shoulders but with his smiles and personality. Kent was enough to make any space into home for her, so of course she’d follow him back if that was what he wanted.

He squeezed her hand before they unbuckled their seatbelts, separated by the car until he came around to her side and reached for her, like he needed the comfort of Nell tucked under his arm, and that was good. Even if he was only doing it to make her feel better, it was good.

Owen showing up didn’t mean it stopped being the two of them against the world.

Nell was faster with the keys, so she unlocked the outer door and went up first to the apartment door to open that, too, and shuffle through the regular coming home ritual of keys and purse and shoes and the rest, finding space for Owen’s things, too. “I should call your mother,” he told Kent. “She’ll probably want to FaceTime, but I should, uh …”

“Prepare her?” Kent suggested.

Owen’s smile didn’t change, but he shrugged. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

He pointed to the short hallway. “Den’s back there on the right. You can shut the door.”

Owen nodded and went, and before Nell could fully turn to Kent, he’d taken her shoulders and bent down toward her. “Okay, look, I don’t want to do some sort of unilateral decision,” he said in a low voice, searching her face, “so if you want to move back, we can talk about it, but … Nell, I just really like our lives here, and—”

She grabbed his face and pulled him in for something that started out more collision than kiss, but then their arms adjusted to go around each other and their mouths opened and their tongues met. Kent moaned, making her shiver. “Fuck …”

“Not when my dad’s going to walk in on us,” he whispered in her ear, nibbling on it despite his protests before pulling back a little. “God, he’s here.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, not ready to let go yet but trying to force her temperature down out of pure will. “He hasn’t changed a bit.”

Kent tilted his head. “As opposed to …”

“Look, if they can’t see that you’re happier—”

“They’re not going to see that I’m happier because they didn’t see anything was wrong,” he protested, keeping his voice a low hiss. “I didn’t …” Sighing he lowered his head to press their foreheads together. “I didn’t let them see the real thing, so now …”

“Here they are!” Owen announced, and Nell couldn’t tell if he said it to make sure they knew they were being watched or to convince Donna that yes, this was her son and daughter-in-law.

Kent reached for his dad’s phone, bringing the screen closer to see her—dark blue glasses that hadn’t been there five years ago, but hair the same Clairol color as always—and having to let go from Nell to swipe at his eyes. “God, Mom …”

“Here, sit down,” Owen urged, getting the two of them together on the couch. “We can put this …” He didn’t have any sort of stand on the back of his phone, but he piled a couple things on the coffee table and MacGyvered something to keep it at a good angle. It wasn’t the biggest couch, but Nell scooted over so Kent could move, too, and his dad could squeeze in, and maybe Kent didn’t think about it as claiming her, but his arm went around her once his hands were free.

“My word, look at you!” Donna exclaimed once things were settled and she’d wiped her eyes a few times. “I wouldn’t have recognized you on the street!”

“Aw, Mom …”

“No, really. That beard?” She clucked her tongue and shook her head like she was wishing she could reach through the screen with a razor and a pair of scissors.

Okay, that wasn’t fair, Nell told herself. None of them had prepared for this, and yeah, Owen and Donna were the absolute definition of clean-cut, but that didn’t mean she had to move past the joy of seeing her son again and decided to fixate on his looks as her next hurdle.

“And—are those tattoos? Real ones?”

Kent glanced down, because yeah, his sleeves were rolled up. “Pretty sure, yeah. They haven’t washed off yet.”

“Donna, we talked about—”

“Safety and whatever, yeah, sure,” she said, flapping a hand at her husband. “But … well, Martin … haven’t you thought about getting a job?”

Nell wasn’t the only one who stiffened at his old name, but Kent kept his voice steady. “I’ve already got a job, Mom.”

“Well, sure, but … a better one, honey. Because you don’t have to pretend you’re not yourself anymore. You’ve got that college degree, so whatever you’ve been up to, you know, as …” Another hand flap completed this sentence.

They hadn’t provided details in their letters. Owen and Donna had, because their identities and movements weren’t a secret, but they didn’t know what Kent and Nell had been up to. Come to think of it, they hadn’t even known their new names, so when Owen heard Art call her Nell …

“It’s Kent now, Mom.”

“Well, there.”

“It’s Kent,” he repeated. “Officially, legally, it’s my name. There’s no record of me ever having a different one.”

Donna shook her head to dismiss that. “Well your father can just undo what he did and—”

“It’s actually not that—”

“We haven’t even talked—”

Father and son stopped and looked at each other, but Nell was almost relieved at what Owen started to say. It’s actually not that simple? Had he started to protest that no, he couldn’t really undo what had been done?

“We’ll talk about it,” Owen said when the silence stretched to the sight of Donna’s raised eyebrow. He gestured to the Harrises. “We’ll talk, and then … I’ll let you know. But they’re Kent and Nell Harris. Uh, Kent Alexander and Penelope Autumn, nee Green.”

Donna blinked. “Why do you think I need to know? That’s Mart and Ellie.”

“Who told you?” Kent cut in.

Owen shrugged. “I’ve known this whole time. I probably could’ve looked you up and found you, but I didn’t want to leave a trail.”

“Wait, you could have looked them up at any time?” Donna demanded. “You just—we missed their wedding, Owen Nicholas! They missed Lizzie and John’s wedding, and Terry and Sam’s, and … the grandkids! They’ve never even met their nieces and nephews! And you’re saying all this time—”

“We’ll talk,” Owen cut in, leaning forward to pick up his phone and sending things sliding. “Look, honey, someone’s at the door—I think it’s the agent who was handling their case, so I’ll have to call you back. Love you.” He ended the video call without waiting to hear anything else and sat very straight with his phone in both hands, not looking at them. “Sorry. I didn’t—I should’ve known. She …” Owen looked at his son. “She never understood why you had to leave.”

Kent’s right arm was still around Nell, but he reached over to take her left hand with his own.

“She … Donna …” Owen sighed and licked his lips and decided to move from the couch to the chair, which he shifted a bit before sitting down so he could face them better. “I think she understood that someone was after you—after your friends,” he explained to Nell, choosing his words slowly, “but she also thought that … if you left … then whoever it was wouldn’t have any reason to come after Ma— Kent.”

“So I stole her son,” Nell concluded. It wasn’t an entirely original thought, but really, she figured she’d stolen Kent from his entire family.

Owen smiled lopsidedly. “Stole his heart, maybe. But he had yours, so we should probably call that a trade.”

Kent squeezed Nell again, but she really didn’t know what to say.

“She just … she’s going to need time. Time to be mad at me, and time to realize that changing what sound comes out of her mouth to get your attention is small potatoes when it means you’ll show up for reunions and any other big family events. I just …” Owen shrugged. “I’m just overwhelmed that it’s all a possibility. At this point … after all these years?” He shook his head slowly. “I figured letters was all we’d ever have.”

---

Chapter Thirty-Three

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Brandon frowned at the photo of C. J. O’Connell, aka Bentley Beckett. “Wait, who’s this guy in the book?”

Art looked toward the back room where Adam and Kent hadn’t emerged yet. “I’m pretty sure Mr. Suit would prefer it if we didn’t make any assumptions about the book.”

Nell snorted and wrapped both hands around her mug. She’d made herself a mocha. “That’s the author.”

“The au …” Brandon blinked, then bent over her phone again.

Art tilted his head. “So I think we can say that’s Cal, at least in his own mind.”

“You don’t look surprised,” she murmured, raising her drink for a sip.

Her boss shrugged. “Once you accept a basic premise, a lot of pieces fall into place. O’Connell’s writing about a real woman who got away, check. So Cal’s his self-insert into the fanfiction of his own life.” He raised an eyebrow. “And Rosie’s not a serial killer.”

“There isn’t a serial killer,” Brandon protested.

Nell set the mug down and reached over to tap the side of her phone so she wouldn’t change the picture showing. “This guy is.”

Brandon held it up like she just needed to look again. “You’re saying this guy killed your friends.”

She nodded. She didn’t want to say it, but two of them had certainly been murdered. Someone was behind it, and Beckett’s behavior was definitely suspicious.

God, one of Kent’s dad’s friends let himself get beat up over this? If they all sent Beckett after Hillier, then why weren’t they keeping an eye on his house? Surely somebody could’ve stepped in before the freaking hospital had to get involved. You only needed one swing to get in the assault with a deadly weapon thing, right? Someone didn’t have to actually almost die.

“There’s an FBI agent who didn’t want you to see that photo,” Art pointed out. “Something’s up, and it’s big, so memorize the face and keep an eye out for it, because that face has a habit of circling Nell and deciding she doesn’t need people in her life.”

Brandon used the phone to point to the door leading to the back. “How long has Kent been in your life?” he asked Nell.

She shrugged, mostly to stall. Since I was nineteen was the truth, but they thought they’d known her since she was eighteen. She had to do the math instead. “Since 2016.” God, which made her what in their minds—fifteen? A fifteen-year-old, meeting a twenty-five-year-old, and why had Kent agreed to such a large age gap?

Art nudged her foot under the table. It wasn’t quite a kick. From his smirk, she figured he was doing the same math, and remembering Kent’s headcanon about Rosie’s boyfriend.

Brandon shook his head. “Man, none of this adds up.”

“No,” she agreed. “It shouldn’t, actually. That’s kind of the point.”

The door jingled, and Nell waved for Art to stay seated, because it was Mary. She got up, but paused when Mary greeted her with, “Lots of dark cars with tinted windows out there today. I feel like I’m in a spy movie.”

Nell looked to the large front windows, but she hadn’t seen any pass by. Granted, she hadn’t been out here the whole time, but since she’d been sitting here with Art and Brandon … she moved closer to the window, almost unconsciously hugging the wall to keep from giving someone a clear shot. Eyes, camera, gun … it didn’t matter.

Adam’s car was parked out there, and of course it was a dark one with tinted windows. It wasn’t like Adam was undercover or anything, but it was the sort of car that called attention to itself and warned you that someone official was driving. He’d only ever come alone to see them, and if he had a partner, they would’ve come in the same car, anyway, so …

Beckett was probably in Iowa. Adam said the address he got was hours from here, but it wasn’t inconceivable he would’ve passed near Colchester if he was headed from Kalamazoo to someplace further west. It wasn’t the direct route, of course, but a man who’d beaten up a federal agent probably wasn’t interested in direct routes as much as avoiding being spotted. Say, by someone in a dark car with tinted windows.

Gacy drove something that looked like an undercover cop car. When he was getting ready to dump one of his victim’s bodies, he’d cruised past a bridge and heard radio chatter about an unmarked being in the area. They’d seen him and thought he was a cop, so it wasn’t exactly unprecedented that Beckett would drive a dark car with tinted windows.

Mary joined her. “See, that’s one of them.”

“I know who drove that one. It’s been here a while.”

“Huh.” Mary tilted her head. “There’s at least one more, then. Did we have an alien spaceship landing? Any, what do you call them, travelers?”

“Little green men?” Art suggested.

She shook her head, not looking at him. “That’s the old term.”

Nell glanced over at Mary, but she wasn’t sure how to ask what the non-racist phrase was these days. It wasn’t creatures from another planet that had her worried, anyway. Really, there was only one creature on this planet at the top of her mind, but … hours away. Hillier got put in the hospital, but he said he’d given the wrong address.

Still an Iowa address.

“Look, there,” Mary added, nodding as a similar-looking car pulled in from the other direction, moving slowly, and then edged over to the curb across the street and parked.

“Nell?” Art asked, and from the corner of her eye she saw him take her phone from Brandon and come up to the other window, just to the side of the door, like he wanted to be sure he could go back and forth between the screen and the face of the man getting out of the car.

He was too old, for one thing. Beckett was maybe thirty, but the man across the way, scanning the buildings on their side of the street as he reached back in for a messenger bag, was likely near sixty. A fit sixty, but this was broad daylight, and that wasn’t stage makeup. His hair was dark and threaded with gray, which they could see better when he turned his head to check the traffic before crossing the street and angling toward the front door of Pending.

Nell’s heart tried to drop into her stomach, but her stomach dropped into her shoes.

“Nell?” Brandon said sharply, also getting up. He frowned, though, because no, this man wasn’t Beckett.

“Kent,” she croaked, then shook her head and tried to turn to call toward the back room, but her eyes stuck on the man who’d just reached this sidewalk. “Kent!”

The man started to open the door at a normal speed and then paused, slowing, when he realized that he was confronted by a group of people. His eyes passed over all of them quickly, bright and assessing, but there wasn’t anyone behind the counter, so he calculated and looked at Art. “Sorry, uh … I’m looking for Adam Scott. That’s his car out there.”

Kent swung open the back door and did the same sweep to see what was happening, then … froze.

Art frowned, glancing back at him, then to the newcomer, then to Nell. “Nell?”

“Nell?” the man echoed, slowly turning to look at her. Rather, his head turned slowly, but his eyes finally pulled away from Kent as he looked at her face and not just her hair and her clothes. “Oh my God, Nell!” He moved to hug her, which was wrong, because he should’ve hugged Kent first, and he shouldn’t even be here, and Nell wasn’t used to dad hugs. She figured Gran had kept her up on the whole mom hug side of things, but dad hugs were foreign.

Art started to ask something, maybe if she was okay, but then Kent joined them, and one of the man’s arms released her to go around him and pull them both in, squashed together, and she was hidden down here because both of them were tall, with the same broad shoulders, and a lot of the same facial features, and maybe it was okay, but also maybe …

Kent pulled back first. “Dad, what …?”

“They got him.” Owen shook his head, looking back and forth between the two of them, maybe trying to overlay the faces he knew with the ones he saw now, unable to keep from grinning. “They got him. I was here—well, nearby, they wouldn’t let me be part of it—but they got him, and they told me to come talk to Adam Scott, so I called, and they said he was out, so I explained who I was, and they said to come here, to Colchester, and …”

“I’m Adam Scott,” Adam said, sounding miffed.

“Are you?” Even though he probably didn’t want to, Owen let go of the two of them and offered Adam his hand. “Owen Cooper. I owe you a world of thanks.”

“Owen …?” Adam shook his head and his frown suddenly blossomed into shock. “You’re …?”

Owen grinned. “Kent’s dad? Yeah.”

“Kent’s last name is Harris,” Mary pointed out. “So’s Nell’s. Art, can I do my order?”

“Sure, Mary.” Art nodded for the others to take a seat, or at least get out of the way.

“They got him,” Owen told Adam. “Just a couple hours ago. He finally showed, they got him, he’s in custody. It’s over.” He turned back to Kent and Nell. “It’s over.”

Kent guided her into a chair before she collapsed, but even in her shock she thought his knees had gone a little wobbly, too. “You’re sure?” Kent cleared the gravel out of his throat. “Positive?”

“Fingerprints match,” he said, and he even laughed. “He had his ID on him, too, but they did prints, and bingo. It’s him. We’ve got him.” If possible, the grin got broader. “You can come home.”

Uh, hold up.

“They’re already home,” Mary told Owen. She’d drifted over after filling up her coffee. “Why do you want them to leave?”

Kent’s hand found Nell’s knee under the table and gave it a squeeze, but she wasn’t sure which way it was supposed to go: if he wanted to reassure her that he’d correct his dad, or if he didn’t want her to get upset at what Mary said.

“We’ll figure it out,” Owen said, waving either Mary or her comment away with a dismissive hand. “The point is … my God.” He shook his head, swiping at the tears in his eyes. “Just look at you two. It’s finally over.”

---

Chapter Thirty-Two

Catch up on the previous chapters here

Part Five: News From Home

Adam took a slow breath, both hands raised. “They didn’t use your dad’s real name.”

Kent blinked, which at least helped him look less like he wanted to throttle the other man. “What?”

“They …” Adam looked over to Art and Brandon, then back to Kent and Nell.

“For fuck’s sake,” Kent sighed, lowering his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. “If we’re in danger, then we’re in danger at work, too.”

“You shouldn’t be. Aren’t.” Adam shook his head a little, closing his eyes like he was in physical pain. “Hypothetically. If …”

Brandon snorted without amusement. “You want us to go to the back while you get this all sorted out?”

“Can’t,” Art argued. “Someone has to be paying attention in case we get customers.”

“Adam doesn’t want to go in the back because I threatened to break his arm with the dough mixer,” Nell explained, taking Kent’s hand and giving him a tug all the same.

“If he doesn’t spit it all out, you won’t need the dough mixer,” her husband muttered, gesturing for Adam to go first.

He did, turning and holding up his hands again until the doors shut. “I was only just told all this, and it happened a couple days ago, but: they got O’Connell’s real name and planned it all out. Two of them went to his house and asked him to come in and talk about it, and yeah, they planted the whole ‘Rosie’s the real killer’ thing, and buttered him up about connecting all five murders, and one of them dropped a name. Hillier.”

Kent frowned.

“It had to be an actual agent,” Adam continued, “because they weren’t sure if he’d check the WayBack machine to see if the website was just updated. Beckett,” he added, to Kent, realizing he hadn’t been there earlier. “Bentley Beckett. That’s his name.”

“So they told this Bentley Beckett that his Rosie …?”

“Was the real killer, yeah. To throw him off. And one of them ranted about how his ‘Rosie’ had a boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s dad was still in the agency even though he’d illegally helped the two of them disappear …”

Nell didn’t have to reach far for Kent’s hand, and he gripped hers tightly.

“And one of them dropped the name,” Adam continued. “Because Hillier volunteered. He doesn’t have kids, he’s divorced, it’s just him in the house, so all they had to do was photoshop some pictures and wait for Beckett to take the bait.”

“Is …” Nell tried to swallow. “Isn’t that entrapment?”

“Not at all.” Adam recovered enough to look a little smug. “They weren’t trying to get him to confess to it. They said oh, he did such great work in his research—could he provide some insight into the mind of the real killer?”

Kent switched Nell’s hand to his other one so he could put an arm around her. “You mean Nell.”

“Yes. His only known weakness.”

God, he almost sounded like he was talking about his favorite childhood superhero.

“And it worked, because Beckett went to Hillier’s house, and now …”

“Now?” Nell prompted hoarsely.

“Well. He’s going to be fine, and if nothing else, we can charge Beckett with assaulting a federal agent with a deadly weapon.”

“Wait, you …” Nell sagged against Kent. “You set an agent up and he almost got killed?”

Adam held up his hand. “He volunteered to do it—for you, by the way—and he knew the risks. And he’ll be fine. He’s in stable condition and expected to improve.”

“You …”

Kent locked both arms around her, standing steady. “Nate?”

“Sorry?”

“Hillier. Nate Hillier.”

“Uh …” The pause was long enough that Nell felt a dozen different emotions about Adam. Some agent risked his life for her and in the middle of retelling it, Adam couldn’t even remember his first name? “Yeah, Nathan J. Hillier.”

Kent nodded, lowering his head to rest his cheek against her hair. “I know him. He’s one of my dad’s best friends. I’m not surprised.”

“Okay, but does your dad also have the kind of job where he might get killed at any moment?” she asked, trying not to snap it, but her voice was shriller than usual. “Because I always got the impression he was kind of a desk guy.”

Kent shrugged. “We don’t talk about what Dad does. What happened with Nate?”

“Beckett, uh … located his house. He drove his company van, which we’ve got on camera, and apparently stopped to ask for directions.”

“Apparently?” Did that mean the agent who’d volunteered to pose as Kent’s dad hadn’t been conscious since then?

“He said he was lost and looking for a specific address, but we assume he was ready to use any excuse to drive by Hillier’s house and try to talk to him. Which was why it had to be a single agent,” Adam added. “They didn’t have time to update the website or make any sort of address changes on a larger scale, so Beckett had to be able to look him up in, say, the phone book and get the right information.”

It still sounded like entrapment to Nell.

“He could’ve just shown up and asked some questions,” Adam argued at whatever he saw on her face. “Out of curiosity, or because he could use some of the information on his book tour. He didn’t have to …”

“What did he do?” Kent asked in the voice that yes, really made people think he was a Hell’s Angel.

Adam cleared his throat. “Brass knuckles and a switchblade. But he didn’t really use the knife.”

“Didn’t really?” It came out of Nell like a laugh, but come on. How did someone not really use a switchblade?

“He threatened Hillier with the switchblade,” Adam corrected, and if he was ever put up on the witness stand, she hoped he got some more training about using a poker face. Clearly Adam thought this was an excellent and wonderful story and they were fixating on all the wrong parts. “He mostly used the brass knuckles.”

Nell’s hand went up to her face, fingertips on her cheekbones. How delicate was a human face? Or had Beckett gone for the torso and internal injuries?

“The point is, Hillier knew he had to play it right to make it believable.”

“To make what believable?” Kent demanded.

“Your address.”

Silence.

“God, no, your—a fake address. A safe house a couple hundred miles from here. I don’t know why they still picked Iowa, except I don’t think they know you’re here, so maybe it was just a weird coincidence. But Hillier had an address memorized, and if he just gave it up right away, Beckett wouldn’t believe him.”

Okay but if he’d given it up right away, he could’ve avoided the whole assault with a deadly weapon business.

Kent shook his head a little, like he’d caught her thought. “Nate would risk himself for us. Get the conviction for the assault, if nothing else. That at least buys us time. So he showed up at the safe house and you’ve got him? Because maybe you should’ve led with that.”

“Uh …”

“Wait, all that and you don’t even have him?” Nell gripped Kent’s arm with both hands.

“Not yet, no. He, uh … didn’t take the direct route, so … we’re not sure where he is.”

“He …” Nell shook her head, but that didn’t help things fall into place. “So why are you here?”

Adam sighed. “Because they’re going to put it out on the news that an agent was assaulted, and identify the suspect, and your dad didn’t want you thinking it was actually him.”

Nell closed her eyes because it wasn’t like the news would call him the father of Rosie’s boyfriend or something. “You’ve identified him, but now we’ve got no idea where he is, because two agents alerted him to the fact that you’re on to him and told him to come to Iowa.”

“Nowhere near here in Iowa,” Adam protested. “And I didn’t have a damn thing to do with this—they only just told me about it today.”

Because they were going to put something on the news, since so much had gone wrong.

Kent squeezed Nell tighter for a moment. “We need that picture of him. Beckett.”

“Why—?”

“Because our bosses are out there, and they need to know it’s a problem if they see that guy hanging around.”

A muscle in Adam’s jaw twitched. “I’m not happy that you’re sharing this information with anyone else, in any context.”

Said the man who was not actually trained to hide people in witness protection. Nell tried not to scowl. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot we’re not happy about, either.”

“You said it’s going to be on the news,” Kent argued more quietly, if not more calmly. “We’ll just tell them then. Let them draw their own conclusions about why they should keep an eye out for this guy who assaulted a fed with a deadly weapon.”

Adam shook his head. “Neither of you get it. You’ve had these identities for years now, and you want to throw it all away? You can’t go back to who you were, and you’re not getting us involved again. As far as the bureau’s concerned, your dad took things a step too far, but they’re leaving it … as long as nothing else comes up. If you start undoing all that, you’re not just losing us. You’re going to lose every single friend and connection you’ve made here, because basically you’ve done nothing for years but lie your asses off.”

Art understands. Nell wasn’t sure that Brandon did, but she could see Art got it. He was actually comforted by it, if only because he didn’t have to keep thinking Kent was a groomer. “The whole reason Kent’s dad did this is because there’s someone out there hurting people I care about.” God, she hadn’t expected her voice to waver this much. “If he’s out there, and now he’s even closer, then Art and Brandon are two of those people who need to be on their guard.”

“You know who to look out for,” Kent added, also softly. “And we know you can’t be everywhere at once. Give them a chance, will you?”

Adam stayed still for quite a while, resuming the fed mask and showing nothing, but then he took a slow breath, nodded, and got out his phone.

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Chapter Thirty-One