left the Inn. There had only been that one reporter, likely a lowly leave-behind, since the Spa lot had largely cleared out. I assumed the big guns were in the center of town, but the road behind me remained dark.
My heart slowed its racing enough for me to ask, “What are you doing here, Chris? And how did you get in?”
His hand appeared. My spare key was in his palm.
Had the situation been different, I might have laughed. The key. Of course. But in the seconds before it appeared, I had imagined him jimmying the lock, which didn’t bode well for his innocence on the computer-hacking score, given the high-tech security system in my truck.
The key was the one Grace had forgotten to return when her car was being serviced and she borrowed my truck, which raised the issue of his taking it from her purse.
But that wasn’t my worry. I had enough others. If Chris had been photographed entering or, worse, inside the truck, Michael Shanahan would be back.
“You weren’t seen?” I asked. If he had been, media reinforcements would likely already be on the way. Hell, if I had been recognized, they might be. I looked in the rearview again, but all was dark. “How did you do it?”
Moving under cover of darkness was one thing, but we had just turned the clocks forward, so it was still light. Okay, there would have been more cars in the lot an hour or two ago, meaning more cars to crouch between and hide behind. But there would have been more reporters, too.
That said, I knew how cunning Chris could be. I had played hide-and-seek in the woods with him and, granted, he was eleven at the time, technically too old. But he had asked, and was totally into it, like he’d been waiting forever to play with someone.
He was good in the woods. What he lacked in athleticism, he more than made up for in smarts. He moved stealthily and with purpose. I imagined him now, behind the Spa, watching for an opening from the cover of nearby trees, waiting for the moment when something else drew reporters like a shark to chum.
“Hoodie,” Chris said.
Hoodie. Of course. Like half the men leaving after a day of work at the Inn, the hardware store, or the highway department. Like half the boys heading home after a day of classes at Devon High.
Hoodie. Right. The hood was down now, but he’d kept it up going in and out of the police station, the courthouse, and Jay’s office. And how did I know that? Since Michael kept tabs on the news, I had to keep tabs on what he saw. I had done it when I got home from Jessa’s last night. As tired as I was, I was too keyed up to sleep, so, resting my laptop on my midriff, I retrieved every article I could. I hadn’t seen myself in any more clips, but Chris was all over the place. Fortunately, his features hadn’t shown. And his hoodie was the same nondescript gray worn by all those other high school kids who wanted more to look cool than feel warm. Huddling into himself in those clips, he’d had the look of someone who was either frightened, guilty as hell, or freezing.
When my thoughts reached the freezing part, I turned up the heat. The inside of the truck was cold, and he had been in it for God-knew how long, which raised an urgent issue. “Does Grace know you’re here?”
“No. She’s out.”
I didn’t want to ask out where—wondered if he knew—feared that if he had been hanging around the Inn for long, he might have seen her leaving the Spa with that guy.
I grabbed my phone. The call went straight to voice mail, which meant that Chris was just starting to protest when I said a louder, “Hey, Grace, your son’s with me. I’m taking him to my place. You can pick him up on your way home.”
I didn’t ask her to confirm it, didn’t want to wait for an answer that might be a while coming. She surprised me by texting I will within seconds, like she had her cell right there just in case, which restored my faith a little.
My periphery caught the flicker of headlights in the rearview. Heart pounding, I sank a little lower, watched, waited. The headlights passed, taillights receded. Only then did I dare take a breath.