Page 30 of Bad Mother

She gathered the papers and began returning them to her briefcase. “Thank you again. The department appreciates it.”

The department.

They stood, and he followed her to the door, this unfamiliar desperation clawing at him to keep her from leaving.

Cool it, Gavin. She has a job to do.

“Before you leave,” he said, his words coming out in a rush, “Mirabelle wanted me to invite you to dinner. Monday.”

Sienna turned back toward him, blinking. “Uh...”

“Argus will be there.”

He saw the surprised happiness flicker over her face. “They’re still together,” she said.

“Are you surprised?” he asked on a smile. She’d posed it as a statement, so he knew she wasn’t.

She gave a short laugh that was mostly breath but tipped her head as though conceding his point. “No, though she did put him through the wringer. Did she finally marry the poor guy?”

“Not yet. They still don’t even live together, but he continues to propose.”

She gave a full-fledged smile then. “He’s persistent; I’ll give him that.”

Gavin laughed. “I don’t know thatpersistentcuts it. Argus deserves a word several steps beyondpersistent.”

Her smile grew, and their eyes locked for one beat, two, before she looked away, her smile fading. “I’ll think about it,” she said. It wasn’t a yes, but it was better than no.

“Okay. Great. Hold on just one second.” Gavin walked quickly to his desk, where he tore off a sticky note and scrawled Mirabelle’s address.

He walked it back to Sienna, who took it, glancing down at the small, square piece of mint-green paper. She raised her brows. “This is in South Reno, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I, ah, once I was able, I moved her out of that trailer park.”

Whatever she saw in his face made her eyes linger for a moment. She stuck the piece of paper in the side pocket of her briefcase and inhaled, her shoulders rising and dropping again. “She never belonged there anyway. Thank you again, Gavin.”

“You’re welcome, Sienna.” And with that, she turned and walked out his door. He watched until she rounded the corner to the elevator banks, and then he returned to his desk. He sat there for a moment, tapping his fingertips together as he worked to move his mind away from Sienna and young boys who watched their mothers brutally kill their fathers.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“You seem distracted,” Kat said, scooping up some salsa with a grease-laden tortilla chip and eating half in one bite.

Shewasdistracted. Distracted and frustrated. She and Kat had worked all morning before finally taking a break for a late lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. They’d both agreed that sitting down for an actual meal was important, not only for their mental health but so that they could update each other on what they’d individually worked on and brainstorm a little. The profiler Ingrid had called was looking over all the information they had so far, including the most recent letters and a few of their theories. Hopefully he could assist them with what they’d already speculated about and offer new ideas.

Sienna sipped from the straw of her iced tea and set it down before speaking. “I keep going over those notes. It’s hard not to dwell on every small line, thinking it might be a clue pointing us somewhere.” Words and phrases and snippets of Danny Boy’s writings kept winding through her mind, keeping her up half the night.

“Okay, but where?”

“You mean what is the ultimate destination if it’s not simply the end of his story? I have no idea.” She thought for a minute. “Ingrid mentioned that the point of all this can’t be for him to get caught. But what if it is? What if he’s leading us tohimselfand plans on giving uponce we find him? All these notes are both a stalling tactic and a way for him to tell us his story before we arrest him.”

“To garner sympathy?”

“Maybe. Maybe he thinks we’ll go easier on him if we understand his motive. Maybe it’s just that no one has ever listened to him and he believes he has to employ extreme methods to be heard?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine any killer setting up a scenario where he ends up spending life in prison. No matter how intolerable he considers his own circumstances or what happened to him, he can’t consider thatbetter.”

“True enough.” Maybe especiallythisguy, whose past included sexual molestation.

Everyone was well aware of the things that could and often did happen behind prison bars.

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