The Departed

she’d been too nervous to look at the camera. She’d been like that when he met her, too. The one and only time they’d met in person. He liked the picture of her. It was why he’d chosen her. Something about that picture made her tits look huge and he’d had a whole lot of fun squeezing those big tits when they’d been getting things arranged. She’d stared at him over the gag, her eyes big and terrified, her skin pale. They had worn masks, all of them, except for when he’d grabbed her. Then he’d worn a hat, glasses. Could she identify him? Fuck. What if she could…His heart started to slam against his ribs as he realized just how fucked up things were. If she could identify him, it wouldn’t matter if the guys didn’t decide to talk. Why wouldn’t she ? The fucking bitch.
    “Well?”
    Brendan glanced up and shook his head, swallowed around the knot in his throat and gave him a game smile. He needed to relax. He had barely recognized himself when he looked in the mirror right before he picked her up. She couldn’t place him. There was no way. “No. I don’t think I know her, Detective.”
    * * *
     
    BEHIND the one-way glass, Taylor stood next to Blake Hensley and watched as the boy lied.
    Oh, he wasn’t bad at it. He might be fooling his dad.
    But Taylor wasn’t fooled.
    “He’s lying,” Blake said, his voice grim and sad.
    Arching a brow, Taylor glanced over at him. “What makes you think that?”
    “Shit, FBI man. I got eyes, the same as you. I see the same things you do.” He reached into his pocket and tugged out a mangled pack of gum. “That boy is lying or I’m missing my left nut.”
    Then he flashed Taylor a wide grin. “And I’m pretty sure it’s still there—was this morning. At least I think it was this morning.” He sighed and checked his watch, then rubbed a hand back over his head. “Yeah. This morning. This has been one hell of a day. We don’t get shit around here like this, you know.”
    “Well, it’s good you don’t see many things like this.” He focused on the boy again, watching the way his eyes would occasionally dart to the one-way glass, the way he had his arms folded over his chest—it should have looked casual…probably even passed for casual to the untrained eye. But he kept digging his fingers into his arms, every now and then, like he was fighting the urge to fidget.
    And his eyes were just a little too wide—the pupils dilated.
    He was still scared.
    But more than the fear, he was pissed . It was an ugly anger, too. The kind of anger that Taylor had seen turn deadly in the blink of an eye. He hoped that detective in there had good eyes, because this boy, he was a time bomb.
    Oh, he hid it. Hid it very well under a smooth layer of manners—his father had raised him well, but Taylor wouldn’t have expected any less of the Moore family. They’d been the sort of family his mother had loved—a nice, well-established family…they’d been in the area for years; they had money. They had history.
    And about ten years back, Joshua Moore had run for mayor and won. Taylor remembered him—the guy had been a schmuck in school and was probably still a schmuck now, but he was a smart one. He was raising another smart schmuck, it seemed.
    Studying Brendan, he asked softly, “You know who he hangs out with?”
    “Yeah. There’s about five other guys.” He sighed. “There used to be six, but one of them…the best of the bunch, actually, died about two months ago.”
    The hair on the back of Taylor’s neck stood up. “Really? What happened?”
    “Killed himself.” Blake shook his head. “Got to tell you, doesn’t make sense—Tristan was a good kid. Level, you know? And I can’t see him, of all kids, being involved in something like this.”
    Tristan .
    A piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
    The boy’s ghost had found Dez somehow—led her here. Yeah, that was it. Taylor knew it as well as he knew his own name.
    Something else he knew…Dez was holding back on him. In a major way.
    “The other kids—you going to talk to all of them, too?”
    Blake started to answer, but out in the hallway, there was a commotion. Loud. Very loud. “Damn it, I got a right to be in there with my grandson!”
    Taylor’s brows arched.
    Blake swore and turned around, heading out of the room. Curious, Taylor fell into step behind him. The man out in the hallway looked vaguely familiar, although it took a few minutes to place him.
    Beard, he thought. Leon