“Aha,” Laura replied, holding up a finger. “But he isn’t committed anymore. He stayed there for about eight months and was then released. His records show that he was rehabilitated, but what if he wasn’t? What if he just learned to let out the grief and anger—and, yes, the guilt—in another way?”
“By killing off identical twins,” Nate said. “Like he’s trying to make every male twin out there feel his sorrow. But why kill off both of the women?”
“I’m not entirely clear on that,” Laura said, shrugging. She had to admit to herself that it was the one flaw in her reasoning. The one thing she couldn’t explain yet. “Who knows how a psychopath’s mind works? Maybe he’s making it so that it’s only single male twins left. The women don’t have a part to play, so he gets rid of all of them.”
“That needs work, but I follow you otherwise,” Nate said. He paused, as if trying to find a way to disprove her theory. “It’s a good hunch.”
She noted the use of the word. Saw how it almost pained him to say it. He didn’t want to admit that she might be right about something.
Well, that was fine. So long as he was able to swallow his pride and say it anyway, it didn’t make a difference. And she’d always known he would have more respect for this hunch, given that it really was one—a hunch that came from doing the investigative work and seeing connections between the dots. Doing the work.
“So?” Laura prompted, still waiting for his final go-ahead.
Nate nodded slowly, then looked over his shoulder. “Where’s the car we’ve been using? We should head over to his address, see if we can track his guy down.”
***
Laura paced back and forth restlessly, making the receptionist watch her with wide eyes. She didn’t care. She was too wired up to rein herself in.
They almost had him, but now they were getting into dead end after dead end, and it was putting her nerves on edge.
“You could sit down,” Nate suggested mildly, earning him a glare.
“What’s taking so long?” Laura snapped in response.
“I’m sure the manager is just finishing off a call or something like that,” the receptionist replied nervously. Laura felt a little bad for that. She hadn’t actually meant to snap at her. She was just snapping at the world in general.
“It’s only been a couple of minutes,” Nate told her, from his position of leaning coolly against the desk.
“If he’s escaping out the back door right now…” Laura muttered, checking the position of her gun in its holster. She hadn’t intended that as a threat either, but the receptionist shifted unhappily in her seat.
“If he’s not here, we’ll look for him somewhere else,” Nate said, an apparent attempt to calm her down. It didn’t work.
“Where else?” Laura asked him. “We already tried his home, and he’s not there. If he’s not at his workplace either, then where is he supposed to be?”
“I think I might be able to answer that,” someone else said from behind them, making Laura spin around, immediately on guard.
A middle-aged man with a prominent bald spot on top of his head in an ill-fitting suit had just emerged from a door into the office. He held up his hands as if in surrender. Laura realized she maybe was coming on a bit strong, and forced herself to drop out of a ready stance.
“You’re Brady Seabrooke’s manager?” Laura asked, finding her voice still harsher than she had meant it to be. She was getting too worked up. Too antsy. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to get into the kind of tension where she would end up making a mistake.
“I am,” he said. “I was told you’re trying to track him down?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “You know where he is? He isn’t here, then?”
“No,” the manager said, giving her a regretful look. “Actually, he was here until a couple of hours ago. He said he needed to leave early today.”
“Why?” Nate asked, cutting right to the point.
“He said that an old friend was in town,” the manager replied. “That he wanted to spend some time together. It seems to have been somewhat unexpected. He didn’t book the time in advance. But since we already knew we’d be a little quieter today, I let him go.”
“Where was he meeting this friend?” Laura asked, seizing onto renewed hope.
“I don’t know,” the manager said, at a loss. “But I guess it would be somewhere local. I thought he would have gone home to meet him, but I just heard you saying he wasn’t there.”
Laura resisted the urge to hiss in the man’s face. He wasn’t helpful at all. Saying he knew where Brady Seabrooke had gone, only to reveal he didn’t know at all? This was a waste of everyone’s time.
“Do you know his old friends? Did he mention a name?” Laura asked, her irritation only increasing as the guy looked blanker and blanker. “Do you know where he goes outside of work? Is there a bar he likes to go to often?”