“Sorry,” she said as she closed the door behind him. “Nothing personal, but I figured the last thing you needed right now was speculation on who the redhead in the motel might be.”

He laughed ruefully and took off his jacket. “I have a feeling they might already know.”

“What do you mean?” Dorsey stood with her hands on her hips.

“I mean you’ve been outed.” He hung the jacket on the back of the room’s lone chair. “Please tell me you have beer.”

“In the bathtub.” She nodded in the direction of the bathroom. “What do you mean, ‘outed’?”

“One of the reporters asked how many agents had been assigned to the case and I told him one.” Andrew disappeared into the bathroom. “Oh, wow. You know, you just might be the perfect woman.”

He came back out with a dripping wet bottle of beer in his hands. “Ice in the bathtub. Brilliant.”

“Thanks. It’s going to make for a damn cold shower later, but hey, at least the beer isn’t warm.” She directed him to the desk. “The pizza might still be, though. I wrapped it in a blanket.”

“You really are brilliant, did I already say that?” He sat wearily at the desk and opened the lid of the pizza box. “I’m so hungry right now I could eat the box.”

“The pizza tastes better. Go on and eat.” Dorsey sat crossed-legged on the end of the bed. “Finish the part about me being outed.”

“I said, one agent had been assigned. Me. And Chief Bowden said, ‘Oh, but what about Agent Collins?’”

“And you said?”

“I said,” Andrew chewed and swallowed, “Agent Collins wasn’t officially assigned. Which would have been fine, except that after the mics were turned off, I heard the reporter asking Bowden about you.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I went inside to interview Franklin and hoped that the reporter didn’t think anything more of it.”

“That will depend on how good the reporter is. How curious.”

“Right. But anything else I said at that point would have had him wondering what the big deal was, so I acted like it was nothing. Sometimes the more you say, the more they want to know.” Andrew licked tomato sauce off his thumb. “Did I ever tell you that my favorite pizza was sausage, sweet peppers, and mushrooms?”

“Just a good guess on my part. Now talk. What happened?”

Andrew filled her in on his remarks to the reporters and his conversation with Franklin.

“What was your gut feeling about him?” she asked. “Too much protest? Overly indignant?”

“Neither. To tell you the truth, I didn’t get that vibe from him.”

“The vibe that says, I’m lying through my teeth, or the vibe that says, you’re way off base.”

“The lying vibe. I think he was telling the truth. I don’t think he was the one Shannon was running from.”

“Who do you think it was, then?”

“I think it might have been his father.”

“Reverend Paul? Founder of the church? The man who, according to Paula Rose, brought truth, justice, and salvation to the good people of Hatton?”

Andrew shrugged. “You asked me what my gut was saying, and that’s it. Look, he was there at the church that day, we know that for a fact. Shannon was in his office.”

“Martha said he had an appointment.”

“Maybe Martha was lying.” He polished off the first slice and took a long pull from the bottle. “A little more pizza and I might turn back into a human being again.”

“Hmmm. Grampa Paul as abuser.” She rubbed her chin as if considering the possibility. “I like it.”

“I’m thinking the other sisters knew about that.”

“Probably. If it was the old man, I’d be real surprised if he started with the third sister.”

Andrew took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “It would be unusual, with those two older sisters around, for him not to have started with one or both of them.”

“It’s certainly something worth exploring.”

“You know, you’re awfully calm for someone whose cover has just been blown.”

“We knew it could happen.” She shrugged. “But you never know, the whole thing could have gone right over this guy’s head.”

“Your name is out there. All it takes is one reporter with a contact in the Bureau to find out who you are.”

“Well, let’s hope this guy was slow on the draw. I’m not really ready to back out of this yet. Too many questions remain unanswered. I’d like to be around to answer a few of them.”

“I’d like you to be, too.” He caught her eye and held her gaze. She looked like she was trying to think of a snappy comeback and couldn’t. He let her off the hook by adding, “It’s a complicated case. Of course you’d want to finish what you started. See how all the pieces fit together in the end.”

She nodded thoughtfully, eyes downcast. Then she looked up and grinned. “So how long exactly was it before Franklin kicked you out?”

“Maybe twenty minutes or so.” He laughed. “About average for the Randalls.”

He grew sober then, and related Judith’s recollections of hang-up phone calls that lasted a little too long, of envelopes that often contained nothing at all.

“I’d bet anything that was all Shannon,” Dorsey agreed. “But boy, the empty envelopes speak volumes, don’t you think? Wanting to connect, wanting to reach out, but not wanting them to really know…” She shivered. “That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Everything about this case is sad.” Andrew went into the bathroom. “Can I get you another?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He emerged with a bottle in each hand, and passed one over to her.

“Do you ever think about doing anything else?” Andrew asked as he sat back down at the desk.

“No. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I didn’t do this.”

“Doesn’t it ever get to you?”

She thought about her last case, about the two young men now sitting in a federal prison awaiting trial. Over a period of three months, they’d kidnapped, raped, and murdered seven girls in the Florida panhandle. Seven Dorsey knew of, anyway. Who knew how many others there might have been?

“Yeah.” She took a drink from the bottle. “Yeah, it gets to me.”

“You see these families, they appear so solid. And then you find out there was something underneath it all that just was not right, and you wonder what went wrong.”

His gaze went distant. To bring him back, she asked, “You’re talking about the Randalls or the Beales?”

“Neither. Both.” He focused on the pizza, as if debating whether or not to have another slice. “Maybe I was thinking about the Shields.”

“Your brother.”

“All of us. We came from this great, tight-knit family. We had two parents who loved us. Yeah, Dad was gone a lot, but Mom was no pushover, believe me. That woman ran a tight ship. She was strong, the real anchor of the family. I look back and remember how close we all were, how we were all such good friends. Me, Brendan, and Grady. And how protective we all were of Mia. She was the only girl in the entire family, you know? The baby sister. Even Connor and those guys doted on her.” He looked up at Dorsey with haunted eyes. “I just don’t understand what went wrong with Brendan. How he could have turned out so bad, when everything he came from was so good.”

He cleared his throat and added, “I read somewhere that 45,000 women and children are trafficked into the US every year. My brother was responsible for some of those kids. He arranged for them to be sent here so they could be sold like puppies in a pet store. He didn’t give a damn about them. About what was going to happen to them. I just want to understand how he ended up without a conscience. I just would have liked to have asked him why.”

“We’re used to finding answers, that’s what we do. There’s a case, we solve it. We try to find out who is responsible and we try to find justice for the victim, justice for their family.” She sat up a little straighter so that her eyes could look directly into his. “It’s hard for us to accept that sometimes things happen and there are no answers, no explanations. So we deal with it the best we can.”