Hunting Human - Amanda E. Alvarez [52]
“Get out.” Her anguished cry pierced his anger and plunged into his chest, stealing his breath.
“Beth…”
“Get out!” He narrowly ducked the plate of sandwiches she flung at his head.
Unsure what else to do, he left. He leaned back against the door, suddenly exhausted, the anger that had been maintaining him drained away, leaving a hollow void of disappointment behind.
The things I said…
Too late to take them back. Now his words stood between them, as solid as the door at his back. The cries filtering out from the basement room slammed against his heart, then drifted down and settled, low and leaden, in his gut.
Chapter Thirteen
“Got the background check.” Chase dropped a stack of papers next to Braden’s morning coffee.
“And?” Braden asked, resisting the urge to leaf through the documents. Possible scenarios had kept him up half the night, dragging him around in circles.
“The report has a few gaps.” His dad poured himself the last of the coffee, glanced into the hallway and reached into the back of a cabinet, withdrawing a few packets of sugar. “Your mother’s taken all the fun out of my diet. She thinks she’s replaced all the sugar with a crappy imitation.”
Braden smiled over the rim of his cup, palmed the wrappers off the counter and disposed of the evidence. “Gaps?”
“Right. First, as far as we can tell, she was pretty straight with you about a lot of things.”
“Apparently not the ones that mattered.”
“Well, she was honest about who she was.” Chase straddled one of the high-backed bar stools, rocking it forward onto two legs. “Her full name is Elizabeth Williams. We think she used to go by Liz.”
“Uh-huh.”
Chase plucked the report from the counter, thumbing through the pages as he rattled off mundane facts about her life. “Twenty-five, degree in architecture from Boston University, her mother died when she was fifteen, no father, some family friends took her in.”
“Skip to the part where she started working with Markko.” Braden set his teeth and crossed his arms, the drip-hiss of fresh coffee hitting the empty carafe reflecting his temper.
Chase and his father exchanged a look.
“We’re not sure she is,” his dad interjected.
Fuck. Just fuck.
“Considering I saw her markings, I find that hard to believe,” Braden argued, forcing the words past his rigid jaw.
“Yeah, that stumped us, too.” His father pulled out a chair next to Chase. “As far as we can tell, she’s got no blood ties to their family.”
“Then she was bitten.”
“That in and of itself is unusual. More so considering she had no reason to cross paths with the Bolveks.”
“Reason or not, she crossed their path at some point.”
“Yeah,” Chase interrupted. “And we think we know when.” He looked back through the report before continuing. “Beth accepted a scholarship to pursue her Master’s of Architecture at Boston, but she never attended. We wondered why.”
“What’s your point?”
“Turns out she spent some time in the hospital. Then, she checked into a private inpatient program,” his dad explained.
“Drug addiction?” Even as Braden suggested it, the idea scraped against what he knew of Beth.
Or what I thought I knew.
“No. Although, we don’t have the specifics.” His father paused, gathering his thoughts. “The clinic specializes in post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia and a variety of other mental health issues. She checked herself out after about a month, continued outpatient care for another three, then up and moved to the West Coast. We still aren’t sure why.”
“Where’s the connection?” How did the pieces fit? A mental patient? It was hard to believe.
“We weren’t sure if there was a connection,” Chase said. “But I had our guy dig a little deeper, look closer at the time between her college graduation and when she checked into the hospital.”
“Turns out, after she graduated, she and a friend…” Chase referenced the papers again, “…Rachel Collier, took a graduation trip abroad, backpacking through Europe. Details are scarce, but the trip ended early. Beth checked into the hospital less than a week later. She didn’t even attend