Wouldn’t that mean that he was still locked up? At the end of the article, there was an update. After new legal filings, and McCabe’s admission into a new juvenile program at Everest Juvenile Treatment Facility, he will now be eligible for parole after his twenty-first birthday.

I did some quick mental math. As of a month ago, he could be out. And only a couple of hours away. Why hadn’t Shay gone farther than a ferry ride from Seattle? None of it added up.

My stomach churned at the school photo printed in one of the articles. A freckle-faced Shay stared back at me, a small gap between her two front teeth. Her smile was wide and unreserved as if nothing was wrong in her world. But there had been. The article spoke of Michael’s long history with mental illness, even at the age of eleven. Trips to a local psychiatric hospital, and one brief stint at a juvenile detention facility. What would it have been like for a child to grow up in a home, struggling to deal with that? How terrifying.

My jaw worked as my back teeth ground together. I kept reading. Article after article. Everything I could find on Michael and the McCabes. Most of it was a regurgitation of the first two articles I read, but I kept hunting anyway. The truth of what I’d just learned swirled in the back of my mind. Shay had almost died. Because her brother had tried to kill her.

I almost jumped out of my skin when the video chat notification blared to life on my screen. I hit accept, and Carson’s face filled the screen.

“Surfing the internet, slacker?”

I couldn’t seem to force my mouth into a grin. “Just doing some research.”

Carson sobered. “What’s wrong? Press hounding you again?”

“No, nothing like that.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to think of what I could share without betraying Shay’s trust.

“Is Lara giving you shit again? Need me to hire a hitman?”

That almost got a smile out of me. “You know she showed up here the other day?”

Carson’s jaw dropped open. “On your little island in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s not in the middle of nowhere, but yeah. Flew in and had a boat bring her straight here.”

“No wonder you look like crap.”

I wished it was as simple as Lara showing up and driving me nuts. But she’d been surprisingly understanding when I’d canceled our dinner and promised that she’d heard me and would give me some space to figure out what the new direction in my career might be. I absentmindedly traced a design on my desk with my finger. “It’s not Lara.”

Carson let out a huff. “What then? You regretting your move already?”