Boudreaux sat again. I dropped into the chair across from him, remained silent while the guard unlocked the cuff on my left wrist and snapped it closed around a thick eye-bolt set into the table.
The guard left and locked the door behind him. Boudreaux fidgeted and rubbed the fingers of one hand together as if he wanted a cigarette in them. He glanced at me then away while his heel tapped a nervous staccato on the floor. I adopted my best bored expression, leaned back and resisted the urge to break the awkward silence—yet another effective interrogation technique. At this rate, the two minutes would be up before he said word one.
“She’s gone,” he finally said, voice low and strained. “My mom’s gone.”
Damn. Boudreaux could be sneaky and underhanded when it came to questioning, but I was sure he’d eat broken glass before using his mom as an interrogation trick. I chose my words with care before speaking. “Do you know where she went?”
He jammed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said, voice cracking. Uncertainty skimmed over his face. “No one knows. She just . . . vanished.” He shot to his feet, sending the chair skittering back several inches with a screech of metal on tile. “There was surveillance on the house,” he continued as he began to pace. “They saw her go inside last night, but she wasn’t there this morning. No one saw her leave, nothing shows on the videos, and her car is still in the driveway. They even checked for a tunnel!”
Anger roiled my stomach. Catherine McDunn pulled an amazing disappearing act—as if by magic!—and did so after she dropped the information that led us to the nature center ambush. Yet my anger fizzled after only a few seconds of consideration. Katashi had coerced McDunn, so why not Catherine as well? My gut told me she was with Katashi, either as his guest or his hostage—an insight I needed to keep to myself or risk opening a godawful can of worms. Boudreaux eyed me with the desperate expectation of a starving dog in a butcher shop. Regardless of his mother’s complicity in Katashi’s schemes, his distress was genuine. I couldn’t remain pissed in the face of it. Even so, I couldn’t drop my guard. The interview rooms had video and audio recording, and anything I did or said in here could potentially be used against me. “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
He spun to face me. “You talked to her yesterday. What did she say?”
“She told me she was filing for divorce,” I said. “She said that she hated McDunn for what he put her and you through, and that she couldn’t forgive him. Said that he’d called her wanting money, then again asking her to trust him.” Nothing the cops didn’t already know. “She told him she hated him and to not call her anymore.”
The nervous twitch in his fingers stilled. “You don’t believe it.”
“Sure I do,” I said. “I heard her say she hated him on the recording.”
“She cooperated with the police. I know my dad . . . stepdad,” he corrected with an unmistakable note of grief, “would never hurt her.” He rubbed his hands over his face as if trying to wipe away his unhappiness then sat heavily. “Where is she?”
“Everything isn’t always as it seems,” I said. Surely Boudreaux deserved a shred of comfort. It sucked to take a hit in a game he didn’t know he was playing. “She might have faked everything and gone willingly.”
Ice flooded my veins the instant the words left my mouth. Where had that come from? It hit too close to a truth I hadn’t intended to voice under surveillance or to Boudreaux, and with that one injudicious remark, I’d blundered into a minefield. The last thing I wanted was Boudreaux sniffing around the Katashi connection. My pulse galloped as I fought to keep my reaction hidden from the camera. Maybe Boudreaux wouldn’t use his mom as an interrogation tactic to solve Farouche’s murder, but he would do anything and everything in his power to find her. He wasn’t an ally, and I didn’t owe him any information or comfort. How had I forgotten that? “Your two minutes are up,” I said, throat dry.
The calm gaze he leveled on me felt as if it penetrated to my essence. “It’s my mom, Kara.” His voice slid through me, soft and persuasive. “What do you know?”
“I think she’s—” Shocked to my core, I clamped down hard on the rest of the sentence. Son of a bitch. I yanked my eyes up to the camera. “I refuse to say another word without my lawyer present.” Too little, too late. Though I hadn’t said much, it was way more than I’d intended.
Boudreaux placed his hands flat on the table. “Kara, please,” he said, voice a whisper of desperation. “Help me.”
I bit my tongue and shook my head, mentally recited the state capitols and avoided eye contact.
His shoulders slumped, and he blinked as if only now seeing me as a prisoner shackled to the table. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
The heavy clunk of the door’s lock saved us both from the minefield. The guard stepped in.