“Whoa, whoa, hold up. I ain’t know nothing about that and I would never ask your mom to do some shit like that.” Keith’s eyes were earnest as he shook his head. “I know I told her I was glad she agreed to accept my phone calls and us maybe pursuing something, even if it’s only a friendship. Look, I may not have liked your father and maybe in the past that would have been some shit I would’ve done. But I don’t give a damn about her money. I just want to be with her, if she’ll have me.”

“But . . .” Deven pinched the bridge of her nose, Iris’ comments coming back to play in her mind as her confusion started to clear, little-by-little. Kennedy mentioned that he wants me to have my will changed to include him. And I’m going to do it. Trying to scam their own mother? There had to be something else. Someone else.

“I need to know where Kennedy is,” Deven insisted. “I found a bunch of different scams that she’s been running. Using other people’s driver’s licenses, passports, taking lots of money from a lot of people. She could be hurt. Or worse, she could’ve scammed the wrong type of people and gotten tangled up in something she can’t get out of. Do you know anything about any of this?”

Keith’s eyebrows drew together. “No, not Kennedy. She wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“That’s what I thought. But I guess she picked up a lot more from you than you realized,” Deven said pointedly, her eyes accusatory as they bore into his.

The realization of his influence had shame coloring his face and he lowered his gaze to the handcuffs on his wrists. “I . . . didn’t know,” he said shaking his head. “I always told her—I tried not to expose her to the stuff I did because I knew she would just end up in a place like this. And I didn’t want that for my baby.”

“Well, she’s out there. And she’s following in your footsteps. I know she’s not really dead. So where would she be?”

“Dead?” Keith seemed genuinely alarmed by Deven’s words. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Deven opened her mouth to speak, but the buzzer sounded once more, drowning her out. Everyone started rising to give their final goodbyes as officers motioned the prisoners to a door.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” one of them yelled.

Keith stood too but he kept his eyes trained on Deven. “What do you mean dead?” he asked again.