She wanted to cry for the boy, Vince could see. He walked her down the hall and they went out the end door to the side yard. They stood in the shade on the far side of an oak tree and he put his arms around her and just held her—and she just stood there and let him hold her, slipping her arms around his waist as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m proud of you,” he said quietly.

“Proud of me? For what?” she asked, slipping out of his embrace as easily as she had slipped into it.

“You’re a tough little mouse, standing up to Farman like that.”

She frowned. “Look at all the damage he’s done. Dennis is never going to have a normal life, is he? Whether he’s in prison or not. He’s never going to get over this, is he?”

Vince shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, honey. I wish I could say different, but in my experience . . . He’s broken, and there’s probably no fixing him.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” she asked. “Throw him away? I don’t like that answer.”

“I know, but I don’t have a better one.” He reached a hand out to her and she took it without hesitation. “Maybe someday you could be one of the people who figures that out.”

“Someone has to try,” she said stubbornly.

“I know. I mean it. You’re great with your kids. You’re passionate about figuring them out and helping them. Not that teaching isn’t an important job, it is. But you could be making an even bigger impact on kids that need serious help.”

“I just want to do the best I can for them,” she said.

Vince leaned down and kissed her softly.

“You are one incredible lady, Anne,” he said, settling for those words instead of the ones that sat on the tip of his tongue—I’m falling in love with you.

He was forty-eight with a bullet in his head, falling in love on the third day of knowing Anne Navarre. That sounded a little crazy, even to him. But it was true . . . and he was going with it.

Chapter 70

70

“I did complain to Cal about it,” Jane Thomas said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I felt that the women from the center were being stopped with inordinate frequency. He told me I was imagining things.”

“What did you say to that?” Mendez asked.

“I told him he needed to go look up the records and then he could accuse me of having a persecution complex, not before.”

“When was this?” Hicks asked as they left the family waiting room and started back down the hall toward the ICU.