Reyes had managed to describe exactly what had happened to her as she stood on that driveway and watching her mother’s car send her little sister flying through air.

Had she started to cry then? She stared into her own eyes now, trying to remember. Yes, she had cried. And Reyes had held her. Kissed her forehead. Then driven her back here, sparing her the degradation of turning their new connection into something sexual. He knew about living with hollow spaces.

I’m not going to help you make them bigger, he’d said to her as he walked away from her room.

No one else had understood why she did the things she did. It wasn’t in any textbook. But Reyes knew because he’d lived it as well.

That explained so much about him—how he exuded confidence and swagger, pulling women in. Probably sleeping his way through the county. But also why he was the only one who seemed to give a shit about finding her mother. And why he was so loyal to Chief Watkins, who had saved his life by giving him a second chance at being a cop.

* * *

A young woman was at the front desk.

“Can I speak to Roger?” Nic asked her.

She smiled politely. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“No.” Nic was insistent. “It’s important.”

The woman picked up the house phone. “Hold on,” she whispered. Then, into the receiver, “Our guest asked to see you . . .”

Then a nod and a smile as she hung it up.

“He’s in his apartment,” she said. “It’s the second door down the hallway.”

She pointed to the hallway that began just beneath the stairs.

Nic thanked her, then walked toward Roger Booth’s apartment.

The door was already open when she got there, Booth greeting her with a burst of surprise, and an “Oh my!”

“What?” Nic asked.

He motioned toward her face, her hair. “It’s cold out. Your hair is wet.”

“I didn’t bring a hair dryer,” Nic said.

Booth looked confused. “There’s one under the sink.”

“I didn’t know. Can I come in?”

Booth hesitated, glancing behind him as though checking to see if his home was worthy of visitors.

“Do you have company?” Nic asked. “I can come back.”

Booth looked nervously at the floor. His cheeks turned red, and when she studied them they also seemed chapped from a recent shave.

Shaved. Neatly dressed. Smelling of cologne. All just to sit in his apartment or work at the diner. He really seemed to have no idea about what this place was like, Hastings.

“No, no,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

He stepped aside. “Come in. Please . . .”

His apartment was no bigger than her room upstairs. A bed, a small sitting area. A bathroom. The only addition was a wall of kitchen appliances near the window that faced the odd patio out back.