He looked back to the front of the store, then out the window to the gas pumps.

“I’m scared, okay? I didn’t want to go up against Reyes. I can’t go back to prison, and I can’t leave this town. I have two jobs and about fifty bucks in the bank. I’m an ex-con. Are you starting to get it?”

“Why would you have to leave town?”

“You don’t see it? You still don’t see what he is?”

“Who?”

“Reyes. Officer Jared Reyes.”

Now a rush to her head. A wave of nausea.

“He’s the criminal, Nic. A con man.” Kurt let this sink in for a moment, but not a long one. Not long enough.

“Three years ago, he pulled me over for supposedly running a light. It was bullshit. Next thing I know, I’m out of the car and he’s holding a bag of cocaine, saying he saw it in plain sight in the back seat of my car. He didn’t even pretend to look back there. He didn’t even bother to go through the motions of the setup.”

Nic stared at him now, her perception of Reyes taking a new turn.

Kurt continued. “Then he said it could all go away for ten grand—like I would have ten thousand dollars. He said I could borrow it from my family. He gave me until the end of the day. I thought, fuck him, you know? I was young. I believed in justice and the people in this town who’d known me my whole life. I believed in the chief and his bullshit about helping kids . . .”

“But you were convicted,” Nic said, finishing the story for him.

Kurt nodded. “The chief backed Reyes. His pet project. His prodigy. The son he never had. Who the hell knows. Doesn’t matter. Reyes is a con man, Nic.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. But what does this have to do with Edith Bickman? Reyes was the one who made me suspect that she was lying. He found a hole in her story about being in New York.”

Kurt looked up and crossed his arms, like he was preparing to tell her something she wasn’t going to like.