She shrugged his hand off her back like she couldn’t stand the feel of it, went to the corner farthest from him, and sank down to sit on the floor with her face buried against her knees.

Mendez went out into the hall and paced up and down for a minute, trying to clear his head. He was upset in a way he didn’t know quite what to do with. He was a goal-oriented problem solver by nature, but he didn’t see a good way to solve Lauren Lawton’s problems. He felt hamstrung by the rules and regulations he was bound to follow. He felt as useless as a boy in the face of her fury and pain.

He went into the break room, where Vince sat watching the Ballencoa interview on the closed-circuit TV. Out of habit he went to the coffeemaker, but the idea of coffee seemed pointless to him. He wanted a stiff drink—but probably not half as much as Lauren did, he thought.

Vince flicked a glance at him.

“This guy’s a piece of work,” he said, nodding toward the screen.

Mendez flung himself into a chair with a sharp sigh and looked up at the television. Ballencoa sat at the table facing the door, wearing the sour expression of a petulant child. Trammell sat across from him, laid back, his body language calm and relaxed. Just having a chat with a citizen.

“He’s been telling Trammell how Lauren Lawton is stalking him and he wants to get a restraining order against her.”

“Fucking piece of shit,” Mendez growled. “He was taking pictures of the daughter at the tennis courts.”

“Which he says is his right and his livelihood.”

“His rights.” The words were bitter in his mouth. “Like he’s a victim. Lauren needs the protection order against him. He’s the fucking criminal. The fucking nerve of that guy—taking pictures of the daughter! If I’d been in her place, he’d be talking out the other side of his head right now.”

“And you’d be under arrest,” Vince pointed out.

“It’s not right.”

“If somebody looked funny at one of my kids . . . I don’t want to know what I’d do,” Vince admitted. “But there’s what’s right, and there’s the law. And unfortunately, the two don’t always go together.”

“Try explaining that to Lauren,” Mendez said. “I tried. I felt like something you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe. She lost her daughter to this dirtbag. She doesn’t even have the peace of knowing what he did to her.”

“How’s she doing in there?” Vince asked.

“She’s furious, she’s scared. She just handed me my ass,” Mendez said. “And it wasn’t any less than I deserved—or than our system deserves, I should say. When we threaten to arrest her for protecting her own child, where’s she supposed to turn?”