He continued. “But it wasn’t anything like that. It was the kind of situation you see so often you almost start forgetting what a tragedy it is, and you sure as hell stop expecting anything like justice to come of it. Woman leaves her husband, guy threatens her, she takes out a restraining order, calls the local cops a few times…sure, they try to help, but there are other priorities. And it seems like half the time when cops do respond, the couple is making up in the bedroom when they get there.”

“But this wasn’t one of those times, was it? He killed her.”

Quinn nodded. “It wasn’t my case—that’s not…it isn’t the kind of work I do. But I knew the woman’s father—a friend of my dad’s—and my dad asked me to be there, to explain stuff to the parents. The bastard walked. He leaves the courtroom, grinning and high-fiving his buddies, while her parents are crying, her oldest kid just staring into space, and I’m thinking how goddamn unfair it all is, but that’s really all I think because I’ve seen stuff like that so many times before. Afterward, we’re in the parking lot, and her father asks me to do him a favor.”

“Set things right.”

Quinn nodded.

“And you did.”

“Nope. Told him two wrongs don’t make a right, and I understood how badly he was hurting, but this wasn’t a road he wanted to go down. Two days later, the bastard’s dead, the old man’s in jail, his wife tries to kill herself, and the kids…well, you can bet those kids are fucked for life. And it could have been avoided if I’d taken that job instead of spouting some ‘turn the other cheek’ crap that I knew was bullshit.”

“So that’s what you do then,” I said. “Vigilante for hire.”

Quinn looked at me. His eyes were blue that night. Whenever I saw him, they were blue. I doubted that was his normal color, but he always wore the same contacts when he knew we’d be meeting—the same contacts, the same hair color, the same overall disguise—as if he wanted to show me something consistent.

With Jack, I could look him full in the face and still not have the faintest clue what was going on behind his eyes.

The doors were closed. With Quinn, there were no doors, probably never had been, and I could imagine that it had only taken one look around for the victim’s father to know the best person to approach with his offer.

Now, as Quinn watched me, his feelings were written over every feature—the creases around his mouth, the line between his brows, the anxiety in his eyes as he mentally replayed those words “vigilante for hire,” and tried to interpret my tone.