Marshall caught the tiny emphasis on “can’t.” The guy was in denial. He couldn’t bear for it to have anything to do with him.

“He’s lying,” Bree said from the doorway. Adam jerked like he’d been shot, twisting at the waist to see her. Kelly stirred at his sharp movement. She made a small moan, but her eyes stayed closed. Bree held up a small framed photo, stabbing her finger at the faces in the picture. “That’s you, with the pledges. That’s my husband, in his senior year. That’s Spencer Shaw.”

Marshall shot her a quelling look. She’d pretty much handed this sober asshole her identity.

“Oh,” said Adam, very unconvincingly. “Was that Spence? I didn’t recognize him. I haven’t seen Spence or Trey in years.”

Marshall glanced at the picture as Bree came over closer. A frat house? Yes. Spencer and Trey were tiny figures with round baby faces and shaggy college-boy hair. He had a blinding moment of clarity, anger at himself hard on its heels.

Not a lawsuit. Something earlier. He could feel all his assumptions washing away. He shouldn’t have made such assumptions in the first place. A rookie mistake, not being open to everything. He was too close, as he’d feared.

Too close to the family, the situation, way too close to Bree. He knew too much about Spence and Trey, their job and how connected they were. It had made him myopic, blinded him to the idea that this might be old, old business.

Underneath his anger, he was thinking. Three boys, same frat.

That put this thirty years ago. But when Adam saw the current photos of Trey and Spence, he’d instantly remembered some piece of their history. Something bad enough to make him lie and say he’d never known them. When he’d heard that the next photo was of a woman, a face had come into his mind. Not the old woman, though. Adam had expected a different face.

The daughter? That was the most likely explanation. The mother was in her seventies, and she’d told Bree she had one female child. He did quick math. Yes, the daughter could be the right age to have been at school with Trey and Spencer and this jackal.

It made sense. So, say Adam was expecting to see the face of the daughter when Marshall asked him to look at a photo of a woman.

A young, drunk Spencer Shaw, frat brothers, and a woman spelled a certain kind of trouble. He knew what Spencer was. Or to be more correct, what he had been when he was living. He didn’t know this guy, Adam, and he couldn’t figure Trey fitting into the scenario he was imagining. But Spencer? Please.