He studied Leland’s most recent mug shot as Bree turned in to her neighborhood. Leland had a pale addict’s face, his skin picked and marred, his round eyes pink-rimmed. His hair was white-blond cotton floss, and he had a neck tattoo of a Jesus face over an eagle wing that went running up behind his ear. Marshall stared long and hard, until he was sure he would know the guy when he saw him, even if Leland’d shaved or dyed his hair and grown a beard to hide the tat.

When Bree pulled in to the drive, he’d already shut down and packed his laptop. He was ready to go, but Bree put a hand on his arm, stopping him. She wanted assurances that when this was over, they would let the Wilkersons know what had happened to Geoff and that he could find Lexie. He gave them, though he was more sure of the former.

That should have been it. He had work to do. He stayed in his seat, though. She was about to have one hell of an ugly conversation with her husband. He was trying not to think about that. What Trey’s story might be. He knew Spence. He’d seen Gabrielle’s face when Spence had trapped her in that copy room. Spence had never, to his knowledge, behaved that way to another female associate, but they were not likely to confide in Marshall. Not to mention, all the others were white and most were from wealthy families.

Gabrielle came from money, but she was a black woman, and the partners were almost universally white and male. There was one woman, but she was a junior partner. The only black partner was male and very conservative.

That made Gabrielle a pioneer, and as such she was vulnerable. Now he was wondering if some paralegals and administrative assistants might have seen a side of Spence that he kept hidden from the elegant white daughters of wealthy men. Spence married women like that. And cheated on them. And lost them. His pent aggression, his anger as his divorce had gotten uglier, it had to have gone somewhere.

Lexie Pine had been poor. Vulnerable. Unconnected. Meanwhile there was probably a Shaw law-library wing or building on that campus. So while he had ideas about what Lexie’s story might entail, he couldn’t make the most obvious explanations line up with what he knew of Trey.

Moreover, if he was a decent human being, he couldn’t want Trey to be a bad guy. If Trey was, at his root, just another Spencer Shaw, then Bree would leave him. She would not want her daughters in the care of such a man. She would not want her son raised in that mind-set. Though that might not be up to her, if she left him.