A folder of paperwork lies open over her knees. She’s been reading Cooper’s summary on McMurtry out loud, and she and Bell have talked awhile. Cooper is canny, she realizes. One road trip is a better get-to-know-you than a thousand formal handshakes at Quantico.

“Living away from home is tough,” Emma notes.

“It is.” Bell takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his knuckle, suspends the glasses off the neck of his shirt. “But being away for LEO training is no different than being away for college, I guess.”

“I go to college in my home state, though. Wisconsin’s a long way from Texas.”

“That’s true. But Texas won’t let you start until you’re twenty.”

“How did you get recruited for this? If you don’t mind me asking,” she adds quickly. “Cooper said everyone on this detail had some kind of experience with, uh—”

“My dad was a US Marshal. He was murdered by a serial offender.” Bell keeps his face forward, eyes trained out the windshield. “It was during an arrest. There was a situation, and my father was involved, and he got stabbed.”

“Oh.” She feels a little winded. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. You asked—it’s all right to ask. It was two years ago.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve gotta know this stuff about each other if we’re gonna work together.”

“Right. Yeah.” She nods at the folder in her lap, closes it, and places it on the bench seat between them. Sweat in her palms at the prospect of talking about this. “Well. I’m the only survivor of the Daniel Huxton case. He was the guy in Ohio who—”

“I know,” Bell says. “You don’t have to tell me. I know about it.”

“You do?” Emma wishes her heart would stop beating so fast. “Ah, of course you do. You read the news.” She looks out the window and tries not to think about it. Tries to think of something nice: her mother and the petunias, the soft black loam in the flower boxes.

“I remember,” he says. “My dad put the newspaper in front of me at the breakfast table and said, ‘This is what real bravery looks like.’ I paid attention.” When Emma doesn’t reply, he continues. “You’d just turned sixteen. You fought off Huxton, escaped, then found help and led the police team back up the mountain to the location.”

“It wasn’t…” Thinking about petunias isn’t working. Emma reaches for her inner gyroscope. “It sounded really straightforward in the media. It wasn’t.”

“It never is,” Bell says. “There was a standoff, right? And Huxton shot himself.”

“He…” Her breath is thin, like she’s at high altitude. “He was, um…”

“I understand. You don’t have to go over it. It’s okay.” Bell looks at her, looks away. “It was messy, right? Every situation like that is messy.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t need me to explain. The relief of that makes her light-headed, but Emma keeps her eyes on him. She finds the sight of his profile steadying. “You get through it, though.”