“Well, for one thing, there were no jobs for lawyers when I got out. That’s okay. I would have hated it.”

“So you joined the police?” Lucy asked.

“Nope.”

She was confused. “What did you do?”

“I drove a taxi for two years.”

Lucy laughed. She reached out and touched his shoulder and then quickly drew her hand back. “Wow, you really are full of surprises.”

“I liked it,” Frost said. “I got to know the ins and outs of the city, all the back roads and back routes. That still comes in pretty handy.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“I got robbed too many times. I had too many people throw up in my cab. So I hooked up with a high school buddy down on the Wharf. We ran fishing charters for a year. We slept on the boat. I liked being on the water, but I smelled like fish all the time, and girls didn’t really go for that.”

Frost was enjoying his trip down memory lane, but he knew how it ended. He felt a tightness in his stomach. Things happen, and you figure out where you’re going, but it doesn’t mean what happens is good.

“Then I spent six months working on Alcatraz as a tour guide. I loved that, being a history buff. It was my favorite job.”

“But only six months?” Lucy asked.

“Only six months.”

“What happened? Did you get laid off?”

Frost glanced at Lucy and then glanced away. They were the same age. Lucy and Katie. Both twenty-five.

“No, my sister was murdered,” Frost told her.

Lucy’s big eyes flew open even wider. He heard her inhale sharply. Without a word or thought, she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. “Oh my God, Frost. I don’t know what to say.”

“Thanks. There’s nothing to say.”

She let him go, but she held on to his hand. “That’s so terrible.”

“Yeah. Katie was a sweet kid.”

He was about to say she was your age, but he didn’t. He was about to say you remind me of her, but he didn’t.

“I found her in the backseat of her car. It was—”

He stopped. It was a scene only the devil would understand.

“There are so many ripple effects when something like that happens,” he went on. “My parents separated for a while and only reconciled a couple years ago. They left the city. Moved to Tucson. They couldn’t handle being here anymore. Duane and I actually grew closer. We were so different, and we’d never spent much time together, but without Katie, we were all we had.”

“And you became a cop,” Lucy concluded.

“Yes, I became a cop. Suddenly, the criminology degree, the law degree, seemed to make sense in the world. Up to that point, they didn’t. But I guess there’s a weird synchronicity to life. The puzzle pieces come together eventually.”