Lila clicked on the next picture, and her heart nearly stopped. It showed two girls in a red-faced argument. Lila saw herself at the edge of the crowd, a beer in her hand. But it wasn’t the two girls fighting that caught her attention—nor was it seeing herself standing half drunk at the edge of the fray. What made Lila’s blood freeze was the image of a boy in the background. He sat on a cushioned chair alone, invisible to the rest of the partiers, and he wasn’t watching the fight like everybody else. The boy stared at Lila.

It was Gavin Spencer.

Chapter 52

Chapter 52

When the jailers called Gavin’s pod to dinner that evening, he stepped into line with the other men. The guy ahead of Gavin looked like he belonged there, tall and broad-shouldered, his greasy hair dangling down between his shoulder blades. He glanced over his shoulder at Gavin and gave a sneer—then a smile. Gavin should have trusted his instinct and moved to the back of the line, but he hadn’t.

They marched, single-file, into a concrete hallway, one jailer at the head of the group, one at the tail, the odor of forty unwashed men filling the small space. Gavin hated chow time. He needed to eat, so he made that walk three times a day, but he loathed being lumped in as just another dreg in an orange jumpsuit, no different from the toothless meth heads and the idiots who blew their snot to the floor when there was a tissue within reach.

But he took comfort in knowing that unlike the rest of them, he would be out soon; he was only there for the alibi.

The line turned a corner, placing Gavin out of view of the guard in back, and the man ahead of him suddenly turned and punched Gavin in the stomach—once, twice, three times. It happened so fast that Gavin didn’t have time to react. He dropped to the floor, his body curling in upon itself, his lungs empty, and his stomach heaving bile up into his throat.

The man did not continue the attack, but simply turned and walked on as though nothing had happened. The men behind Gavin stepped around him as if he were a pile of dog feces.

By the time the rear guard got to him, Gavin had worked himself up onto his knees. The man radioed to the control center, telling them to look at the security footage to see if anything was caught on tape. He lifted Gavin to his feet and asked what had happened. Gavin wasn’t sure he could explain it even if he wanted to, so he simply shook his head.

In the mess hall, Gavin took a seat far away from the long-haired man. The attack had beaten the appetite out of him, but he cut a piece of Salisbury steak and put it in his mouth anyway.