She chews her lip, looks at the situation board, the young, scared picture of Shannon from high school.

“I’m going to be out tomorrow morning,” Hurt says then. “Unreachable. For a few hours.”

Kateri raises her eyebrows at him.

“I have a breakfast.” He doesn’t want to tell her.

“For the case?”

“No,” he says. He stands sideways in the doorway, slim. “With my son,” he says.

She tucks her head back, surprised. “Oh,” she says. “I didn’t realize.”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Hurt says.

“I don’t know anything about you,” Kateri says.

“He’s twenty-two,” Hurt says.

“Oh,” she says.

“I’ll check my messages after one,” he says. “Text me if anything new develops.” He walks out and then steps back with one foot. “It won’t,” he says.

But she feels like there’s something she’s missing. Some other thread that has eluded her, something more complex than Shannon Jenkins acting alone. She misses things all the time. Has no idea what gives someone like Joel Hurt joy, or what has caused him pain, but now there’s a full-grown man who belongs to him, who is part of him, and for whom Hurt is taking a very rare half day.

Details, she thinks.

There is something she has not noticed.

Her phone alerts her to a new email, and there’s a message from Bear Miller.

I’d like to provide a defense attorney for Shannon Jenkins. Please call me.

She hits reply and types, Why?

But then deletes it.

When she visits the cell, Shannon won’t look at her. He sits on the stainless-steel cot, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his face turned away. He looks small in the prison-issued scrubs, his shoulders bony. His long, willowy arms are faintly striped with scars that Kateri recognizes as self-inflicted. Years ago, she thinks. They hold the pattern of purposeful injury.

“Shannon,” she says. “I need you to tell me where we might find your sister.”

He lets it sit between them, the heaviness of the missing girl, for a moment before he answers. “I don’t know,” he says, flat.

“The more time that passes,” Kateri says, “the more dangerous it becomes.”

He looks her in the eye. “I know.”

She waits, and he says nothing more.

“A lawyer is being provided for you,” she tells him.

“Free of charge?” Shannon says, and then looks at her. His right eye is bruised underneath—again, Kateri thinks, self-inflicted. “I need a court-appointed lawyer,” Shannon says. “I can’t afford one. Which basically means you can just move me to death row now,” he adds.

“There’s no death penalty in New York State,” Kateri says.

“Oh, well goody,” Shannon says.

“Bear Miller is providing an attorney for you,” she says.

“Why?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says, and feels catty, and hates that feeling in herself. “He seems to have a soft spot for you,” she says.

Shannon scoffs and then laughs, but it’s bitter, hard, and there’s not a hint, she thinks, of a smile, or any kind of mirth, on his face.