“I never saw or heard from a single one of them again.”

“They let you take the fall? Without any support or communication or anything?”

He shrugged, but she could sense the betrayal. When he’d been facing a trial and jail time at the age of twenty-six, they’d abandoned him.

“I’d like to—to go find Kyle,” she said, “and spend some time shouting in his face.”

He gave her a bona fide grin. Crooked and weathered and glorious.

Her chest flooded with adoration. The shell-shocked boy had been to hell and back and emerged a man.

“I thought you were a pacifist,” he said.

“I have my limits!” She captured her wind-tossed hair, twisting it into a coil as she drew it forward over one shoulder. “Did you use a public defender?”

“No. I made a lot of money during my years at the shop. I had a good attorney. It’s just that every jury member could see that I was guilty. Which I was.”

“Did you spend all your savings on your attorney?”

“No. I spent some of it on my legal fees and invested the rest.”

“Oh. So . . . that money continued to appreciate while you served your sentence?”

“I have plenty,” he said evasively.

“Define plenty.”

“No.”

“You’re saying that your ill-gotten gains have grown in value?” she asked, trying not to let the horror show on her face.

“That’s usually how investments work.”

“You shouldn’t keep ill-gotten gains!”

“Watch me.”

Green and red gems sparkled as she captured them in her pan. “How did prison change you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’d really like to know,” she added.

“How did it change me for the better or for the worse?”

“Start with for the worse.”

The sound of distant thunder rolled over them. Dark gray clouds smudged one corner of the sky.

“I distrust pretty much everyone I meet,” he said after a time. “I hold myself . . . apart, because it’s easier to hide my emotions that way.”

“Is it necessary to hide your emotions?”

“It was in prison.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t have much tolerance for fake people or manipulators. I’m more paranoid about my surroundings than other people. And it’s hard for me to stop remembering some of the stuff I saw and experienced.”

She wanted so badly to fix his past for him, to reassure him the way she reassured abandoned puppies that everything was going to be okay. But she couldn’t. Finley set her pan aside, dried her hands on her jacket, then stuffed them into her pockets. “And how did it change you for the better?”