“Well?” Mac asked. “What do you think?”
Boyd dragged his eyes away from Morgan and turned back to the cops uncomfortably. They both looked at him with expectant, neutral faces, one of Mac’s eyebrows raised. Apparently they were focused on the actual important things, like who Morgan really was, and hadn’t noticed Boyd’s mind slide into the gutter.
“I….” His voice caught in his throat, and he paused to clear it. “I don’t know. I see it, and then I don’t. Half the time I’m trying to convince myself that he could be Sammy, and half the time I’m sure he’s not, and I’m looking for evidence of that. It works either way.”
Mac clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“Go call Shay,” he said. “I need to talk to Bennett about how we can all get some clarity here.”
Boyd hesitated. He was ready to argue, but Mac’s cool stare and the pressure on his shoulder reminded him he didn’t have any actual right to be in this conversation. Childhood best friend was good enough as family for the press, but he didn’t have any official standing. Boyd backed down before Mac had to remind Bennett of that.
“I’ll try again,” he said. “If anything comes up, let me know.”
“Of course.”
Bennett stuck out her hand. Her palm was chilled from the water bottle when Boyd grasped it. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “We appreciate it. Hopefully we’ll have some answers for you and the family soon.”
That would be a change. It wasn’t her fault, though. It wasn’t anyone’s, except whoever stole a kid.
Boyd nodded and headed off in search of somewhere quiet to make a call. Or seven. One of the court security guards helpfully directed him down a quiet corridor. Two social workers—after a while, you learned the look—and a lawyer were already tucked in down there, propped up against doorframes or seated on benches with case files on their knees.
A bench next to a half-dead palm provided enough privacy for Boyd’s call. He leaned back against the wall and sat through Shay’s voicemail message five more times until the chipper singsong blandness of the instruction to leave a message made him clench his jaw.
“Call me back before lunch,” he snapped at last. “Or I’ll assume you’re dead, and I’ll send Harry and Danni around to kick your door in. Asshole.”
One of the social workers frowned at him. Boyd grimaced an apology and tilted his head back against the smooth plastered wall as he took a deep breath. Part of him wanted to blurt out the facts and dump the whole situation on Shay’s plate for him to deal with. But he doubted Shay would listen all the way to the end of that message… or if he did, it would be from the bottom of a bottle.
“I need to talk to you,” he said instead. “This time it was something…. Itisn’tsomething where I can fill in for you. Call me. I meant what I said about Harry.”
He hung up and leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees and hands wrapped loosely around his phone. The inside of his skull felt as though someone had crumpled up a ball of static and left it to rattle around in there.
Fifteen years, and he’d never really imagined Sammy grown up. After a couple of years, even as a kid, he understood that his friend was dead. That conviction took up a small, raw place in his brain. He didn’t know how to fit this new idea in there.
A finger poked his shoulder. He looked up at the lawyer, her papers tucked away in her briefcase, who pointed up to the clock on the wall.
“If you’re here for the bail hearing, it’s about to start,” she said. “Judge Gallen today.”
“Is that good or bad?” Boyd asked as he stood up.
The lawyer smiled thinly as she tucked her phone into a slim pocket on her skirt. “Could be worse. Could be better.” She shrugged. “It is what it is.”
THE HEARINGShad already started. Boyd slid into the room behind the lawyer and ducked his chin in quick apology as the clerk glared at him. He slid into an empty seat and slouched down as though that would placate the irritated man.
At the front of the room, a lawyer in a pale-blue suit rhymed off the reasons his client should be bailed on his own recognizance. “In addition to his family and friends, Mr.—” He paused to look at the paperwork on the table. “Blanchard has a new job. He has every reason to stay in the area and to clear his name against these charges.”
He fell silent. The only noise was the scritch of the judge’s pen as she made notes and the rustle and quiet stomach noises from the gallery. After a moment, Gallen, her gray-brown hair cut in a neat pixie cut around her ears, looked up with a flinty expression on her face.
“I assume his other family in… Nevada would have thought the same,” she said dryly. “Nice try, Mario.”
Mr. Blanchard did not get bail. Even he didn’t seem surprised.
Next up was Boyd’s prompt lawyer friend, with a wet-eyed woman at his elbow who breast-fed a baby as she listened to his plea for her. Boyd felt a wash of sympathy for her, but it faded as the charges against her were laid out. She’d driven drunk, killed two women, and injured a baby. Not the one at her breast.
She got bail, but nudged higher than expected, to judge by the lawyer’s protest.
Next up was a drug dealer. Then a shoplifter. Finally Morgan stood up. Even from the back, he looked—Sexy,a small voice muttered in the back of Boyd’s head—defiant. There was a mute “fuck you” in the way he stood, the way he tilted his chin. The woman who stepped up next to him cleared her throat.
“Your Honor,” she said. “I believe you’ve already been informed that there are some special circumstances around this case?”
