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it again in my mind. Drab walls butted up against each other, with a flat ceiling stacked on top. There was no camera in that room. No mirrored window with an observation room on the other side. No evidence that Hennessey had ever threatened Fuentes, except for my word. And if Hennessey had left me in that room for five, ten, fifteen minutes, if he’d gotten the guard outside to agree, there would’ve been no evidence of that either.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    The next morning, I woke up before my alarm went off. The sky outside was stained pink, like someone had washed something red with the pale sheet of sky.
    I wore my silk blouse with the pale yellow chevron patterns that I’d found at a vintage shop on a rare trip to Austin. Over that I wore a black jacket far too rigid to really be comfortable. I didn’t like it, but it was basically a requirement to be taken seriously. I was already a rookie, and my short height and china doll features didn’t do me any favors.
    So I put on the sleek Italian wool, but underneath it all, I wore satin and lace and remembered the feel of a warm, solid chest beneath my cheek. I wished I could take back that moment, so he would see me as an equal instead of a scared little girl.
    No, scratch that. I wanted him to remember that moment like I would, one second of the connection I’d always been searching for. I hoped my tears had stained his shirt, turning it a grim impossible pink so he would remember I was a woman too. I’d always been ancient, really—even when I was a kid.
    I drove to work wondering how just one day could make things seem a little sharper, a little weightier. Was it Hennessey who made it different? Or was it the act of facing evil for the first time in over a decade?
    Both, maybe.
    Life or death situations could bind you to a stranger, the way I mourned every day for the children my father killed. For the children I’d let him kill before I turned him in. We were in the same position, those kids and me. At the mercy of a psychopath. But they had died, and I had lived.
    Survivor’s guilt , the textbook would say. It wasn’t me who had caused that pain; it was misfortune, coincidence, the melody of a madman. I was a victim too, they said. I was the one who had suffered, not the one who caused suffering. Except I hadn’t ever suffered, not really. No one had ever hit me or continued to touch me when I said no.
    Creepy men in white vans took one look at the jaded knowledge in my eyes and kept on driving. They knew there was no innocence left to corrupt—just a hollowed out space where my soul should have been.
    I didn’t want those men to hurt me because I liked pain. I wanted them to hurt me because I knew I deserved it all along. I’d escaped it through a twist of fate. I’d let the hurt fall to other more hopeful children. And for that, I would always deserve to be punished.
    Hennessey was leaning against his car when I pulled up. Morning light glinted off his smooth jaw. He seemed somehow younger than before. He looked bright and put together, as if yesterday’s stress and upheaval had meant nothing to him. Threatening a child molester with death was like fetching coffee for him. Implying he might let his rookie partner get raped was like filing a paper. Part of the job, easy peasy.
    He nodded toward the passenger side. “Get in, rookie.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “To catch a bad guy. Where else?”
    His voice was light, and I took that airiness into myself. I made it mine. Let this be a joke. At least then I could be in on it. A coping mechanism, the textbook would say. Life was one big coping mechanism, one more beat passing without desperation, another moment without fear. I wasn’t afraid of a joke.
    We didn’t go back to the prison. Instead, we went to the permitting center and rode a creaky elevator to the fifth floor. A large dusty room contained architectural plans and permits for the entire city, in no sort of order that made sense to me. There