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She stood, threw down the pen, and paced between the door and the wall of windows. “You just sat back and let her dictate the moves. She told us all about Lucas and Johnson, but she didn’t reveal anything about why she’s here. It’s not because there have been five murders. She’s been following the clan. She knows something she’s not sharing. I don’t trust her.”

“Then trust me, Alex. There are things that cannot be explained, only experienced. This is one of those things.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Alex spread her hands. “I solve crimes and arrest bad guys. What do I do with this?” She didn’t raise her voice, but her words were hard, rapid, like bullets. “If all this is real, if you and I become targets for these vermin, how do I protect Dan and the girls?”

Bowing her head, she gripped the back of a chair.

Alexandra Socorro was a good officer, clear-thinking, decisive, tough but fair. She was also a wife and a mother. Kimble didn’t understand those feelings—the need to belong to someone, to care to the point of laying down one’s life. He still struggled with being human and alive, no longer wandering in the half-light between death and life.

Alex raised her head and looked at him in blank awareness. “I gave her my blessing to be a vigilante. She and that boy are going to kill people, Gus, and we are just going to let it happen.”

“Yes, Alex, we are.” He leaned one hip on the table and crossed his arms. “But they won’t do it unless they have no choice.”

“And that excuses it?”

“’There are more things in heaven and earth—”

“Don’t quote Hamlet at me. What do you know about Brygid Trahern? Other than her scar?” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Ex-lover?”

“I knew her when she was a kid.”

“You give her that scar?”

“That came later.”

Alex smiled a little. “You know I’m going to keep after you until I have the story.”

Kimble reached over and shuffled the papers and photos back into their folders then picked up his jacket. “C’mon. Past time for lunch.”