Forty minutes before my arraignment, a brown-haired man in his early forties entered the courthouse interview room and slapped a briefcase on the table between us. “Manning Sutter?”

“That’s me.”

I stood to shake his hand, but he stopped me. “No time for formalities. I’m Dexter Grimes, your public defender.” He pulled out a handful of manila file folders, put on his glasses, and rifled through them. “Richards, Rosenblatt, Stephenson,” he muttered, reading them off. “Here we are—Sutter.” He opened my file and frowned. “No, this is wrong.” Fanning them out on the table, he picked one labeled Sweeney and swapped the contents of our files. “There we go. Sweeney was in Sutter, and Sutter was in Sweeney. It happens.”

I’d had my personal effects taken, been fingerprinted, photographed and stood in a line-up, then held in a cell—all within seventy-two hours. All as an innocent man. I’d been told I’d meet my lawyer before my arraignment. This was the one I’d been assigned. Upon closer inspection, I decided he was mid-thirties with deep lines around his eyes. He looked as if he’d been through the grinder. There was a mayonnaise stain on his lapel, or at least I hoped that’s what it was.

I stared at him until he cleared his throat. “We’re a little overloaded,” he said.

“No shit.”

“But don’t worry.” His glasses slid down his nose. “I’ve done this a thousand times.”

In my experience, having done something a lot didn’t necessarily mean you were good at it. But he was all I had, and at least when he talked to me, he looked me in the eye. I placed my forearms on the table. “I’m innocent.”

“Of course.” He sat back in his seat, looking over my slim paperwork. “Do you know how arraignments work?”

“Not really.”

“It’s going to be fast. The judge’ll read the charges, you’ll plead ‘not guilty,’ and they’ll set bail. You have anyone to post your bail?”

I had nobody, period. Even if my mom had the money, I’d rather sit in jail than crawl back to her. My aunt and Henry, the officer who’d looked out for me as a teen, had done enough for me in one lifetime. “No.”

“We can go to a bondsman. Depending on the amount, they’ll front you the money and take a percentage.”

The money I’d saved over the years was a small sum by most standards, but it was all I had. I’d worked hard for it. “I’m not paying anyone anything for a crime I didn’t commit.”

“Okay.” He made a couple notes. “So Friday night, you were pulled over.”

“No. My truck stalled, so I pulled it over. The cop stopped to check on me.”

“Says here he suspected you were drinking.”

“No. I walked in a straight line for him and then we had a nice, friendly chat.”

Grimes looked up. “Did he administer a Breathalyzer test on you?”

“I wasn’t drinking.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Then that’s irrelevant. It’s your word against his.”

The officer and I had hit it off; there was no reason for him not to believe me. I opened my mouth to explain.

Grimes checked his watch. “Your charge is attempted robbery. A felony.”

“It doesn’t much matter what it is, because I didn’t do it.”

“It does matter.”

“I didn’t go in anyone’s house. I don’t even know which house it was. Look, all you need to do is tell whoever needs to know that there’s some kind of mix-up so I can go home. I work under contract. Every hour I’m in here is lost wages.”

“I understand, Mr. Sutter. I’m moving as quickly as possible.” He darted his eyes over the page in front of him. “This officer says he saw you just before one.”

“I guess.”

“Witnesses have you leaving Phil’s around ten-thirty. Neighbors spot you driving in the dark around eleven. What happened between eleven and one?”

“I went for a drive. Then when I got close to camp, my car stalled.”

“So for almost two hours, you sat on the side of the road, waiting for a jump?”

“Yeah, so fucking what? I drove around a while before that.”

Grimes closed the file with a sigh. “Look, Mr.—”

“Manning,” I said. “I’m not mister anything.”

“Manning, I’m on your side. Anything you tell me is confidential. I can’t win this if you don’t work with me.”

I ran my hands over my face and looked up at the ceiling. “There’s nothing to win. I didn’t do it.”

“I’ve got news for you, Manning, and you aren’t going to like it. Your case doesn’t look great. The residents of that ritzy suburb want someone to go down for this, so the prosecutor will try to wrap this up as soon as possible. You’re the strongest suspect, and far as I can tell, you move from job to job and don’t come from the best background.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“You’re suspicious. I’m sorry.” He took off his glasses and set them on the paperwork. “If you don’t tell me where you were, if nobody can vouch for you, then the police are going to think you’re hiding something. They want guys like you to be guilty so they can close it and move on. Give me something to work with. Otherwise, guilty or not, there’s a chance you’ll go away for this.”

I lowered my chin, meeting his eye. Under the table, my knee bounced up and down. I wasn’t naïve, not even when it came to the criminal justice system. It’d done right by me in the past, but I came from a line of bad men. Maybe based on that alone, I should be put away. Before I really did hurt someone the way my dad had. For fuck’s sake, I’d almost taken advantage of Lake that night. Maybe I deserved this, but either way, being charged with a crime I didn’t commit seemed like a cruel joke.

I’d already given Grimes my story, though. At least what I was willing to share. I opened my hands on the table. “I got nothing, man.”

Grimes nodded slowly, studying me. After a few seconds, he peeked in the file and back at me. “Who’s Lake Kaplan?”

Time as I knew it came to a screeching halt. The air in the room evaporated, fluorescent overhead lights became blinding. Lake was off-limits. Period. How the fuck had he even gotten her name? My hands twitched with the urge to grab Dexter by his mayo-stained lapels.

“I take it by your silence you recognize the name,” he said.

“Where’d you hear it?”

“She left a message with my office a few hours ago.” He opened and closed the arms of his glasses. If he was preparing to gloat, he didn’t seem happy about it. “I called back, but nobody answered. The machine belongs to a family.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Goddamn stubborn Lake. I knew she’d try to help, but I’d hoped the threat of making things worse would be enough to stop her. The thought that Mr. Kaplan could’ve picked up the phone made me sweat. I wiped my palms on my scrubs. “Please don’t tell me you left a message.”

“Lake mentioned it was sensitive, so I didn’t. She sounded young, Manning. So now I have to ask why a young girl has information I need.”

I looked at the table. “She’s nobody. My girlfriend’s little sister.”

“How little?”

“Sixteen.”

“I see.” He proceeded slowly, as if deliberating over his words. “What’s her involvement?”

For what felt like the hundredth time in three days, Lake’s face came to mind, her big, blue, gullible eyes, the way her chin ended in a point, like a heart. She’d looked terrified when I’d last seen her. Then hurt when I’d dismissed her to get Tiffany. Making her feel like a kid was the only way I could get her to leave.

Somehow, I’d dragged a girl, who was younger than Maddy would’ve been if she were alive, into my mess. I laced my hands together. “Nothing else to tell.”

“Whatever you say stays between us, Manning. If . . . something happened with her—”

“Nothing happened.”

“But if I know what occurred in those two hours, I can start building your defense. I need the truth.”

“I told you. Nothing . . . fucking . . . happened.”

“All right, then.” He scooted his chair closer to the table. “We have to discuss your options before they call us up. The way things are headed, I think we’d better talk about the plea bargain the prosecutor is offering.”

I lifted my head, drawing my eyebrows together. “Isn’t that if you’re guilty?”

“If you’re likely to be convicted, then it’s best to take a deal to soften the blow. Less time, for one.”

“But I’m innocent.”

“This is no longer about innocent versus guilty. It’s a game, and you need to play.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “The law’s the law. I didn’t break it.”

“We can argue mistaken identity,” he continued, “but since the victim ID’ed you in the line-up, and she claims she turned the lights on, I can’t promise it’ll turn out how we want.”

“She picked me out?” I sat forward. “The other guys weren’t as tall as me. Maybe she’s remembering it wrong.”

“Maybe. I’ll need more time to look over all this.” He scratched his jaw. “Luckily, you have no priors. The max for attempted robbery in the state of California is four-and-a-half years.”

I laughed from my gut, harder than I had in a long time. “This is a huge misunderstanding.”

“The D.A. is offering to reduce the charge to first-degree burglary with a low-term sentence of two years. With good behavior, you’d be out in less.”

Whatever he was talking about went in one ear and out the other. I crossed my arms. “I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.”

“Then we go to trial, but we risk ending up with a longer, more severe punishment. I’d definitely need to know the details of what happened that night—all of them. And I won’t be the only one snooping for information.” He tapped the top of the file. “I believe you didn’t break into that house. I don’t believe your story.”

This conversation hadn’t gone anything like I’d expected. I thought I’d explain to my lawyer that this was a case of wrong place, wrong time, and be home by tonight. Now, we were talking jail time. I was in deep shit. I squeezed my hands together until my knuckles were a sickening, bloodless white. “If I tell you what happened, it stays in here? You won’t try to make me say it in court? Because I’ll lie if I have to.”

Grimes held up his palms. “You have my word.”

The room suddenly seemed half its size. I inhaled. I didn’t want to see the look in Dexter’s eyes when I told him, but I held his stare. I deserved to face my mistakes, and maybe that wasn’t all I deserved. Fact was, I had done something bad. And bad people got locked up all the time for one thing or another. “Like I said, Lake is Tiffany’s younger sister. Tiffany’s my girlfriend, for lack of a better term. Lake, though . . .” I couldn’t put into words what she was. As if I even knew. “She’s my friend.”

“Be straight with me, Manning. She’s sixteen.”

I flattened my hands on the table. I’d have agreed to almost anything for a cigarette at that moment. I’d never felt more deserving of one. “I had a younger sister.”

“Had?” Dexter sat back. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded once. “Having Lake around reminds me of how it used to be. With Maddy. You don’t just stop being an older brother.”

Dexter gave me a moment. “If that’s true, and it’s nothing more, then we might be able to use that to our advantage, show your character.”

“It was true . . .” I said slowly. “At first, Lake was uncomplicated. Genuine. Trusting. She brought back small things about Madison I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten.” I had the urge to look anywhere but at Dexter. To bash my head against the table and wake myself up from this nightmare. I’d made these decisions, though. I couldn’t just pretend I hadn’t. “It’s not that anymore. The more I get to know her, it’s something else. She’s not like the rest of us. She’s good.”

“Are you saying something happened?”

“I’m saying what I feel for her comes from an innocent place. I would never hurt her. If anything, I wanted . . . I want to protect her. To keep her pure.”

“But you had sex with her,” he concluded.

“No. God, no.” I ran both hands over my face. “We went for a drive. We don’t get much time alone, and somehow we’d ended up with this one night. We were only in that neighborhood with the lights out to see the stars. Never even stopped the car. On the way back, we almost hit a coyote so I pulled over. She got out and jumped in the lake. She wanted me to chase her. To give in. She wanted me, and fuck, I wanted her back, but it’s no excuse. In the truck, we got a little too close. I almost went where I shouldn’t. But I swear, that was all, and I ended it right before the cop spotted us. Lake hid in the back while I talked to him.”

“She hid. Fuck.” Dexter took it all in. “He didn’t see her?”

“No.”

“Drinking?”

“Not a drop, either of us.”

“No sex at all? Were you inside her at any point?”

“No, fuck no. We didn’t even kiss.” To hear it put so clinically, my stomach churned. “I know I lost control, but I’d never take advantage of her.”

“Does anyone else know? The sister?”

“Not unless Lake told her, but she promised me she wouldn’t. I’m sure that’s why she called. She’s probably scared.”

He chewed on his bottom lip. The room got so quiet, I heard his watch ticking.

What I did with Lake, it could’ve been worse, but what people thought held more weight than the truth. Even if we swore she’d ridden in the bed of the truck the entire time, people would think the worst. Blame me for taking advantage of a young girl. And some might blame her, too. They’d look at her differently. Her dad would see her differently. That changed a person, and I didn’t want her to change, didn’t want her to feel the stares, to think she’d done anything wrong, or that she’d disappointed her family.

Lake was untouchable. I’d make sure it stayed that way. “I won’t bring her into this,” I said. “Even if it saves me.”

He looked up. “You can’t go away for driving around with a minor. If you were with her and she corroborates that, then you couldn’t have been at the house. Basically, she’s your alibi.”

If she were called to the stand to tell the court what’d really happened that night, she’d be traumatized. But I’d be fucked. I hadn’t forgotten what Mr. Kaplan had said at dinner about his “friends in the legal system.” If the burglary charges were dropped, no doubt he’d bring his own against me. He’d find a way. Maybe even statutory rape, and I’d serve a decade before I put Lake through that. I opened my mouth to tell Grimes as far as the courts were concerned, I had no alibi.

“But,” he said, frowning, “since the cop didn’t see Lake, he’d either assume you were lying or that she’d hidden. So even if the jury believed her story, they’d draw their own conclusions as to why she’d hide from a cop.”

“You’re agreeing with me?” I asked. “We can keep her out of this?”

“I think that’s best,” he said hesitantly. “I’m concerned her testimony could actually hurt us.” Dexter picked up my file, straightening it on the table. “We’ll have to find another way.”