Page 80 of Fighting For You

"He's okay, Nora. He's not hurt. Because he's a minor, they separated him from the adults. He's in juvenile holding. I called you as soon as I saw his name."

"How long has he been here?"

"A couple of hours. They're still processing the adults. Ian's been cooperative. He hasn't said much, but he hasn't given anyone trouble."

I pressed my back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. The fluorescent light above me buzzed and flickered at one end.

Rudy's. The shop where he said he was learning a trade. The job he was so proud of. The money for the new shoes, the button-down shirt, the dinner at Aurelio's. All of it from stolen cars.

The cut on the back of his hand. Two inches, jagged, scabbed over. Caught it on a fender at the shop. I'd sat across from him at Aurelio's and looked at it and told myself my brother wouldn't lie to me.

"Can I see him?"

Andy nodded. She led me down another hallway to a door with a small window. She stopped with her hand on the handle.

"Nora." She looked at me. "Go easy on him."

She opened the door.

Ian was sitting at a table in a small room with cinder block walls and no windows. His hands were folded in front of him. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the last time I saw him. The same new shoes. He looked up when I walked in, and for a second his face opened, relieved, grateful, like a kid who'd been waiting for someone to come get him.

Then he saw my face, and the relief drained out of his.

Andy closed the door behind me. I heard her footsteps move down the hallway.

I sat across from him. I looked at my brother. My seventeen-year-old brother, sitting in a room at a police precinct because he'd been arrested in a raid on a chop shop. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to scream at him. I sat there and did neither.

"How could you do this?"

He didn't answer.

"How could you let yourself get involved with people who steal cars for a living? People who strip stolen vehicles and change VINs and sell parts they don't own? How could you let them pull you into this, Ian?"

"They didn't pull me into anything. I chose to be there."

"You chose to commit felonies?"

"I chose to work."

"That's not work. That's a crime. You could go to prison for this. Do you understand that? VIN tampering is a felony in Nevada. You're seventeen years old and you have a felony arrest on your record."

His jaw tightened. "I know what I did."

"Did you lie to me about the fire?"

He went still.

"I asked you. Before you started at Rudy's, I looked you in the face and asked if you knew anything about the kids who burned our house down. You said no."

He didn't answer. That was its own answer.

"How long did you know?"

"I didn't know when you asked me." His voice was quieter now. "I found out later. After I started working there."

"And you didn't tell me."

He looked at the table.