Penn blinked at Brooke. “A natural?”

“With kids.”

He shrugged. “When I was a beat cop, I had kids either swarm me or run from me. I had to get the kids that would run to trust me. They knew more information that the kids who looked up to cops.”

“Did you interrogate them?”

“No, none of that would be admissible in court. I just listened and it usually sent me down a track where I could find the bad guys.”

She studied him. He’d had a whole ...