“You were raised by the state. What happened to your parents?”

They died before I was born.

“But…how could your mom have died before you were born?”

She was in a coma. Technically she was dead for the last three weeks of the pregnancy. As soon as her body gave birth to me, they let her go.

And after that?

Foster homes.

How many?

Seventeen all up. Some I stayed in a couple of months. Some just days. I stayed in the last one a year.

Why so long in the last one?

Gregory liked to have me around. I was useful to him.

In what way?

Cooking and cleaning. Sex whenever he wanted it.

So you were in a consensual relationship with the man?

Not really.

Not really?

No. It wasn’t consensual.

He raped you?

Silence.

Sometimes a mind can just not bend around a word. The word rape is like a paralytic to Lacey’s system. She just shuts down. Goes to staring out of the window, blinking slowly.

“Was he the first?” Pippa asks.

Lacey’s blonde hair brushes her shoulders as she shakes her head.

No, Gregory had not been the first.

After that Pippa backs off, sensing she’s walking a fine line, on the brink of the girl withdrawing entirely. She asks other questions: why is she afraid to be alone? Can she share why she is so attached to Zeth? But all Lacey does is shrug and tell her that she doesn’t know why. After a torturous forty-minute session, Pippa nods her head and gets up from the armchair she was sitting in.

“Alright, ladies. I think we should call it a day, don’t you? I’m exhausted.”

Lacey’s eyes flicker back to life, rising to glance at Pippa. “What, that’s it? You don’t want me to tell you anything else?”

Pip gives her a friendly smile. “Not if you don’t want to. You can tell me anything you want to, though.”

“No, that’s—that’s fine.” Lacey loosens her grip on the edge of the throw she still has over her legs. “I think I’d like to go now.”

“No problem.” Pippa holds her hand out to Lacey, offering it to her to shake. Lacey looks at it like the gesture is some kind of trick. The handshake was designed all those hundreds of years ago to demonstrate that a person wasn’t carrying any weapons; the same trick works here between Lacey and Pippa—I mean you no harm. The timid blonde reaches out to accept the patiently waiting hand. A dam seems to break in Lacey, and tears spring to her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, just gets up, tidily folds the blanket away and exits the apartment, standing on the other side of the open door, presumably waiting for me.

“She’s got a long road ahead of her,” Pippa murmurs to me. “She has a lot to work through. I get the impression that she’s blocking most of it out.”

“What? So the rape isn’t the worst of it?”

A sad, pained look develops on Pip’s face. “Probably not. Make sure you keep an eye on her, okay? Ideally she’d be institutionalized and placed on suicide watch at least for a little while.”

I’m already shaking my head, no. “He won’t—”

“I know he won’t,” she interrupts. “But this isn’t about him. It’s about her and what she needs. Right now she’s somehow managed to bond herself to this guy, which is probably the most unhealthy thing she could have done. This time with him away is a good opportunity to try and break that connection.” She gives me a hesitant look. “And also a good opportunity for you to do the same.”

I gape at her. “I’m not bonded to him.”

Her lips pull into a tight line: worry. “Not right now, maybe, but I think it could happen, babe. Way easier than you think it could. Don’t forget,” she says, pausing, “I have met this man.”

I arrive at Julio’s compound at nightfall. Somewhere in the city, Rick’s waiting impatiently for direction from me. Michael, my most trusted guy, is already here too, having been watching the compound for me since he learned of Alexis’s presence. The place is way out in the boonies, skirted with a ten-foot-high concrete wall that encircles the whole place apart from the front entrance, which bears a fierce-looking wrought-iron gate with formidable spikes on the top. No fucker gets in or out of here, if not without Julio’s direct say-so, then at least without him knowing about it. Two beefy guards smoke joints by the gateway, scowling at me with dark eyes as I pull the Camaro up out front. Their hands move to the blatant weapons they carry in their waistbands as I step out of the car.

“Turn around, hombre. This ain’t the ’burbs. You ain’t got no business here,” the short, fat one tells me. I arch an eyebrow.

“Sure I do. I got open an ticket with Julio.” The other man spits on the floor, and then draws deeply on his joint. The smell of pot blossoms in the night air. “We ain’t got no white boys on the guest list tonight, brother. You need to go on home.”

I walk straight up to the railings of the gate and press my face close to the bars. “Better check your list again, brother.”

The two of them look at each other. I’m not driving a Benz, so I’m obviously not their regular clientele. The size of me doesn’t seem to be doing me any favors, either. A tense minute follows—them staring at me and me staring right back at them—before the tall one tuts disapprovingly and turns his back, mumbling in Spanish into a small walkie-talkie. He quickly turns back around and gestures upward with his chin. “Smile for the camera, pendejo.”