Lauren contemplated taking them to Mendez. But she could see it happen all over again: Ballencoa brought in and questioned, released for lack of evidence, free to do what he wanted, free to stalk someone else’s daughter, empowered by society’s seeming inability to stop him.

Ballencoa’s lawyer would argue that the journals had been obtained illegally. A judge would rule them inadmissible at trial. Ballencoa would get them back and destroy them.

Lauren felt sick at the thought. Should she have left them where Ballencoa had hidden them? Should she have gone to Mendez and told him about the journals? By the time the police had been able to get a search warrant to enter Roland Ballencoa’s home in Santa Barbara, he had long since gotten rid of anything that might have incriminated him.

No, she thought, as Ballencoa got back in his van and pulled out of the parking lot. She couldn’t let that happen again. She needed to make a plan and implement it. She needed to do it now while Leah was safe at the Gracidas’. She now had something Roland Ballencoa would want. A bargaining chip. She would trade it for the truth. What happened after that would be justice . . . one way or another.

Chapter 49

49

Leah felt terrible. She went about her chores on the brink of tears, shaking inside, feeling sick over the terrible things she had said to her mother. The most terrible thing was she had meant all of it.

She was angry. She was so angry. She was angry with her sister for being so headstrong and so stupid and so careless. She was angry with her father for being so selfish and so weak that he would leave them just to end his own pain and not think anything about the pain Leah or her mother had to deal with after he was gone.

She was angry with her mother for holding on so tightly to the misery, and for fighting and fighting and fighting when it would have been so much easier for them both to just forget and go on.

And more than anything, she was angry with herself for having all of those feelings. What kind of terrible person was she that she could resent her sister, who was probably dead, who had probably been tortured and gone through unspeakable things at the hands of Roland Ballencoa? How could she hate the father she had loved so much and missed so badly? She would have given anything to have him back, to feel his strong arms around her as he told her everything would be all right. How could she lose patience with her mother, who had been left to deal with everything with no help from anyone?