“Just play the little games…get tied up and scream a lot…you know, act like I was scared.” She made a face, stuck out her tongue. “Stupid, but it beat the hell out of turning tricks. I think I could have made the break—Darrell wouldn’t have hunted me down—but I decided to stay. It was better than home.”

“Your home life was that bad?”

Her face turned hard. “My parents are assholes. My mom’s this perfect soccer mom who won’t stand up to my dad, who’s a super asshole. My sister’s the princess. I’m the dumb one in the family. Me, I could never do anything right. It was all about how stupid I was, how ugly I was, how I wouldn’t ever be anything because I was stupid and ugly….” There were tears in her eyes. “He never trusted me. He always went through my drawers. At first, he didn’t find anything, because I didn’t do anything. Later on, he found my stash. He locked me up in a place for users. God, I was only smoking pot, and he acted like I was this strung-out H addict. So he sent me away to the school for fuckups. I ran away. After that, he said he was sending me to reform school or juvenile hall or something even more shitty than the fuckup school. I told him over my dead body. And then I slugged him. Then he slugged me back. I fell and hit my head. The asshole almost put me in the hospital.”

“Why didn’t you report him?”

Tears fell from her eyes. “He has connections. The easiest thing to do was to take off. My mother was really mad that my father hit me. Of course, she wasn’t mad enough to throw him out. Instead, she suggested we all go away for a little time out. So we went to Woodstock. That’s where I met Brock.”

“The biker.”

She nodded, then slumped back down in the pillows.

Decker tried to be objective, but it was hard. All these wounded lives.

She went on. “Darrell was a perv, but at least he didn’t hurt me. And he gave me junk. He could afford it. He was always flush.”

“The Baldwins paid him well?”

She shrugged.

“What did he tell you about them?”

“Not much. I didn’t ask questions about things that weren’t my business.”

“What was your business?”