Yarmini angled his body away from the three other occupants of the room and punched his fists against his thighs. He spoke barely above a whisper when he finally answered. ‘I just figured she was already, you know, and so I asked her if it was okay. I mean, I didn’t think it was rape if she agreed to it.’ His arms pressed tighter into his sides even as he continued pummeling his thighs.

Cord’s teeth gnashed together. ‘You didn’t think it was rape if you took advantage of a fourteen-year-old girl who’d already been raped and tortured, and in your own words, was “used goods”? In what universe would that be considered anything but rape?’

One of Yarmini’s hands reached up and pulled at his hair. ‘She said yeah,’ he said weakly.

‘She said yeah? Just like that? You sure about that?’ Alyssa watched Cord’s face flush crimson and the tendons in his neck tighten as he tried to rein in his temper.

Yarmini used the sleeve of his jumpsuit to wipe the sweat beading on his brows. ‘Well, not exactly. She just kind of nodded and rolled over.’ His gaze was still averted from the other occupants of the room.

‘She nodded and rolled over, and you took that as assent?’ Blood pounded in Alyssa’s ears. The man in front of her wasn’t just sick and twisted, but apparently stupid as well. A sharp pain in her palm ricocheted up her arm, and she realized she’d been squeezing her fists so tightly that her fingernails had sliced tiny crescent-shaped figures into her hand. She wiped the light line of blood off on her pants.

‘I don’t know what happened. I got—’ Yarmini shook his head back and forth, not finishing his sentence. ‘And then she suddenly stopped breathing, and she never started again. I panicked and dropped her off downtown. And then I dumped my car.’ His upper body hunched forward, and his arms crawled around his middle.

Alyssa found it difficult – if not impossible – to feel anything but anger and disgust toward him. ‘When we discovered Meghan’s body, she was wearing clothes that didn’t belong to her. Explain that.’

Yarmini’s legs bounced, and he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs as his gaze flew around the room. ‘Tatiana kept all the clothes from her first operation. And before you ask, I don’t know why. I just grabbed something from the box I thought would look sexy and dressed her in that.’

Alyssa was aware that one of the evidence technicians had uncovered a cardboard box containing clothing in one of the rooms when they’d searched the Placitas property but believed the clothes belonged to the girls in the house. Those items had been sent to the lab for testing in hopes they’d uncover a link to one or several of the men involved.

Alyssa’s pulse quickened. ‘What do you mean by “her first operation”?’

Yarmini’s face paled even more, and he dropped his head into his hands. Alyssa suspected it was because he thought they’d already known.