Leigh Ann adopted a puzzled expression, and she laughed a little, as if she was aware a mistake had been made, and she was uncomfortable pointing it out. ‘I’m sorry. No. Why would you call me Anna?’

‘I’m sorry. Maybe that’s just what Tatiana Salazar calls you.’

In a matter of seconds, Leigh Ann’s face contorted from an expression of innocence to a cold sneer. Even the shadows in her eyes darkened, as if she’d pulled a shade down. ‘I’m sure you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Mindful of the growing interest of the staff and various onlookers, Alyssa shifted just slightly in order to place herself between Leigh Ann and as many innocent bystanders as she could. ‘Oh, I know full well what I’m talking about. You target and incapacitate girls for Tatiana Salazar’s sex trafficking ring, isn’t that right?’

Leigh Ann’s eyes flickered to the side, telegraphing her intent to flee.

And then Nick Otis, still standing outside his sister’s room, took one small step forward. ‘Anna? Is everything okay?’

Leigh Ann’s head snapped around, and Cord took advantage of her distraction by closing in and jerking her arm behind her back before shoving her against the wall.

Above the howls of Leigh Ann’s rage, Cord read her the Miranda Rights, and Alyssa spared a quick look in Nick’s direction. A rage she fully understood brewed in his eyes, and she knew then that he’d correctly interpreted the situation and purposely distracted the person responsible for kidnapping his sister.

His fingers clenched into fists as Cord pushed Leigh Ann toward the exit, and when she was directly in front of him, Nick stepped back inside Rachel’s room without uttering a word and closed the door in Leigh Ann’s face.

Alyssa wasn’t sure whether, in his shoes, at his age, she’d have been quite as in control.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Monday, May 27

Cord leaned his back against the door of the interrogation room while Alyssa pulled out a chair and sat across from Leigh Ann. She flipped open a manila folder and began to read from it.

My daughter has been troubled most of her life. We’d hoped a fresh start in Albuquerque would be what she needed, and for a while, I thought it was working.

She lifted her head to gauge Leigh Ann’s reaction, but the girl’s face remained impassive. Alyssa lowered her head and continued reading from the interview Hal had conducted while she and the rest of her team had raced to the hospital. As soon as Leigh Ann’s mother received the call about what her daughter was suspected of, she had readily come in, bringing with her folders of past psychiatric evaluations for the detectives’ use.

After some troubling incidents in school when she was twelve, and then again in our neighborhood when she was thirteen, my now ex-husband and I forced our daughter into counseling where she was soon diagnosed with a narcissistic sociopathic personality – a social predator who plays with people’s feelings and emotions. My daughter is the perfect chameleon; she can fit in anywhere and make anyone like her. She can and does become whoever she needs to be to gain whatever it is that she wants. Picture if you will, a cat with a mouse before it finally destroys it. Do you have any idea what that’s like for a mother to hear? It’s not easy.