“So tell me who her date was with last Saturday night. So we can stop this guy before he does it again. Is that what you want? For him to hurt some other young girl? Do you really want that on your conscience?”

Kasey sighed and closed her eyes and slumped on the couch like a blow-up doll with all the air let out. More tears ran down her cheeks. “It wasn’t a date,” she finally mumbled.

“What?”

“I said it wasn’t a date. Are you happy now?”

Pryce’s cell phone buzzed in his pants pocket. He ignored it. “If it wasn’t a date, what was it?”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Amy called it a business arrangement.”

“What kind of business arrangement?”

She glared at him. “Do I really have to spell it out to you?”

“Please do.”

Medina’s cell phone began to chirp. He stepped out into the hallway. Pryce could hear a muffled conversation taking place.

“Amy lost one of her main scholarships, okay?” Kasey threw her arm out, gesturing around the room they were sitting in. “This place might not exactly be the Four Seasons, but it isn’t cheap either—and neither is tuition. She knew her folks didn’t have the money, and she didn’t want to go back to Ohio and give up on her career. She was desperate.”

“She was having sex with men for money?”

“Look, she wasn’t hanging around street corners. She didn’t have a pimp. She wasn’t on drugs. It was once or twice a month at most and with a handful of regular guys.”

“And last Saturday?”

“She called him Frank. She’d met him maybe a half dozen times before. That’s all I know. You have to believe me. I told her I didn’t want to know anything about those men or what she did with them.”

“Was this Frank guy the father of her baby?”

Kasey’s mouth dropped open. “Baby? What baby?”

“Amy was pregnant. Three months.”

“You’re lying.” She appeared genuinely shocked. “No way was Amy pregnant. I would have known.”

“I’m not lying, and there’s no mistake, Kasey. Amy was definitely pregnant, although it’s possible she didn’t even know herself.”

Kasey nodded. Then her face changed as realization dawned on her. “No, she knew,” she whispered, shaking her head. “She’d stopped drinking alcohol weeks ago. Said she’d put on a few pounds, wanted to lose some weight.”

“Why didn’t she tell you?” Pryce asked gently.

“Because she knew I’d convince her to have an abortion. Don’t you see? She gave up the booze—that means she wanted to keep it.”

Pryce nodded. “These men she was seeing—how did they find her?”

“Online. I don’t know which sites.”

“We have her laptop. Hopefully we’ll find something in her browsing history.”