Page 60 of Dirty Looks

“That’s not necessarily true,” I said. “We’ve got a little extra help in the computer department. And it took him a while to dig out the information. You’re safe. Let’s sit down and talk, okay?”

She nodded and then took the chair facing the door, so she could see if anyone passed by or entered. She had strong preservation instincts. Which made me ask the question again and again why she’d need them.

Jack was letting me take the lead since she seemed to respond better to my voice. “Emily,” I said again. “Some things have happened at home that you need to know about. It has to do with your sister.”

I was pretty sure that a murder in King George County wouldn’t have shown up on the local news in Maryland. Why would it have?

“My sister?” she asked. “Which one?”

“Evie,” I told her.

Color leached from her cheeks and she reached out and grabbed my wrist in a vice. “What happened to her? Did they get her? Tell me!”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that she was murdered Monday night,” I said softly.

“Murdered?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

Jack got up quietly and went to the fridge, finding a bottle of water, and he set it in front of her.

“Why did you ask if they got her?” I countered. “Emily, Jack and I are working hard trying to find out who did this to her. We know there are a lot of people involved. Maybe people you know or people you were supposed to be able to trust.”

Her eyes were big and round and her pupils were like pinpricks. “They hurt her?” she asked. “Did they hurt her like they hurt me?”

I turned my hand over so I grasped hers. “Yes, they did. But they went too far this time. They killed her.”

“Because Evie wasn’t like me,” she said softly. “She wouldn’t have just cowered and prayed for it to stop. She would have fought.”

“You were just a child,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. And there’s nothing you could have done. Adults are supposed to protect you. They’re not supposed to hurt you.”

A big fat tear rolled down her cheek. “My mom and dad always protected us,” she said. “But they didn’t know. Didn’t understand. I couldn’t tell them. It would have brought shame to the family.”

“Emily, listen to me,” I said, my voice more firm. “I’ve met your mom and dad. I’ve seen your house. And they don’t strike me as the kind of people who give two flips about bringing shame to the family. They seem like the kind of people who do what’s best for them and their children, even if it isn’t popular with everyone else.”

She nodded slowly and looked at me, and the heartbreak in her eyes was almost my undoing. “I just didn’t know how to tell them. I was Evie’s age the first time. That’s when I was old enough. Oh, God. Evie. She would be that age now. And the other girls right behind her.”

“They’re going to be safe,” I promised her. “No one is going to hurt your family again. There’s something else I need to tell you. About your grandmother.”

“She knew,” Emma said, her eyes going distant. “She knew the first time it happened. I could see it in her eyes. The other girls were still too small, but not me. I was old enough to start learning things. And I learned because the alternative was terrifying. I was told if I wasn’t good enough and didn’t please well enough that he’d just pick another sister.” Her voice hitched. “They were so small. Just babies. I couldn’t let him do that.”

“No, I can see that,” I said. “What did your grandmother do?”

“She drank,” Emma said. “I think it was all she could do. And I started drinking too. I found some cocaine in Uncle Phin’s jacket pocket. I took it when he wasn’t looking and tried that too. And I found if I drank a little or snorted a little it wasn’t so hard to go through the motions of acting like I was enjoying myself.

“And then when I was fourteen he sold me for the first time,” she said. “Just to some friends, he told me. And that I was supposed to do all the things I’d been practicing, and that if I was good I’d get special gifts. New clothes. A car when I turned sixteen. And all the time I kept drinking and doing drugs, and my mom would look at me with the saddest look on her face because I know she didn’t understand and didn’t know how to help me. Sometimes I could hear her crying at night.”

“No one else knew what was happening to you?” I asked.

She wiped her face with her hands. “Sometimes it seemed like no one knew. And sometimes it seemed like everyone knew.And then when I graduated from high school Mimi gave me a card and she told me to open it when I was alone and to not tell anyone. By that point I was pretty good at keeping secrets, so I waited a couple of days and then opened the envelope.

“Inside of it was a safety deposit key and some paperwork, along with exact instructions on where to go and how to retrieve it. I pretty much came and went as I pleased at that point, so no one even noticed when I took the train to New York and spent a couple of days there.”

“What was in the safety deposit box?” I asked.

“The deed and keys to this house,” she said. “A driver’s license and passport. Social security card, high school and college diploma. And cash. About twenty-five thousand dollars. Also the passcodes and login for an account she’d set up for me.”

“She helped you escape,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “She came up and met me in New York, and that was the last time I saw her. She said if I was going to disappear I had to leave everything for good. If I didn’t then they would find me. I could tell she was afraid. For me and for herself.”

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