to let us in. Kayla stays glued to my side as we enter, her pale hand holding tight.
“Hello, Bill,” I say darkly, giving the woman something
to gossip about later. I’m on a first-name basis with him
and I’m bringing a child along for a mysterious personal
appointment? Oh, Bill Morris, what have you done?
The man tries to keep his glower aimed at my face,
but his eyes can’t help a few darts toward Kayla.
“It’s okay,” I say softly as I lead her over to one of the
chairs. “Sit down. You’ll be fine.”
She makes a show of letting go of me reluctantly before
she takes a seat, scooting back too far in the chair so that her sandals dangle above the ground.
I take my own seat and cross my legs as the receptionist
draws the door slowly closed behind her.
“What the hell is this filth?” Bill Morris growls, slap-
ping the card down on his desk.
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Morris,” I answer. “It’s il-
legal to even view that kind of content, as I’m sure you
understand.”
256
Problem Child
“I had no idea what I was looking at!”
“This is Kayla,” I say, gesturing toward the pale
girl with her head bent in shame. “Did your brother
explain exactly what he was getting you into when he
asked for help further terrorizing my niece after sexu-
ally abusing her?”
“Your niece.” He’s still angry, his eyes shaded by a
cliff of furious brow, but the words come out as a resigned statement instead of a question.
“Yes. Kayla is my niece, and she was fifteen years old
when she … encountered your sick brother. Since then she’s been stalked by a bald man in an SUV who I believe is in your employ, and that same man assaulted her
childhood friend, Brodie. Did you know that Brodie was
found murdered two days ago? Because I find that very
interesting.”
He blinks hard and sits back a little in his huge leather
chair. “Excuse me?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Who didn’t tell me? I have no idea what you’re talk-
ing about.”
“Why don’t you call up your brother and ask him
about Brodie, then? He might know him as Little Dog.”
“Ms.—”
“Sir, I’ve worked overseas helping victims of sex traf-
ficking, and I never thought I’d come home to find that
my own little niece has been victimized by the same type
of monster I fought so hard against in other countries. I
assure you that I have taken steps to protect this child,
and those steps include storing the proof of this assault in several different safe places, both online and in multiple
secure locations with instructions on how to proceed if
anything happens to us. This problem will not go away
257
Victoria Helen Stone
no matter the threats of violence. Kayla is not alone any-
more. She’s not the helpless child she was a month ago.”
Kayla sighs and reaches out to touch my hand. I grasp
her fingers briefly before she slumps back in on herself.
This girl is a master actress, and I have to fight not to let my mouth lift in amusement.
Morris crosses his arms on the table and studies me
for a long moment. “And yet you’re here in my office.
You haven’t gone to the police.” I see his eyes dart down
to the phone on his desk. I imagine he’s recording this,
hoping I’ll make an extortion attempt.
“To what end?” I ask. “I have no idea how far your
tentacles reach. The only guarantee of consequences to
your brother would be making this public, and that would
further damage a vulnerable child.”
“I see. So you’re not going to the authorities.”
“Not yet.”
“Right. So how much do you want?”
“How dare you?” I snap. “How dare you treat this as
some seedy financial matter! I’m an attorney and an aunt
and a decent human being. But, considering your family,
maybe you’ve never encountered one of those before and
have no idea how to interact with one.”
His confidence has finally slipped a notch. I watch his
shoulders drop and I pounce.
“Your brother is a pervert and a danger to the com-
munity. If I had any hope at all that we’d find justice, I’d see this through. But look at you, still treating my niece
as if she’s the cause of this instead of your predatory, rapist, pedophile brother!”
“I didn’t—”
“You most certainly did. We don’t want your tainted
rape money, Mr. Morris. I want your brother to get
258
Problem Child
extensive treatment and my niece wants to get the hell
out of this state to somewhere safe. A boy is dead! Do you
understand that? My niece might have been murdered
already if I hadn’t been the one to find her.”
“I don’t know anything about that. And I can’t force
my brother to—”
“Oh, you can make your brother do whatever you
want. Don’t feed me that bull. Your specialty in life is
pulling strings. Chair of the state board of development,
head of the council on economic growth, a member of
the insurance council. You’ve got more strands to pull
than a spider, and you use them to devour everything
you can. Try using your power for good just this once.”
When I go quiet, I can hear him swallow even from
ten feet away. “I’m not a bad man, and I am certainly not
my brother’s keeper. I don’t know anything about this
death you mentioned. But I will try to direct Roy into
treatment. He has trouble with alcohol and it causes him
to…” His gaze darts toward Kayla and then back to me.
“To act out.”
This time I’m the one to reach for Kayla’s hand. I grasp
it in mine and nod. “My niece has been traumatized, and
I want to help her leave this violation behind her and get
a good education. I have reason to believe her mother
will agree to a change of guardianship, but there will
still be a hell of a lot of red tape to work through. All I ask is that you call off your attack dogs and do what you
can to help us leave. It will be good for everyone to get
Kayla into a new environment.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s all that you want?”
“Yes. I’m not here to blackmail you. I’m here to ask
you to do the right thing, if you know what that is.”
“And the … evidence?”
259
Victoria Helen Stone
I shrug. “There’s nothing to be done about that. There’s
no physical tape I can turn over. No proof that it’s re-
ally gone. The best you can do, Mr. Morris, is distance
yourself from your brother in every way possible. Reject
him. Let him sink or swim on his own. If you do that,
then his criminal evidence has no hold over you, because
your future isn’t tied to his. You won’t have anything to
worry about.”
He uncrosses his arms and presses his hands flat to
the desk. “So you can�
�t give me any assurance that this
won’t come out.”
I lean forward and let him see the natural darkness in
my eyes. “Let me make something clear. You are not the
victim in this situation, and I’m not here to assure you
about anything. You don’t need protection. You are not the one who has been damaged. What I’m giving you is the
opportunity to do right by a young girl who was raped
by your brother and further victimized by your support
for her rapist. You will get no reassurance, and I have
put automatic safeguards in place in case of any further
malfeasance on your part, and I promise those protec-
tions are airtight and legal. Is that reassuring enough to
you, Mr. Morris?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He says the right thing, but he’s an-
gry again, backed into a corner and hating it. But that’s
fine. He can hate it as much as he wants as long as he
understands that I hold the power here.
“And those strings we spoke about?” I press.
He clears his throat and I see him set his anger aside.
He’s a businessman, and this is business now. “I’ll do what I can to make sure your application for guardianship is
expedited.”
“And you’ll call off your dogs?”
260
Problem Child
His jaw clenches. Clenches again. “I’ll speak to my
brother and make sure there is no further contact of any
kind. If he was the one responsible.”
He’s too smart to admit he was involved, and I can
respect that, so I dip my head. “If anything happens to
me or to Kayla, this will not work out well for anyone.”
“I understand.”
“Good. I hope your brother gets the help he needs.”
It’s his turn to incline his head.
I stand and tug Kayla up too. She keeps her head down
as we exit, her sandals slapping against the floor. My neck prickles, my animal senses warning me that Bill Morris
is watching from his desk.
He can watch all he wants, but there’s no good way to
solve the problem his brother has dropped at his doorstep
like a decomposing rat. If they’d gotten to Kayla while
she was alone, maybe. But now she’s got me.
I’m grinning widely as I wave goodbye to the recep-
tionist and step onto the elevator.
Kayla jerks her hand away. “We could’ve gotten so
much money from him!”
“He’s a politician, Kayla. If we pushed him too far,
he would have turned us in to the cops for blackmail and
painted himself as an innocent victim in his brother’s
crimes. Then he probably would have started a task force
against child exploitation while we were still waiting for
a trial.”
“Whatever,” she snaps.
“You’ve still got the recording. Do whatever you want
when you’re eighteen.”
“I can do whatever I want right now.”
“Not if you want to get out of this place. You start
throwing that video around and you’re on your own. I’m
261
Victoria Helen Stone
not going down in flames so you can score five thousand
dollars and a permanent audience on the dark web. I have
a law license to protect, and you might have a future if you listen and learn. Might. ”
Rolling her eyes, she pops a piece of grape bubble
gum into her mouth.
“You were amazing back there,” I say, and that bright-
ens her expression.
“Yeah?”
“Great acting.”
“Thanks.”
“You should try out for the school play.”
“Dumb,” she answers, but her anger is gone, smoothed
out by praise. I know what a little girl like her wants.
Praise and admiration. I know because I want the same
and I always have.
She blows a purple bubble. “If his guys try to grab us
on the way to the car, you’re on your own. I’m quicker.”
She flashes me a mean, narrow look, but I smile. Then I
giggle. Then I’m laughing so hard, I have to hold myself
up on the elevator rail.
“Weirdo,” she mutters, but I don’t mind. She likes me.
262
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I completely forgot about dealing with the police.
With Kayla reported as a missing child, there were
interviews and written reports and talk of child neglect
charges for her mother. There was even a murmur of
charging Kayla with truancy, but I shut that down.
They spent so little time looking into her disappear-
ance that they never even connected her to Brodie, so
there are no questions about his death. I assume they don’t care about him at all either. I wonder who his house will
go to now.
Kayla and I made up a much more palatable story
to tell the authorities, of course. Something about her
hitchhiking and then living on the street for a while.
The intense questioning about her circumstances did
help move her mother’s decision along. The woman was
eager to assign me temporary guardianship by the end of
that first day and wash her hands of the entire situation.
A true case of parental devotion.
Permanent guardianship will take longer, but we’ve
greased those wheels. A judge immediately approved
Kayla’s voluntary move to Minnesota, expressing grati-
tude that an attorney was taking this troubled girl under
her wing.
263
Victoria Helen Stone
A temporary situation is better for the two of us regard-
less. She’ll be slightly more malleable if there’s a chance she could easily lose all her new luxuries. And with a
budding little sociopath, malleable is better.
It’s our third day back in the boonies, and there’s been
no sign of trouble. We could still be gunned down on
the highway back to Oklahoma City, but my hunch is
that Bill Morris decided to take my deal. The emergency
hearing with the judge came through suspiciously quickly.
We’ve got one last stop before we head to the city to
catch a flight. That’s right. It’s time to say goodbye to
Grandma and Grandpa!
That’s a joke, of course. Kayla wants to pick up the
belongings she moved to their trailer. I’ve advised her to
leave that shit behind, but I guess she has some useless
crap she wants to drag to Minnesota with her. Fine. I
drive her to my parents’ place and we both step out into
the crunching brown grass.
My mother, ever a lover of drama, rushes out of the
trailer as soon as she spots Kayla. “Oh, my baby!” she
cries. “I heard you were back!” Today she’s wearing
baggy white jeans and a pink Hallmark sweatshirt. How
apropos for our touching family reunion.
She throws her arms around Kayla, who stands stock-
still and waits for it to be over. “My sweet little Kayla!
Where have you been?”
“Mom, there are no cameras or social workers here.
Cut the crap already.”
She snarls like a vicious dog over Kayla’s shoulder
before letting h
er go. “Look at these fancy-ass clothes,”
she says in a sharp whine.
“Yeah, they’re great,” Kayla answers.
264
Problem Child
“Go on and get settled in,” my mom says. “I put a few
things in your room, but you can just shove those boxes
out of the way, no problem.”
“She’s coming home with me, Mom. Seriously, cut
it out.”
The kindly grandmother act falls from her face for
good now, and she swings around to glare at me. “What
are you yapping about?”
I wave her off wearily as Kayla slips past her grand-
mother to bang through the metal storm door.
“You can’t take my granddaughter away; I only just
got her back.”
I glance around with huge eyes. “Seriously, who
are you playacting for? There’s no one else here, and I
heard all the shit you talked about Kayla the first time I
dropped by.”
“I have custody, and you need my permission to take
her out of state no matter how high and mighty you think
you are, and I’m not giving it.”
Permission. What she means is that she wants money;
she always wants money, and she’s not smart or steady
enough to work me for it. All she can ever do is lash out
and attack, because she resents having to beg for what
she wants.
I used to send money sometimes. I used to do it because
my best friend told me I should. “They’re your family,”
she’d insist. “The only family you’ll ever have.” True,
thank God. And Meg was the only conscience I ever had,
but she’s dead now, so Mom is out of luck.
They raised me, yes. But puppy mills raise animals
too, offering paltry shelter and shitty food, just enough
to keep them alive, and no one ever thinks the owners
265
Victoria Helen Stone
of those places are owed any love. I have no idea why it’s
supposed to be different with parents.
“You don’t have custody, Mom. She was crashing here
and you were charging her rent. We’ve already worked
all this out with Kayla’s mother.”
“You’re a liar just like you always have been.”
“I’d show you the signed court document, but I hon-
estly don’t care that much. Kayla is getting her stuff and
we’re leaving.”
Mom’s face is drawing tight and desperate now. As
much as she hated me, she always wanted me under her
control and in her orbit. She’s pulling the same thing
Problem Child (ARC) Page 27
