“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’ll take a stab at it. Two reasons, really. One. You’re a really sick, old fuck and wanted to keep them to look at. And two. You need them as evidence in case some enterprising wannabe detective—say me, for instance—came at you with the truth.”

He says nothing.

“I have them, Baylor. The texts you sent while I was here with her. Send me a photo, Princess. So I know you’re getting better.”

He almost guffaws. I bet he still thinks he’s safe. But he’s not.

“What’s wrong with being concerned for my daughter? I wanted to make sure you weren’t hurting her. I wanted proof that she was OK.”

“Oh, wow,” I say, running my fingers through my hair. “You are one persistent bullshitter, you know that?” I lean in. Get right in his face. And I say, “Did you ever give her a flip phone, Baylor? Hmm? How long ago was that?”

He just stares at me. A notch of worry finally appearing between his brows.

It was a rhetorical question. Because there were dates on those texts. I already know that phone was ten years old. I found a prepaid credit card in her backpack. The kind you use to re-up your minutes. And that’s when most of this finally started to make sense.

“Did she, perhaps, once upon a time, lose one of the burner phones you gave her to message you and your friends? Because if so, that’s the one I found. That’s the one she was using last week. It took me a while to figure this part out,” I say. “She told me that furniture was hers. She opened the desk drawer to show me all her teenage crap. And some time while she was upstairs because I had sent her to her room to be punished, she found that phone and that credit card. And she called her daddy.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at but—“

“Do you think she did it so I’d figure things out?” I ask. “Or did she do it because she was conditioned to? Did the simple act of placing her back in that room trigger something inside her? Some coping mechanism to get her through her new nightmare?”

“Again, Mr. Macintyre, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“I don’t know. I doubt even she knows. Hell, maybe you don’t even know. But let’s forget about what we don’t know, OK? And concentrate on what we do know. You and your friends have a sick fetish for little kids. You used Lyssa to fulfill some disgusting fantasy.”

“I never touched her.” And still, even though I’m getting dangerously close to the truth, he laughs.

“You don’t need to touch a child to ruin a child,” I say. “And this place? What’s up with this place, Baylor? And if you say it’s a gift, I’ll punch you in the fucking face. Because it was never meant to be a gift. It was her prison. That’s why you made sure she had a very long criminal record. I admit, I was buying it until the pandering and prostitution stuff came up.” I shake my head. “You overplayed your hand there, asshole. I know what you plan to do with this house with twenty-one bedrooms. You’re gonna fill it with young kids. And invite your friends over for some fun. Close a few deals while you’re at it. And you were gonna make Lyssa run it, weren’t you? So if anyone ever found out, she’d take the fall.”

“You’re insane!” he bellows.

“Am I? I don’t think so. All those drug charges, maybe. Maybe all that really was all her own fuck ups. But you took it too far. Anyone who knows Lyssa would never accept that she sold her body for money. Or sold the bodies of others, for fuck’s sake. She went off the rails back when she was fifteen. Why? I don’t know yet. One day, when we’re far away from here and you’ve been locked up in prison for a while, maybe then she’ll want to talk about what you did to her. But it doesn’t matter. You saw a beautiful, wild girl and decided you could use her. Like you use everyone else. That you could buy her, just like you buy everyone else. And then one day she fought back, didn’t she? And you couldn’t take it. You can’t take anyone telling you no. So you decided to take it a million steps further than it needed to go. You decided to ruin her life again, and again, and again.”

He shakes his head.

“Did you have another one of these estates somewhere?” I ask. “Did it go under and that’s why you set Lyssa up as this prostitution mastermind? Or was this just revenge for you?”

He glares at me. “I saved her.”

“No, you killed her.”

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