Shadowfires

larger part of her attention focused on
some private horror. She met Rachael's eyes but didn't really seem to
see her.
    Rachael reached into the stall with one hand. “Honey,
it's all right. Everything's all right. No
one's going to hurt you anymore. You can come out now. We won't let
anyone hurt you anymore.”
    The girl stared through Rachael, murmuring softly but urgently to
herself, shaken by a wind of fear that blew through some grim inner
landscape in which she seemed trapped.
    Rachael handed her gun to Benny. She stepped into the big shower
stall and knelt beside the girl, speaking softly and reassuringly to
her, touching her gently on the face and arms, smoothing her tangled
blond hair. At the first few touches, the girl flinched as if
she'd been struck, though the contact briefly broke her trance. She looked at Rachael for a moment instead of through her, and she allowed herself to be coaxed to her feet and out of the shadowy stall, though by the time she crossed the sill of the shower into the bathroom, she was already retreating once more into her semicatatonic state, unable to answer questions or even to respond with a nod when spoken to, unable to meet Rachael's
eyes.
    “We've got to get her to a hospital,” Rachael said, wincing when she got a better look at the poor child's
injuries in the brighter light of the bathroom. Two fingernails on
the girl's right hand had been broken back almost to the cuticle and were bleeding; one finger appeared to be broken.
    Rachael sat with her on the edge of the bed while Benny went
through the closets and various dresser drawers, looking for
clothes.
    She listened for strange noises elsewhere in the house.
    She heard none.
    Still, she listened attentively.
    In addition to panties, faded blue jeans, a blue-checkered blouse,
peds, and a pair of New Balance running shoes, Benny found a trove of
illegal drugs. The bottom drawer of one of the nightstands contained
fifty or sixty hand-rolled joints, a plastic bag full of unidentified
brightly colored capsules, and another plastic bag containing about
two ounces of white powder. “Probably cocaine,” Benny said.
    Eric had not used drugs; he had disdained them. He had always said
that drugs were for the weak, for the losers who could not cope with
life on its own terms. But obviously he had not been averse to
supplying all sorts of illicit substances to the young girls he kept,
ensuring their docility and compliance at the expense of further
corrupting them. Rachael had never loathed him as much as she did at
that moment.
    She found it necessary to dress the naked girl as she would have
had to dress a very small child, although the teenager's helpless daze-marked by spells of shivers and occasional whimpering-was caused by shock and terror rather than by the illegal chemicals that Benny had found in the nightstand.
    As Rachael quickly dressed the girl, chivalrous Benny kept his
eyes discreetly averted. Having found her purse while searching for
her clothes, he now went through it, seeking identification. “Her
name's Sarah Kiel, and she turned sixteen just two months ago. Looks like she's
come west from… Coffeyville, Kansas.”
    Another runaway, Rachael thought. Maybe fleeing an intolerable
home life. Maybe just a rebellious type who chafed at discipline and
entertained the illusion that life on her own, without restrictions,
would be pure bliss. Off to L.A., the Big Orange, to take a shot at
the movie business, dreaming of stardom. Or maybe just seeking some
excitement, an escape from the boredom of the vast and slumbering
Kansas plains.
    Instead of the expected romance and glamour, Sarah Kiel had found
what most girls like her found at the end of the California rainbow:
a hard and homeless life on the streets-and eventually the solicitous
attention of a pimp. Eric must have either bought her from a pimp or
found her himself while on the prowl for the kind of fresh meat that
would keep him feeling young. Ensconced in an expensive Palm Springs
house, supplied with all the drugs she wanted, plaything of a very
rich man, Sarah had surely begun to convince herself that she was,
after all, destined for a fairy-tale life. The naive child could not
have guessed the true extent of the danger into which she had
stepped, could not have conceived of the horror that would one day
pay a visit and leave her dazed and mute with terror.
    “Help me get her out to the car,” Rachael said as she