Free The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag Page A

problem.”
    “And what’s the other half?” he asked. “Not you. Not you blowing every fucking thing out of proportion.”
    “When am I supposed to bring you into the equation, Speed?” she asked. “When are you available for consultation on this? He’s having problems at school—a kid who has never had problems at school. He’s having problems getting along with other kids—a kid who has never been in a fight in his life. He’s lying to me about where he’s going and what he’s doing—a kid who has never told me a lie. Just when are you willing to get involved here, Dad ? When am I supposed to call you? When he’s jacked an automatic weapon and gone into school with guns ablazing?”
    Speed slapped his hands to the sides of his head as if to keep it from popping off his neck. “That is so you, Nikki! You jump from A to fucking Armageddon! He’s embarrassed to tell you he got his ass kicked, and you’ve got him planning the next Columbine massacre. Jesus!”
    “And you don’t find any of this alarming in the least?” she said. “Mr. Drug Enforcement Officer. A fifteen-year-old boy’s grades are suddenly slipping. He’s having trouble with friends. He’s lying to his parents and exhibiting secretive behavior. This doesn’t send up a red flag with you at all?”
    “Kyle’s not using,” he said, and though his attitude was dismissive, Nikki thought she might have caught the briefest flash of alarm in the very backs of his blue eyes. “He’s too smart a kid for that.”
    “He’s fifteen,” Nikki said, happy to throw one of his own lines back at him.
    Speed physically took a step back from the argument, resting his hands at his waist, and blew out a sigh. “I’ll have a talk with him when he gets home.”
    “Thank you.”
    They both stood there, breathing hard, as if they had been wrestling physically as well as verbally. The fight was over. All the hard energy had been burned off. Awkwardness descended. So strange, Nikki thought. They’d spent so many years fighting, it didn’t make any sense that they still felt awkward in the aftermath.
    “You’d know if he was using,” Speed said quietly. His kind of reassurance.
    “Would I? I don’t know, Speed. I don’t know the world these kids live in. It changes every day. Used to be they smoked pot or they did speed. Kids with money could afford cocaine. These days it’s synthetic grass and bath salts—whatever the hell that is. They mainline heroine, and they make their own meth out of cold medicine. They know more about prescription drugs than most doctors. It scares the hell out of me.”
    In that moment it was only worse that she was a cop and that she knew things and had seen things other parents only read about in the newspaper, unless they were unlucky enough to have a child mixed up in it.
    “I spent the afternoon at the autopsy of a girl Kyle’s age,” she said. “Someone stabbed her seventeen times and poured acid on her face while she was still alive. How did that happen? How did a girl Kyle’s age come to be in a situation like that? What did her mother not know about her life?”
    To her horror, tears filled her eyes. She was one tough cookie in every other respect, but not when it came to her boys. In that she was as vulnerable as any mother, fearful of what the world was capable of doing to her children.
    “We know how that happens, Nikki,” Speed said softly. He put one hand on her shoulder and stroked the other one over the back of her head. “She was a junkie or a hooker or a runaway. Her life put her in harm’s way, and some predator took advantage. You’ve seen it a hundred times. So have I.”
    Too tired to tell herself not to, she slipped her arms around Speed’s waist and pressed her face into his shoulder. He folded his arms around her and held her.
    She had seen it. She did know how it happened. Sometimes. Not all the time. And the question still remained. Even if their ninth girl had been a junkie or a