“That would never have happened,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “I’m too quick on my feet. Float like a butterfly—”

“Yeah, well, I think both Randy Whiteheads would agree that your sting is much worse when you use your head,” he interrupted, “than your right hook. Who’s Eric?”

I blinked at him. “Who?”

“Eric.” We’d reached the long driveway to his house, and Rob turned the truck up it. It really was a beautiful piece of land—the one Rob’s farm sat on—complete with stately hundred-year-old oaks and its own stream. Randy Whitehead Senior, I’m sure, would have enjoyed turning it into a golf course or country club. “The guy you said you’d tell Mrs. Whitehead about if her husband didn’t do what you said.”

“Oh,” I said with a grin. “Him. Yeah. My dad told me about him. Eric’s a waiter at Mastriani’s.”

“So?”

“So you know how people who work together get to chatting. Eric, my dad says, likes to hang out at a gay bar in Indianapolis.”

“Yeah. And?”

“And it turns out, so does Randy Senior.”

Rob brought the truck to a stop with a jerk, his foot landed on the brake so fast. Finally he turned his head to look at me.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, looking stunned.

“Nope.” I undid my seat belt and started to climb from the pickup. “Eric’s Mr. Whitehead’s boyfriend. They have their own little love nest together and everything. Except, apparently, Randy Senior would rather his wife not know about it.”

I gathered up all the burgers and started towards Rob’s house. Chick—owner and proprietor of Chick’s Bar and Motorcycle Club, out by the highway—apparently heard us pull up, since he came to the front door. When he saw me coming up the brick walk, he broke out into an enormous smile.

“Well, if it isn’t Lightning Girl,” he said, holding open the screen door to let me in. “Long time no see.”

“Hi, Chick,” I said, grinning back at him. “How’s life?”

“A whole lot better now that you’re back in town,” Chick said as Rob followed me up the walk. “Hey, now that you two are back together, maybe you can do something to make this guy stop working so hard and have some fun once in a while.”

Chick slapped a heavy hand down onto Rob’s shoulder. Rob winced. But not, I’m pretty sure, because Chick’s grip hurt.

“Yeah,” Rob said, not looking at meor Chick. “Well, Jess came back, but only to help me find Hannah. She’ll be heading back to New York soon.”

Chick’s smile vanished. “Oh,” he said. Then he noticed the bags in my hands, and his crestfallen demeanor brightened again, but only slightly. “Well, at least she brought food.”

And he started back inside the house.

I turned to glare at Rob. “How do you know?” I demanded.

He stared down at me, confused. “How do I know what?”

“How do you know when I’ll be heading back to New York?” I couldn’t explain why I suddenly felt so incredibly angry. But I was definitely rethinking my whole nonviolent stance, as well as my decision not to knock his block off. “Maybe I won’t be going back to New York. You don’t know. You don’t know anything about me anymore.”

He blinked at me. “Okay,” he said. “Take it easy.”

Why is it that whenever anyone tells you totake it easy orrelax , it has the totally opposite effect?

Feeling exceptionally unrelaxed, I stomped into Rob’s house to find his sister, Hannah, just coming down the stairs to see who was at the door.

“Oh,” she said, looking distinctly disappointed when she saw who it was. “It’s you. I thought it might be my mom.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just as thrilled to see you,” I snapped. “Is there a VCR up there?”

Hannah cocked her head quizzically at me from the staircase. “What? Yeah. Why?”

I signaled for her to turn around and head back up the stairs. Rob, going into the kitchen to get plates for the burgers, said, “Jess. Eat first, okay?”

“Oh, Hannah and I are going to eat,” I assured him. Then, seeing that Hannah had stayed where she was, I pointed up the stairs again and said, “Go. Now.”

Looking churlish, Hannah spun around and headed up the stairs. I followed, after handing Chick all but one of the bags I carried.

Upstairs, in the guest bedroom where Hannah was staying—the one that used to be Rob’s, but which he’d done over in muted beige—I saw that she’d made herself at home. Her clothes were strewn all over the floor, along with several bags of chips and numerous empty soda cans.

“You’d better pack,” I said to her. “Your mom’s on her way to get you, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Hannah said, flopping back onto the bed and glaring at the ceiling. Her multicolored hair made a rainbow against the white pillowcase. “I’m not going back to live with that bitch. And Rob can’t make me.”

“Uh,” I said, pressingPOWER on the VCR and inserting the videotape I’d removed from my backpack. “Yes, he can. He is under no obligation to keep paying for you to live under his roof.”

“Fine,” Hannah said to the ceiling. “He can kick me out, then. He can’t make me stay with Mom, though. I’ll just run away again.”

“Because that worked out so great for you last time?” I pressedPLAY , then took the bag of burgers and went to sit in an armchair by the room’s single window—after first removing a pile of Hannah’s clothes from it. “Good plan.”

Hannah was watching me, not the TV. “Hey,” she said, sitting up, “can I have one of those? I’m starved. That Chick guy offered to make me a sandwich, but have you ever looked at his fingernails? I was, like, no way.”

After taking a burger out for myself, I tossed the bag to her. “Be my guest.” I looked at the TV screen. “Oh, cool,” I said, sinking my teeth into the thick cheese-and-bacon combo. “This is my favorite part.”

Idly, Hannah glanced up from the burger she was biting into to the TV…

…then let the burger drop to her lap.

“What?” She stared, bug-eyed, at the screen. “Where did—hey, that’s—”

I swallowed. “Yeah. I prefer boxers, too. But what can you do? Some guys will never learn.”

Hannah scrambled off the bed—sending burger everywhere—and dove for the VCR. She slammed theEJECT button. When the videotape slid out of the machine, she wrenched it up and stared at the side, where the neatly typed label—HANNAH—caused her eyes to bug out even more.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded in a small voice.

“From your boyfriend’s closet,” I said when I was done chewing. “You didn’t know you were being filmed?”

She shook her head. The ability to speak had apparently left her.

“He had copies, too,” I went on. “I assume for distribution purposes.”

“Dis…distribution?” Hannah’s face had gone as white as the sheets behind her. “He was…selling them?”

“Oh, not just yours,” I said. “There were lots of different tapes of lots of different underage girls. He apparently had quite a little harem going. You really didn’t know?”

She shook her head again, staring down at the tape.

“Well,” I said with a shrug. “You don’t need to worry about it anymore. He’s in jail now. Or will be until his dad bails him out, anyway. Unless they hold him without bail, like the DA is threatening. Interstate porn trafficking is actually taken pretty seriously, especially when it involves minors, but Mr. Whitehead—Randy’s dad—has a lot of money and power and…well. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Hannah looked at me. She had a ketchup smear on one side of her mouth. She actually appeared, for the first time since I’d met her, much younger than her fifteen years.

“Randy’s in jail?” she asked softly.

“Randy,” I said, “is very much in jail. You can help keep him there by letting me give your tapes to the police, and agreeing to testify against him. Which I very much urge you to do. But I guess I’d understand if you chose not to. Though it’s not a course I’d recommend. I mean, if he gets away with it, he’ll just do it to someone else, maybe even younger than you.”

I waited for her to light into me, the way she had back in Randy’s apartment. I was, after all, now doubly her enemy—I’d taken her away from the man she loved,and now I’d been instrumental in putting that man in jail.

So, of course, had her brother. But I was willing to take the blame for Randy’s incarceration, since if Rob had had his way, all her boyfriend would currently be suffering from right now was a concussion, not years of legal woes and quite possibly a good deal of jail time.

But to my surprise, Hannah didn’t fly into one of her rages. Instead, still gazing down at the tape, she asked softly, “Did Rob see it?”

I shook my head. “No. Just me.”

“Where are the others?” she asked. “You said there were copies.”

I reached for my backpack, and pulled out the other two tapes with her name on them.

“Right here,” I said.

She stepped forward and took both the tapes from my hand. As she did so, our fingers brushed, and she said in the same soft voice, “Thanks.” She looked down at the tapes. And appeared to come to a decision, if the way her mouth turned into a flat little line was any indication.

“I guess I’d like to,” she said. “Press charges, I mean.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Let Rob know. Or your mom. One of them can take you down to the station.”

“I will. And…I’m sorry.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What for? It’s not your fault.”

“No, not for Randy,” she said, keeping her gaze on the tapes. “For those things I said yesterday. About you being—”

“A huge, giant, überbitch?” I finished for her.

“Uh,” she said. And she actually blushed. “Yeah. That. You’re not. You’re actually pretty cool.”

“Well,” I said. “Thanks.”