She let out a startled laugh. “Tell Dad? How many things do you think I’ve told Dad about over the years that he’s brushed off or ignored or told me that I was the problem?”
Marlin stilled and stared at her, his breath heaving as his chest moved up and down rapidly. “This is assault, Maya. Not teenage stuff that you have against a stepmother you don’t like.”
She tensed.
“Teenage stuff,” Matthieu said in a low voice.
“I know you and Kathryn don’t get along,” Marlin said. “I know what she’s like. I don’t like her either. But this is far more serious.”
“More serious? So you think it’s all right that Kathryn would tell your sister that she’s ugly, dumb, fat, and unwanted?” Matthieu snarled. “Do you think that’s teenage stuff? Do you think that’s fine for Kathryn to speak like that to a vulnerable child who lost her mother? Whose brother and sister left her in that household where her own father never bothered to protect her from the viper he’d brought into their home? Should Maya have just moved past that? Ignored everything that bitch said to her?”
“I . . . she said those things to you, Maya?” Marlin asked.
“She never liked me. She was clever, though. She never said any of it front of anyone else. And she never touched me. Well, other than a few pinches here and there. Not enough for Father to believe me. And after he started to view me as a problem, to accuse me of being a brat and making things up . . . well . . .” Maya shrugged. “I guess I thought I might as well become what he thought I was. Difficult and rebellious. Angry and rude.”
“You aren’t those things,” Matthieu told her. “You built a barrier to protect yourself. Something that Kathryn and your father forced you to do. No one else was there to protect you and you had to learn how to protect yourself.”
She blinked at him, realizing that she was close to tears. She didn’t know how he saw her so clearly when no one else did.
“Is that why you help abused animals?” Brody asked, staring at her with admiration. “Because of your experience you now help those that can’t protect themselves?”
“I . . . I . . .” She’d never thought of it quite like that. “Maybe?”
“You never told me,” her brother said in a stark voice. “I didn’t know things were that bad. I thought that you . . .”
“That I was just being a brattish teenager and painting Kathryn as the wicked witch because she was my stepmother?” Maya said in a remarkably calm voice. The numb really was marvelous. It stopped her from getting worked up. From saying things that she might regret later.
He winced. “Yeah. I mean, I have never liked Kathryn, but mainly because I felt like Dad got involved with her too soon after Mom died. And she is kind of cold. But I never imagined she was saying those kinds of things to you. I should have tried harder to get Dad to let you live with me. If I’d known . . . I’d have done whatever I had to.”
Maya felt tears threaten again, but she had to keep them at bay. She couldn’t afford to give in. So she just nodded.
“Maybe we get back to Vince?” Detective Reeves asked.
Maya nodded with a sigh. “Yeah, sure.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Reeves asked. “About what Vince did?”
“Yeah, I did end up saying something to my father. Only because he asked me why I wasn’t going out with Vince again. He wouldn’t listen when I said it didn’t work out. Instead, he tricked me into coming around for dinner. Told me it would just be the two of us but when I got there, Kathryn and Vince were there. I nearly walked back out. I wish I had. All night, Dad and Kathryn were trying to push the two of us together. At the end of the night when I was leaving, my dad told Vince to walk me out and I refused. Kathryn told me I was being rude. That’s when it all came out.”
“And what did your dad say?” Detective Reeves asked.
He seemed very . . . intense. She knew that he was on her father’s case. And he seemed like a good guy. But it felt like there was something else going on here.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
Detective Reeves sat back with a sigh and exchanged a look with her brother. Marlin turned to her.
“There’s a lot of corruption at the Billings Police Force.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “I know that. That’s why I never complained about Vince. I knew no one would do anything.”
“It goes deeper than that,” her brother said. “Missing evidence on cases that meant they had to be thrown out of court, reports of bribes and coercion and corruption.”
“Seriously?” she asked, sitting up straight. Tank put his head on her lap and whined, obviously sensing her change in mood.
Shit. What had happened to the numb? She needed that back. The numb kept her functioning. It kept her from losing her mind. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, scratching behind Tank’s ears.
“What does . . . does Dad know? He would have to know, right?”
