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too, so I try to clean it up before I set my book down. I can’t throw the napkin away because Daddy said to sit and color and not leave.
    So I do. For a long, long time. So long that I wet my pants and my mouth is dry and my stomach knotted with fear and hunger and missing Daddy and wondering who the green elephant man is—will he take me back home to Daddy? I want Daddy, I hate this place, I want to be home, I want these people to all go away, I want to use the toilet, I want to get clean, I want the noise to stop, I want my Daddy…
    Then the lights go dim. There’s the rattle of metal and I look up to see people pulling down gates over the food places. A few of them are staring at me.
    While I sat and colored—I’ve filled in all the pictures and drawn a bunch of my own in the spaces in between—people have come and tried to talk to me, but none of them were the green elephant man, so I said nothing, just sat and colored like Daddy told me to.
    Now two more people are walking over to me. Policemen, like on TV. They walk different than the other people. One’s a man, one’s a woman. I blink and stare up at the man, hoping he’s the green elephant man and if he is, that he’ll take me back home to Daddy.
    He talks a lot. So does the woman. But no green elephant. So I sit and color like Daddy told me to even though I have to pee and I’m afraid I’ll wet my pants again and I don’t want to do that in front of the police. Police shoot you and yell and put handcuffs on you. I’ve seen it on TV.
    Daddy said to be a Good Girl, so I’m trying really, really hard.
    But they grab me up and no matter how I kick and scream, they don’t listen, they just take me away, away from the table Daddy told me to sit at, away from the green elephant man I’m supposed to listen to, away from home, away from Daddy.
    That day was the last time I ever saw him.
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    LUCY WOBBLED A bit on her cane, searching for a comfortable position. Walden noticed and stepped forward, sliding a chair out for her at the conference table. They both knew she’d come back to work too soon, just as they both knew she couldn’t stay away another minute. She remained standing, assessing their civilian guests.
    June Unknown. Every law enforcement officer working crimes against children knew her story. Nightmare was more like it. Abandoned at a mall when she was nine or ten—no one knew her true age. Just as no one knew her true name or where she came from or how long the man called Daddy had held her captive.
    Hell, back then, when they first found her, they didn’t even know about the pornography. Daddy didn’t release that out into the pedophile community, once again selling June’s innocence to the highest bidders, until after she was discovered at the mall. Given that the images were later found piecemeal and out of order, mixed in with tens of thousands of other images, no one pervert owning the entire collection chronicling June’s childhood on one computer, it had taken law enforcement almost a decade to identify the girl in the Baby Girl collection of images as the girl found in a mall without a name.
    “June Bernhart ?” Lucy’s gaze was on Seth as she asked the question.
    “We became involved and were married after I left the US Attorney’s Office. Obviously, it’s not public knowledge,” Seth answered. Seth’s voice was one of his best weapons—sure to mesmerize juries and the media. Combined with his distinguished looks and obvious passion for his cases, he could easily have left government service for a seven-figure income doing on air commentary for TV.
    Instead, he’d quit to represent a single client in expensive civil cases mired with jurisdiction and procedural pitfalls. A single client who was his wife. Talk about career suicide.
    Lucy pivoted to stare at June. The younger woman met Lucy’s gaze without flinching, the most relaxed person in the room despite being the center of scrutiny.
    Seth cleared