Skin Deep by Pamela Clare Page B

empty tumbler in hand, listening while Megan spoke. He hadn’t asked her to explain anything, but she seemed to need to talk about it now that her past was out in the open. What she had to say wasn’t easy to hear.
    “I was a virgin the first time. It hurt so bad. They came almost every night after that. There were four of them, and they took turns, using their radios to keep track of the other guards, covering for one another. One of them would come in, force me onto my back and rip down my pants. He would … rape me, and then the next one would come in and do the same. They gave us candy bars, as if chocolate could somehow make up for what they’d done. They always wore condoms. No evidence, no babies, they said.”
    Rage thrummed inside Nate’s chest. He knew all of this, of course. He’d read it in the paper. Megan had run away from her adoptive parents, had been arrested for trying to steal a warm coat, and had been placed in juvenile detention, where she, like the other girls in her unit, had been raped almost every day for six months. It had been hard enough to stomach when he’d read the words on newsprint—adult men in a position of trust and authority taking advantage of young girls who were under their power, girls with nowhere to run and no one to turn to, girls whose lives were already a mess. But seeing the torment on Megan’s pretty face, watching the way she seemed to fold up right before his eyes, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle as if she feared her body might come apart…
    He wanted to slam his fist through the wall. He wanted to hunt down the bastards who’d done this to her, ram their dicks down their throats, and put a bullet between their eyes. Too bad all but one of them were already dead, because they’d gotten off easy. The most he could do to them now was piss on their graves. As for the son of a bitch who was still alive—he was serving a life sentence for rape and murder and would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, impotent and incontinent, thanks to a bullet from Marc Hunter’s gun.
    That, at least, felt like justice.
    Nate fought to keep his voice calm. “You must have felt so alone and afraid.”
    She nodded, her body trembling now. “I reported them. I got an infection and told the doctor everything. The rapes stopped, but no one believed us.”
    Nate had read how the guards had sabotaged the investigation, claiming that the girls had seduced them to win favors and privileges. The investigators had bought into their bullshit. And when Megan had been released, she’d been left to deal with the aftermath alone because the Rawlingses, her adoptive parents, didn’t want her back.
    Nate wouldn’t mind having a few minutes alone with the Rawlingses. They’d adopted Megan at the age of four after her mother was sent to prison for drunk driving and vehicular assault. They’d refused to adopt 10-year-old Marc, tearing brother and sister apart. They’d given Megan too little love and too many beatings with a belt. But Hunter hadn’t forgotten the little sister he’d lost, and after a few tours of duty in Iraq, he’d left the army and gone in search of her—only to find her strung out on heroin and living on the streets.
    “I have to give your brother credit for tracking you down the way he did.” Nate stood, took a throw off a nearby chair and wrapped it around Megan’s shoulders.
    Megan’s lips curved into a hint of a smile. “When he found me, it was one of the happiest days of my life. He put me in rehab and moved me into his house. I got clean, got on my feet again. I went to work on my GED. I had plans to go to college. I felt so full of hope, so certain that I’d turned my life around. I was wrong.”
    Her smiled faded. “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t found me—for his sake.”
    Nate was certain she didn’t mean that and so he let it pass. “Why didn’t you tell him what had happened to you? Why didn’t you tell him about the