Page 56 of Blade

Most of my clients are guilty. It doesn’t change my commitment. My compassion for them. They are children—damaged children—and we owe them a better path forward. A chance to heal. This is what I’m known for. I can hear the argument inside my head. Grace was traumatized. Not responsible for her actions.

A thought emerges as I sit in the car, parked against the wall of snow covering the shoulder.

I grab the file on the passenger seat—Grace’s records. From doctors and her schools. The ones Jolene had to submit to apply to board at Avery Hall. I look through them and see what I expected. Straight A’s. Glowing comments from her teachers. Routine checkups and some physical therapy for a strained hamstring. All normal.

I get to the older ones—the records from Grace’s home in Oklahoma—and see more of the same. I hear the words I’ll need to say.This perfect child was terrorized by Dawn Sumner. Taught to channel that fear to rage. Her young brain conditioned to fight.Dawn and Dr. Westin. The mindfucker.

My phone sits on the console, and I hear the familiar ringtone from my office.

“Jill?” I ask, picking it up, putting it on speaker. I can barely hear her with the whipping wind whistling through the seams of the windows.

“Are you okay?”

I answer, “Yeah—there’s a huge storm. I’m on the road.”

“Goddamned Colorado,” she says. Jill hates the cold—and she knows my history here. At least the parts I’ve been willing to share.

Her sigh is loud and distinct, and the familiarity of it reaches inside and makes me shudder.

“No luck with the girl’s story?” she asks.

“I’m working on it,” I tell her. “Anything on your end?”

I asked Jill to look into The Palace, Dawn, Emile, Avery Hall. Even Jolene. I can’t presume to still know her, especially when she sent her daughter here to train. Our memories are so different.

“It’s true about Emile Dresiér’s position in California,” Jill says matter-of-factly. “I had the intern call the rink in San Diego and ask about trying out for him. They told her he was supposed to start this summer, but—didn’t she know? That he’d been murdered?”

Jill lets out a little laugh, like she’s pleased with her resourcefulness.

“There’s something else.”

I clutch the file, bracing myself as Jill tells me about the calls she made to her news sources.

“Emile was shopping a story—insider stuff about the training methods at The Palace.”

I feel my pulse quicken. “What kind of stuff?”

“Something called Fear Training. I mean—what the fuck goes on in that place?”

“Christ.”

“What?” Jill asks, her voice growing concerned.

“That’s what we called it,” I tell her. “When I was a skater.”

Suddenly, I don’t like where this is going.

“Well,” she says. “My source wasn’t the one he approached, so her intel was spotty. But she said it wasn’t just now—it went back to an injury he had, the one that ended his career or something.”

The quad toe. The twisted knee.

“Okay, yeah ...” I say. All that is true. I feel a burst of relief—maybe Emile was tellinghisstory. Not ours. But then, Jill continues.

“And something about a girl—with a terrible bruise.”

No,I think.Indy Cunningham.

“Does that ring any bells?”