Once a Family. Tara Taylor Quinn

      CHAPTER ONE

      “HOW OLD ARE YOU, Talia?”

      The tanned teenager, straight from the mold of California-model gorgeousness, looked Sedona Campbell in the eye. “Fifteen.”

      Sedona believed her. “You told Lila McDaniels that you’re nineteen.”

      The five-foot-five-inch blonde, with a perfect figure, perfect makeup and skin, wearing all black, looked about twenty-five.

      And, at fifteen, on a Tuesday in the second week of April, she should have been in school.

      “I didn’t want her to call the police. I’m not pressing charges.”

      “You’re a juvenile. You claim you’ve been hit. The staff here have to notify the police. It’s the law.”

      “Not if they think I’m nineteen and I say I don’t want the cops called. I checked. They don’t have to call for adults who don’t want the police notified, especially if they’re not getting medical attention.”

      The law didn’t read quite like that. But the girl wasn’t wrong, either.

      “They’d have to prove they had no way of knowing that you’re underage.”

      The girl said nothing.

      “They know you lied about your identity.”

      Talia Malone, aka the juvenile sitting in front of her, slid down into the plastic chair on one side of the table in the small but private card room Sedona used as a makeshift office during her volunteer hours at The Lemonade Stand. Her gaze darted from the floor toward the edge of the table, and back again.

      Sedona was not a psychiatrist, but as an attorney specializing in family law, specifically in representing women going through divorce or in need of protection orders, she was well versed in reading people.

      “I’m here to help, Talia. You can trust me.” And here in the middle of a workday because Lila McDaniels, managing director of The Lemonade Stand—a one-of-a-kind, privately funded women’s shelter on the California coast—had phoned asking that she drop everything to tend to this situation.

      Talia curled a strand of hair around her little finger. With a covert glance, she met Sedona’s gaze, but only for a second.

      Sitting next to the troubled girl at the table, Sedona touched her hand. “I believe you were hurt,” she said, her tone compassionate, but professional, too. By the time she got to the victims, they needed help, not drama. “But I can’t do anything for you, no one here can, if you aren’t honest with us.”

      Talia’s eyes were blue. Intensely gray-blue. They were trained on Sedona now.

      And that emotional crack that opened sometimes, the one she’d never quite managed to close within her professional armor—an armor that hid a natural instinct to nurture—made itself felt.

      “Why wouldn’t you agree to see the nurse?” Sedona tried another way in.

      Talia shrugged.

      “Do you have any injuries that need to be tended to?” Lila had already told her that Talia had refused to be examined by Lynn Duncan, the on-site nurse practitioner, saying she didn’t have anything wrong with her.

      If Talia saw the health professional, and Lynn determined that there were injuries due to domestic abuse, California law would require them to report to the police or risk a fine at the very least. Lynn could risk her license.

      And still, only about ten percent of California’s health professionals actually reported. For various reasons. Talia’s lower lip pouted. “There’s nothing right now.”

      “Have you had injuries in the recent past?”

      She nodded but didn’t elaborate.

      And Sedona’s mind riffled through possibilities like cards on the old Rolodex her father used to keep on his desk when she was a kid.

      Was this young woman on the run?

      From one or both of her parents?

      Another family member?

      Or a nonrelative? A teacher at school?

      Was the abuse sexual in nature?

      Hiding information was classic behavior for someone being abused. With her near-perfect features, Talia didn’t look as if she’d taken any blows to the face. But that was more typical than not, too. A lot of abusers kept their blows to parts of the body that could be covered. Hidden.

      “Has anyone touched you...sexually?” An officer would ask more bluntly. And with Talia’s age, if they didn’t find her family, the police were going to be called in. That was a given.

      “No.” Talia met her gaze fully on that one.

      Satisfied that the teenager was telling the truth, Sedona asked, “How long ago was the abuse?”

      Another shrug was her only response.

      “A week? Two weeks? A year?”

      “A month. Maybe. And then last week.”

      Okay. So... “What brought you here today?”

      According to Lila, Talia had called from a public phone that morning and been picked up by a staff member not far from a nearby bus stop. “I was talking to...someone...who told me about this place and this morning I had a chance to get on a bus without anyone knowing.”

      “On a bus from where?”

      “Where I live.”

      “Where