Page 60 of Deny Me
“No no no!” She gripped the edge of the door. “You need to—”
King caught the door right before it contacted with the jamb. He let his shoulders widen the space as he loomed over Arnold. “I don’t think we do.”
The nurse was backpedaling as fast as she could go. “I’m calling the cops. Get out of here.”
“You’re not going to call the cops, Jessica,” Saint told her softly.
She did a double take. “I’m not?”
“No, you’re not,” King snapped. “Not unless you want them to find out exactly what you were doing with the women who came to you looking for help in that support group.”
“I did help them!”
“I’m sure that’s what you thought you were doing,” Saint said. Gently grasping her arm, he led her over to the couch surrounded by boxes in the small living room. “And we need to talk about exactly how you helped them.”
Arnold plopped onto the couch and buried her head in her hands. “I don’t want to get in trouble. I just wanted—”
“You wanted to sell their babies,” King barked. “Bet you got a nice cut, didn’t you?”
“Of course not,” she wailed, eyes wide with disbelief as she raised her head. “He said they were safe!”
“Who was safe?”
“The babies!” Tears streaked her face, causing her to stutter as she struggled to speak. “The families agreed to hand the babies over for adoption, and he would take them to good homes. Yes, they were given money to compensate, get on their feet.” A flash of defiance crossed her face. “But not me—I never took money. Never!”
They’d already assumed that—she had no suspicious deposits or offshore accounts that they could find—but the confirmation was clear in her voice, her eyes. She was telling the truth.
Naive, indeed.
“Except not all of the girls agreed to the adoptions, did they?” Saint said, voice still soft but threaded with steel now. “Some of them decided to keep their babies.”
“No, of course not.” Confusion clouded Arnold’s eyes. “They wanted to adopt.”
“You spoke to every single girl who gave up her child?” King asked, not near as nicely as Saint had.
“Y-yes. Yes, I did. Every girl in the group.”
She was hiding something; King knew it, and when he met Saint’s eyes, his friend knew it too.
King followed the hunch. “What about outside the group?”
Arnold tightened her lips, refusing to answer or meet his eyes. King advanced on her, getting close enough that their knees brushed as he bent over the woman. Only when her terrified eyes stared up at him did he ask again. “Every. Single. Girl? There wasn’t a single connection that didn’t directly involve the mother?”
“I mean, some of the girls are scared.” She wrung her hands together, her posture sagging as King eased back a touch. “They rely on their families to help them. I—”
“You gave this information to some of the families of the mothers you met.”
She wasn’t wringing her hands anymore; she was gripping them tight together, but even so, King could see their shaking. “Only to help! They were scared. Desperate. Poor. The babies were going up for adoption anyway.” Tears started falling. “No one was hurt. Why shouldn’t the mothers get a nest egg to start a new life, right?”
King straightened, his face telling her all she needed to know about how right he thought she was. The woman shrank back again, her gaze searching out Saint instead. “Right?”
Saint kept his body relaxed, open, reeling her in. “Right. So who did you put them in touch with, then? Someone you knew well, right? Someone you knew was safe?”
She’d been used, whoever it was. Jessica Arnold had done this out of the “goodness of her heart”—sold children, some without their mother’s consent. When she fully realized that…
“Of course,” she said, hope lighting her eyes. “I’d never risk those precious babies. I put the families in contact with my boyfriend. He’s a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” King asked sharply. A buzzing started in his ears, crowding out thought, replacing it with fear.
