Chapter 5

"You okay?" Trina asked, looking at Zoe worriedly. "You didn't show up for school today."

"Fine. Didn't feel like messing with school today," Zoe said. "Sorry. Should have let you know."

"Problems?"

Zoe shook her head, mouth tight. "Just the normal bull--" She looked down at the baby in her lap, and ended the word there.

"Jack?" Trina asked.

Zoe tucked the baby carefully in a bouncy seat. "Don't worry about it."

"Sorry," Trina said. "Won't happen. I won't bug you, though, if you don't want."

"There's not anything to do about it," Zoe said. "Eventually the sniveling little fool will buy into his ... lines ... and take him back, and he'll be gone again. Until then, he just needs to push someone around to make himself look big, and I can handle that."

Trina snorted. "You ought to do something to him."

Zoe laughed, shaking her head. "He gets too bad, I will. At the moment, it's not worth the trouble. There aren't any little kids in the house, and he behaves with his mother, so no harm's being done."

"So you're the only one in danger?" Trina asked.

"I wouldn't say 'in danger'," Zoe replied. "'In annoyance', maybe."

"Ah," Trina said, her tone half-skeptical, half-enlightened.

"Oh, come on," Zoe said, glancing sideways at her. "I can certainly handle myself with any little small-town hick boy, and this one's not even a particularly bright hick boy."

"Okay," Trina laughed, raising her hands in surrender. "I hear you."

"Good," Zoe said, handing her a baby. "Here, take Mikey. I've gotta talk to somebody."

"You okay?" Trina asked as they left the building. "You seem ... upset."

Zoe looked at Trina thoughtfully, for a long, silent time, and Trina shifted uncomfortably.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want," Trina said.

Zoe shook her head. "It's not that. I ... have a ... well, I can't say I need it, but there's something I want badly enough to accept the debt for it."

Trina tilted her head and leaned back against the side of the car, silhouetted by the setting sun. "Oh?"

"It's a pretty big thing," Zoe said. "You'd need to spend another day in the office. Maybe show up with a wrapped wrist or something."

"Why?"

"I need some information. I made it plain when I started coming here, I don't type, and I don't do computers, and convinced them I couldn't even add columns of numbers straight, so even if they'd buy it from me, it'd blow my cover, and I'd end up running the damned office. But the information I need is in the case files ... it might not even have been entered yet ... that might be what they'd have you doing," Zoe said.

"What do you need?" Trina asked.

"I need to know the names and addresses for three sets of foster apps who visited with a particular child today. Especially the second set."

Trina raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Her name is Brenna Callahan. She's 6," Zoe said.

Trina nodded. "Why do you need the names and addresses?"

Zoe turned her head away. "I'd rather not say."

"Please?" Trina asked.

"I'm not going to burn their houses down, if that's what you're wondering," Zoe said.

"I didn't think you would," Trina said, looking at Zoe. "But what did they do?"

Zoe sighed. "They hurt someone. Without any good reason to at all."

"Brenna, I assume? What did they do?" Trina asked.

"Brenna ... has some problems," Zoe said. "She's been through a lot. Too damned much. But they're totally physical, and if she gets proper care, she'll be fine. Just right now she needs some extra help. So, of course, our lovely ministering angels think she might as well be put out with the trash, and since she's -- gasp -- crippled, she's obviously stupid, too, and they don't even have to pretend to be polite about it."

Trina's face flashed with anger, gone so quickly Zoe wasn't sure she saw it, and she turned, looking at the sky for several seconds. Finally she looked back at Zoe. "Zoe, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, and I'm going to ask you to trust me."

Zoe's eyes narrowed cautiously, and she asked, "What?"

"Let me take care of it." She looked Zoe in the eyes earnestly. "I've got power, Zoe. I do my best not to abuse it, not to just get my way the way some of the girls at school do, but I do have it. I have resources you don't. I don't know what you're planning, but there's a chance you'd get caught, and I'm betting you'd end up in a fair amount of trouble, am I right? Let me deal with them. I promise you they'll get what they deserve. You need to stay out of trouble so that you can keep coming to see her."

"What exactly did you think I was going to do to them," Zoe asked, taken aback.

"I don't know," Trina said. "Probably nothing too bad, but I'm betting it would be enough to get you in trouble."

"If I got caught," Zoe shrugged. "I don't intend to. And it would just be trouble, not serious trouble. Misdemeanor at best, easily worked off with public service."

"But that would be time you couldn't work here," Trina said. "Please, Zoe. Trust me."

Zoe sighed. "What do you think you could do to them?"

"Depends on how badly they deserve to be messed with. Harassment, mainly," Trina said.

"What do you mean by that?" Zoe asked.

"Little things. Running out of gas when they could swear they had a full tank the day before. Flats. Subscriptions to dozens of magazines in their name -- all 'bill me later'," Trina said.