Chapter 6 - The Woman at County Intake
Vicky Sloan drove a silver sedan, volunteered at church food drives, and had never been arrested in her life.
For ten years, she worked for a private company contracted to handle after-hours youth-service intake for the county. She was not a social worker. She did not make final placement decisions. That was exactly why she had been useful to Frank.
She touched everything without officially owning anything.
Complaints passed through her desk. Emergency-voucher requests. Housing referrals. Identity documents. Contact details. Notes about which teenagers had parents, foster families, lawyers, or nobody at all.
Detective Grant explained it to me in the hospital cafeteria while I ate a sandwich I could not taste.
“She could identify vulnerable cases before anyone else,” he said.
“And send them to Frank.”
“Some were legitimately referred to Mercer Outreach. We need to establish whether she manipulated referrals.”
“What does the evidence say?”
“That her access logs overlap with nineteen of the twenty-six names in Frank’s spreadsheet.”
“Nineteen.”
“Yes.”
“Is she arrested?”
“Not yet.”
I set down the sandwich.
“You keep saying not yet.”
“Because cases built fast fall apart fast.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at him.
Grant’s expression softened.
“You’re used to problems where the threat is visible. This one wears employee badges.”
He was right again.
I hated that too.
Chloe was discharged from the hospital the next afternoon under a temporary protective plan. She could not return to the Mercer house. Mom was staying with Aunt Rebecca under conditions set by the court, and Frank was being held pending a bond hearing.
My emergency leave had been extended.
My commanding officer called me personally.
“Take care of your sister, Staff Sergeant.”
“I don’t know how long this will take, sir.”
“Neither do we. We’ll work the problem in front of us.”
I nearly cried after hanging up.
Not because the Army had solved anything.
Because someone had believed me without demanding I prove I deserved help first.
Chloe came to stay with me in a furnished apartment the Army arranged through a local family-support program. It was small. Two bedrooms. Beige walls. A couch that looked designed to survive tornadoes.
Chloe loved it.
“There’s no garage,” she said on the first night.
I understood.
No garage meant no safe.
No safe meant no footsteps toward it.
She slept twelve hours.
The next morning, Tessa came over with groceries and a bag of clothes. I expected awkwardness.
Instead, she and Chloe argued about cereal within ten minutes.
It sounded normal.
Normal almost broke me.
At noon, Grant called.
“Turn on the news if Chloe’s okay with it.”
She was not.
So I stepped into the bedroom and watched on my phone.
Vicky Sloan had been placed on administrative leave. Her attorney released a statement accusing police of conducting a “politically motivated overreach” based on the accusations of a disgruntled nonprofit director.
Frank’s attorney appeared on camera an hour later.
He did worse.
“My client is a respected community advocate,” he said. “The allegations arise from a troubled teenager influenced by an older sister with military training and a documented hostility toward Mr. Mercer.”
I paused the video.
Documented hostility.
That phrase was not random.
Frank had kept records on me.
I called Grant.
“Where did they get that?”
“Get what?”
“Documented hostility.”
A pause.
“We found notes in the safe.”
“What notes?”
“Frank documented arguments you had with him as a teenager. Police calls from your home. School counselor contacts.”
“I called police once when he punched a hole through my bedroom door.”
“I know.”
“The officer told Mom it was a family matter.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to use that against me?”
“They’re going to try.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“What else?”
“Maya—”
“What else?”
“He has a copy of an Army disciplinary counseling statement from five years ago.”
My skin went cold.
“That’s not public.”
“What happened?”
“A soldier under me was being harassed by another NCO. I confronted him. I raised my voice. I got counseled for unprofessional conduct.”
“Any violence?”
“No.”
“Any punishment beyond counseling?”
“No.”
“Then we deal with facts.”
But I was not listening anymore.
“How did Frank get it?”
“That’s a very good question.”
I looked through the doorway at Chloe laughing weakly at something Tessa said.
Someone had accessed information about me.
Vicky Sloan had county access, not military access.
Frank had another source.
That evening, Mom called from Aunt Rebecca’s phone.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
“What?”
Her voice was tiny. “There was a man.”
“What man?”
“Frank knew someone who worked around military records. Contractor, maybe. I never met him.”
“What name?”
“I heard Pike.”
I stood.
“First name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell police?”
“I remembered after the interview.”
“Call Grant now.”
“I wanted to tell you first.”
“No. Stop doing that.”
She went silent.
“Stop making me the private version of the truth. Tell the people investigating.”
I hung up.
Twenty minutes later, Grant called.
“We have a possible match. Darren Pike. Former military records contractor. Lost clearance three years ago for unauthorized database searches.”
“Where is he now?”
“Private investigations.”
“For who?”
“Among others, Mercer Family Outreach.”
The network was getting larger.
Then Grant said something that made it personal in a way it had not been before.
“Pike accessed your emergency contact record two days before Chloe was brought to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
I did.
“He was checking whether I was coming home.”
Grant did not disagree.
I looked toward the apartment door.
For the first time since bringing Chloe there, the locks did not feel like enough.
That night I checked every lock in the apartment twice. Then I checked the windows, the stairwell, and the parking lot from behind the blinds. Chloe watched from the couch.
“You’re doing the thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“The Army thing where you pretend you’re calm but your whole face turns into a checklist.”
I sat beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just tell me what’s happening.”
So I told her about Pike. Not every detail, but enough. I told her someone had been monitoring my movements and that police were handling it.
“Does that mean Frank knew you were coming?”
“He knew I might.”
“And he still brought me to the hospital?”
“He probably thought the staircase story would hold.”
Chloe looked down at her healing wrist.
“He always thought stories were enough.”
May you like
That sentence stayed with me. Frank had spent years treating narrative like ownership. If he named the event first, he believed everyone else had to live inside his version of it.
Now, for once, other people were writing things down too.
