Chapter 1 - The Injector in Her Car
The slap cracked through Lily Hart’s hospital room before I had time to think about who I was hitting.
Evelyn stumbled backward, one pearl earring swinging against her neck.
“Stay away from my daughter.”
My eight-year-old was curled beneath a white hospital blanket, oxygen tubing beneath her nose, an IV taped to her arm. Red marks circled her wrist where Evelyn had been gripping her.
Five minutes earlier, my mother-in-law had been telling me Lily was confused from medication.
Then Lily had pointed at her.
“Dad… I saw Grandma swap my dessert.”
Evelyn moved toward the bed again.
“You don’t know what you saw.”
A woman stepped from behind the privacy curtain.
Detective Sarah Collins had arrived twenty minutes earlier after hospital security called the police about Lily’s missing epinephrine injector. I hadn’t even realized Collins had entered the room.
She raised a clear evidence bag.
Inside was Lily’s injector.
“We found this in your car, Mrs. Hart.”
Evelyn stopped moving.
For six years, since my wife Rachel died, Evelyn had been the person who came when Lily was sick, remembered school pickup when construction jobs ran late, and told me I was doing better than I thought.
Now she looked at the injector as though it belonged to somebody else.
“That proves nothing.”
Collins handed me another sealed evidence sleeve.
Inside was a folded document recovered from Evelyn’s handbag.
I opened it.
The first page looked like paperwork from a private care facility outside Columbus. The second contained medical authorization language.
Then I saw a signature.
Mine.
Except I had never signed it.
Before I could finish reading, my phone rang.
The caller ID displayed Michael Reeves.
Rachel’s older brother.
I answered.
“Michael?”
“Daniel.” His voice was strangely controlled. “Have they found the second injector yet?”
Collins looked directly at me.
I hadn’t told Michael about the first one.
May you like
I hadn’t told anyone.
And until that moment, I hadn’t known there was a second injector.
