Chapter 9 - THE WOMAN WHO WALKED OUT OF JAIL
My mother had been released ninety minutes earlier.
Her attorney produced medical evidence showing she was at risk of cardiac failure.
The judge approved temporary hospital transfer.
The ambulance never reached the clinic.
It was found abandoned beneath an overpass.
The driver was unconscious.
My mother was gone.
Agent Brooks stared at the photograph from the stuffed fox.
“When was this taken?”
Mercer enhanced the image.
A digital clock reflected in the window.
The date was that morning.
My mother had reached the lake house before Garrett entered my hospital room.
Rose was still there.
My father was still there.
And now my mother had both.
The flash drive contained a live feed.
Four camera angles from inside the lake house appeared on Mercer’s laptop.
My father sat in the living room with his hands tied.
Rose crouched behind a couch holding her stuffed fox’s missing twin.
My mother paced beside the fireplace.
A knife rested in her hand.
She looked thinner than I remembered.
Colder.
Garrett had hidden the drive because he was monitoring them.
Then the feed changed.
My mother looked directly into one of the cameras.
“Elena.”
She knew we were watching.
“You always wanted answers.”
She pulled Rose from behind the couch.
The child screamed.
My heart stopped.
“Don’t touch her!”
My voice filled only the hospital room.
My mother could not hear me.
But she smiled as if she could.
She sat Rose beside my father.
“Come to the house alone,” she said to the camera.
“Bring the original trust authorization.”
Agent Brooks shook her head.
“She’s baiting you.”
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“She has my daughter.”
“We will enter tactically.”
“She will hurt Rose.”
My father moved suddenly.
He knocked the knife from my mother’s hand.
Rose ran toward the hallway.
The video shook.
My mother struck my father with a lamp.
The camera feed went black.
I tried to stand.
Pain shot through my arm and stomach.
Dr. Bennett caught me.
“Your contractions are starting.”
“No.”
The monitor confirmed it.
Thirty-three weeks.
Injured.
Drugged.
Terrified.
My body was going into labor.
Dr. Bennett called the obstetric team.
I grabbed Agent Brooks’s sleeve.
“Bring her back.”
“We will.”
“Promise me.”
Brooks held my eyes.
“I don’t make promises I can’t control.”
It was the first honest answer anyone had given me in years.
Agents raided the lake house forty minutes later.
My father was found unconscious in the living room.
The knife lay near the fireplace.
Rose was gone.
My mother was gone.
But they left behind one thing.
A child’s drawing.
It showed a woman with dark hair lying in a hospital bed.
A little girl stood beside her holding a baby.
Above them was a house with a blue door.
On the back, Rose had written one sentence.
DADDY ROBERT SAID MY REAL MOM WOULD COME.
Then the fetal monitor alarmed.
May you like
Dr. Bennett looked between my legs.
“Elena, the baby is coming now.”
