Chapter 1 - The Phone on the Table
“Don’t touch it.”
Nathan Cole caught Wade Mercer’s wrist before the injured groom could reach the phone.
The wooden armchair scraped across the hardwood floor.
Wade’s blue ice pack dropped beside his shoe.
His swollen eye narrowed with rage.
Ava stood on the opposite side of the coffee table, breathing so hard her shoulders shook beneath her pale cardigan.
Her right hand was wrapped in white bandages.
Twelve hours earlier, every adult in the room had watched her strike Wade with a brass fireplace tool.
They had called her unstable.
Dangerous.
Jealous of her mother’s new marriage.
No one had asked why.
Now Ava had slammed her black smartphone onto the table so hard that the clear evidence bag beside it jumped.
Nathan released Wade’s wrist but remained between him and his daughter.
“Show us,” he said.
Ava looked around the bright Virginia living room.
Her mother, Diane, stood near the staircase in the pale dress she had worn to the wedding.
Three relatives sat near the fireplace, staring at Ava as though she were a stranger.
Wade’s father, Franklin Mercer, occupied the center of the sofa with rigid dignity.
Only Nathan looked at Ava instead of the bloodless cut on Wade’s lip.
She swiped the phone once.
A photograph appeared.
Blurred.
Dark.
But unmistakable.
A metal latch had been mounted on the outside of a child’s bedroom door.
The camera angle matched the closed door visible beyond the staircase railing.
Diane covered her mouth.
Wade gave a contemptuous laugh.
“She doesn’t know what she saw.”
Ava swiped again.
Finger-shaped bruises around a small wrist.
A dark mark beneath wrinkled pajama fabric.
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
Then Franklin leaned forward.
His eyes locked on the pictured latch.
His face lost all color.
“Not that door,” he whispered.
Every person in the room turned toward him.
Wade stopped breathing.
Ava lowered the phone.
She looked toward the staircase.
A heavy metallic impact sounded from behind the locked upstairs door.
Nathan rose.
Wade moved to block him.
Ava grabbed her father’s sleeve.
Then she looked directly at Franklin.
“Then why is it locked again?”
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No one answered.
And from upstairs came a second, weaker knock.
