Chloe flinched. She stared at her mother like she was seeing a stranger in her mother's skin. Clothes disheveled. Hair and eyes wild. Wrists pinned behind her back.
"Honey, we can fix this," Rowan shouted. "Call your father. Mrs. Davis, our lawyer. We'll call everyone. They can't do this to us!"
The sirens wailed louder. Doors slammed. Four officers rounded the corner of Rowan's house and jogged toward us across the grass. Two took positions on either side of King as one spoke into his radio. The fourth headed toward the house to secure the scene. On the bluff, seagulls cried somewhere low in the fog.
"Ma'am." One of the uniformed officers took Rowan's elbow and guided her toward the squad cars lined up in the driveway. "Let's go."
"Get your hands off me!" Rowan's voice sharpened. "You have no idea who you're dealing with. Do you know who my husband is? You touch my family, and I'll sue your whole department!"
She kept shouting at them. Threats, lawyers, a tangle of names. But the power had already drained out of her. At the corner of the house, she attempted to twist around. "Chloe, look at me!" The fog swallowed her words, then her form. "Chloe!"
Chloe didn't move, didn't react or respond. She stood with her arms at her sides, mouth slack, pupils blown wide, her eyes empty. She didn't blink, didn't cry. Just stared at the space where her mother had been, as if the fog had simply erased her.
A female officer approached Chloe, placed a jacket around her slumped shoulders, and spoke in a soft voice. The officer gently guided Chloe back toward the house, away from the bluff.
I watched until Rowan disappeared around the house. My throat throbbed where Rowan's fingers had pressed. Every swallow was glass. My vision kept pulsing black at the edges.
I'd been a heartbeat from going over the edge, a heartbeat from Leah's fate.
My knees wanted to buckle. The adrenaline that had kept me upright drained away.
I felt no triumph. There was nothing to win here. Only grief and sorrow and more loss than any of us could count.
King strode over to me. He reached out, palm up. "We'll need that, please."
I looked down at my fist. He took the rock, still in its baggie, from my hand. I didn't recall picking it up after Rowan had dropped it.
The detective passed it on to an evidence tech, who sealed the rock in a new evidence bag and took it to one of the squad cars in the driveway.
King looked over his shoulder toward the house, then back to me. "You did good."
Something in my chest loosened. Not pride, exactly. Not relief. But the acknowledgment that I'd done what I could, that I'd tried my best. After days of being dismissed, doubted, and treated like a hysterical mother inventing conspiracies, it was something.
"I had to. For Mia. For Leah." The words cracked something open inside me. I was shaking, trembling uncontrollably. Had I done it? Was it enough?
I hadn't realized I'd said the words aloud until he put a hand on my arm. "It's enough."
Hope surged so fast and fierce it felt like drowning in reverse—violent, overwhelming, almost painful. I could see Mia walking out those courthouse doors, see myself holding her, feel her weight in my arms again. Real. Solid. Mine.
King's voice gentled. "Rowan assaulted you. That's an additional crime we can charge her with. We need to get that bruising documented and take your statement. I've already called an ambulance."
It felt like gulping pure oxygen after nearly drowning. "I need to be there. I need my daughter."
I tugged my phone from my back pocket. My fingers were so clumsy, it took a second to unlock the code. I'd missed several texts from Camille. We had been in near constant communication since last night, since I revealed Peyton's confession and we saw the camera files.
With Camille at my side, I'd contacted Detective King. We made a deal: I would wear a wire and get Rowan's confession. In exchange,Mia would not be charged with attempted manslaughter or aggravated assault.
I met the detective's eyes. "I'm not going to a hospital. I'm going to the courthouse."
He gave me an appraising look. Whatever he saw in me, the fierceness, the determination, the wild reckless need of a mother desperate to see her child—he relented. "I'll have the ambulance take us to the courthouse so they can check you out on the way. I'll ride along and take your statement."
The fog was beginning to lift. The shape of the world appeared again. Somewhere in front of me, a car door slammed. Someone said my name. The minutes couldn't pass fast enough. All I could think of was Mia.
Exhaustion pulled at me, my legs shaky. I didn't care. The ambulance drove down Wyld Wood Lane and pulled into Rowan's driveway as I looked past the squad cars with their lights still spinning red and blue, through thinning fog that had finally let the morning through. Toward Mia.
I started running.
ChapterForty-Nine
