Mia snuggled into me. "I'm scared, Mom."
"It'll be okay," I lied. "I promise."
"Are we safe?"
"You're safe," I lied again.
I would sit up all night keeping watch until those locks werechanged. Tomorrow morning, we'd be back in front of those detectives, Mia lined up in their sights.
What did they want from her now? What did they know that we didn't?
The key Whitney had given me lay cool and heavy in my pocket. I curled my fingers around it and stared at the space on the coffee table. Though the police had removed the painting, the word GUILTY was burned in my retinas.
ChapterTwenty-Five
The second interview room was colder than the first. The same steel table anchored to the floor, the same hard chairs, and the same detectives, staring us down.
King started the recorder, then went through the formalities, advising Mia of her rights and confirming her verbal consent to be interviewed.
King glanced at Callahan. She gave the smallest nod. Neither of them mentioned the break-in last night, the slashed painting, the accusation in dripping red letters that had haunted my sleepless night: GUILTY.
"Mia," King said, looking at my daughter. "We've been reviewing the evidence from the night Leah died. Crime scene analysis. Forensic reports. Witness statements. Some new information has come to light, and we need your help understanding it."
Mia's hands twisted under the table. I kept my own hands flat and still on my thighs. Camille sat stiffly at my other side.
Camille had warned us they'd have more. That this wasn't just "a follow-up."
The first interview had felt exploratory, almost clinical. Fact-gathering. Now the air vibrated with something else. Direction. Anticipation. Suspicion.
They had something, something that implicated Mia.
"The preliminary autopsy findings." King looked down at the file, then up again, directly at Mia. "We know that Leah didn't die right away."
My spine went rigid. Sound thinned around the edges, as if the room was wrapped in cotton.
Mia's head came up. "What… what do you mean?"
"Leah sustained a severe head injury when she fell from the bluff. But the medical examiner determined that she hemorrhaged for several hours, probably two to three, before she died."
Mia folded forward, as if the information had physical weight and it was pushing her down. "For… for hours?"
"Evidence at the scene supports that timeline," King said. His voice was almost gentle. "Blood patterns, the extent of the hemorrhaging. She did not die immediately upon impact."
Callahan said, "She regained consciousness for a period. We can't give you an exact duration. But it's clear she was moving."
My mind flashed to Zara's testimony. The sounds she'd heard at 3:30 a.m. Scraping, rustling in the bushes, something heavy moving. It wasn't another person, as we'd thought. Those sounds must have been Leah, injured and disoriented, trying to crawl back up. Trying to save herself while everyone slept a few hundred feet away.
Camille's face had gone ashen. "Moving how? Where?"
Callahan said, "The crime scene technicians found drag marks, blood smears. Disrupted leaf litter. Compressed vegetation. Patterns consistent with someone attempting to crawl up the bluff."
I felt like I might float away. Zara had been on the beach at 3:30 a.m. Three hours after Alexis heard the scream at 12:40 a.m. Leah had been out there for three hours. I imagined her waking in the dark, pain exploding in her head, covered in blood. Alone. Bewildered. Frightened.
Had she called out for help? Had her voice been too weak, the wind too loud? How many times had she tried to stand, to crawl, before collapsing again?
A wave of nausea roiled through me. The taste of metal rose in the back of my throat.
"Could she have survived, if someone had found her earlier?" I asked.
