“We can’t.” He leans in until I can smell the coffee on his breath.
I step back, freeing my arm from his grip. “Someone just threw a rock through our window. Our daughter’s window. Possibly the person who has been keeping her captive for six months.”
I freeze as the image comes to me.
“This is a warning, Gabriel. Throwing the rock…it’s a warning to stop asking questions that could end up reopening the case and lead back to them.” I grab my phone again. “I’m calling the police. I know the note said not to, but this is getting dangerous.”
I dial and lift my phone to my ear. The phone is cool against my skin as I wait for it to ring, but Gabriel lunges forward. The phone clatters across the tile. He snatches it up and ends the call, chest heaving.
“What are you doing? That rock could have fingerprints.” My nails bite into my palms. “You’re a lawyer. You know this is a solid lead. You’ve handled enough evidence to know what this means. Whoever threw it connects to the photo, to everything.”
Even as I say it, I realize how much sense it makes. This is a lead. A real one.
My phone still clutched in his fist, Gabriel collapses onto a kitchen chair. He hunches forward, dragging fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair as lines I’ve never noticed before etch themselves deeper across his face. In this moment, my husband looks haunted, like a stranger. Like someone cornered.
“What’s going on, Gabriel?”
“Nothing,” he says, averting his gaze.
“I know when you’re lying. Do you know something?” I step closer and place a hand on his shoulder, which is moving up and down with each breath he takes.
He doesn’t answer. His body seems to collapse further in on itself, as if holding himself upright has finally become too much.
“Gabriel, what exactly do you know?”
In that instant, everything snaps into place: the note, the warning.
Your husband knows more than you do.
“What do you know about what happened to Sadie?” I narrow my eyes at him. “I know there’s something you are not telling me. Tell me the truth.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” He sits up straighter. His expression softens, but his eyes flick away a beat too long.
I’ve been married to this man for eighteen years and know him like the back of my hand. I know when he’s lying. Yet part of me wants to believe him, needs to believe him.
“Then you wouldn’t mind me calling the police.” I keep my tone flat while my heart races between fury and fear. My eyes never leave his face, searching for more signs of his unspoken lies. “We need them to help us find out who threw that rock.”
He exhales and mumbles, “I did it.”
Everything goes still and quiet, except for the kitchen clock that seems to be ticking louder, each second landing like a blow.
“What…you what?” I wait for him to laugh, to say it’s a joke, to give any explanation that might make sense.
“I did it.” He slides his gaze from mine.
My head starts to spin and my lips tremble. This is Gabriel, my husband, my child’s father. The man who taught her to ride a bike, who cried at her school plays. “What are you saying?” I want to unhear it, to rewind time by thirty seconds.
He rubs the back of his neck, that familiar gesture of guilt I’ve seen a hundred times over the years. “I didn’t throw it myself, obviously. Someone else did. For me. I paid them.”
“You paid someone to throw a rock through our daughter’s bedroom window?” My voice barely sounds like my own. The words taste wrong. This can’t be the same man I built a life with. The anger is like a volcano about to explode in my belly. “Why? What the hell, Gabriel?”
When the window shattered, Gabriel knew exactly where to go. He was first in Sadie’s room.
I bury both hands into my hair. “Who did you hire?”
As I wait for a reply, we hear the front door open and close and, soon after, Scarlett steps inside.
“Scarlett?” I turn toward her. My cheeks are still hot with the fury burning through them from inside. “Why are you back?” She only left a few minutes ago.
