Chapter 4

The world dissolved into a high-pitched ringing. Dead. Emily was dead. The words didn't make sense. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She wasn't part of the plan. Alice wouldn't... she couldn't...

"No," I whispered. The word was a dry rasp. "No, you're lying."

"I wish I was," Johnson said, his face etched with a grim professionalism. "We need you to come with us. To the scene."

They drove me back to the penthouse. The crowd was gone, but the flashing lights remained, painting the street in ghostly strokes of red and blue. The building felt like a tomb.

They led me up in the elevator, the silence pressing in on me. The doors opened onto our private foyer. Forensics technicians in white suits moved like ghosts through my home, dusting for prints, collecting evidence.

They took me to Emily's room.

It was pink and white, filled with stuffed animals and posters of pop stars. And in the middle of it all, on her princess-style canopy bed, was a small shape under a white sheet.

A technician lifted a corner of the sheet.

It was her. My daughter. Her eyes were closed, her face pale and peaceful, except for the dark, ugly stain on the front of her pajamas.

A wail tore from my throat, an animal sound of pure agony. This, at least, was real. The shock, the horror... it was all real. But underneath it, a different, colder emotion was stirring. Confusion. Betrayal. Alice had gone off script.

I collapsed, my legs giving out. Johnson and another officer caught me, holding me up.

"Get her out of here," Johnson ordered.

They led me to the living room, a space now dominated by the dark stain on the white rug where David had died. They sat me down on the plush sofa.

Johnson knelt in front of me. "Sarah," he said, his voice low and urgent. "I know you're in pain. But you need to help me. You said you were with Alice Brown tonight. Did she leave at any point? Did she make any calls?"

He was trying to use my grief, my shock, to corner me. To make me implicate Alice.

I looked up at him, tears streaming down my face. But my mind was clearing, the cold fury returning, pushing aside the shock. This was his fault. If he hadn't been so quick to accuse me, maybe... maybe things would be different.

"You're trying to blame Alice?" I hissed, my voice raw with a mixture of real and feigned rage. "My sister-in-law? The only person in this whole miserable family who ever showed me a shred of kindness? After what you accused me of? You have no shame."

I pushed myself to my feet, swaying slightly.

"You stand there, in my home, with my dead husband in the next room and my dead daughter down the hall, and you try to manipulate me?" I spat the words at him. "Where were you five years ago when I called 911? Where were all of you when he was breaking my bones and his mother was telling him to be quieter about it? You did nothing! The whole damn system did nothing!"

My voice rose to a scream. "You let this happen! You are all accomplices!"

The forensics techs stopped what they were doing, staring at me. Johnson's face hardened.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Miller," he said, his voice cold again. "But I'm not the one who brought a knife into this house."

He was wrong. He just didn't know it yet.

I let them lead me out of the apartment, my body shaking with sobs. But as the elevator doors closed, I caught my reflection in the polished steel. My face was a mess of tears and grief.

But my eyes... my eyes were cold and clear.

Underneath the storm of emotions, a single, chilling thought surfaced. Emily was gone. The last chain that tied me to this life, to this pain, was broken. It was a horrific, monstrous tragedy.

And it set me free.

Johnson put a 24/7 watch on me. A police car parked across the street from the hotel they put me in. He thought he was watching a suspect. He had no idea he was just watching the curtain fall on the final act.