Chapter 3

I ignored the hate pouring from the screen. I watched the clock. Ten more minutes passed in agonizing silence, broken only by the distant sirens and the frantic, muffled shouts from the police command center.

Then, Bentley Shannon appeared on the screen again, this time at a podium. A press conference. He held up a file.

"In an effort to de-escalate this horrific situation," he announced, his voice strained, "we are releasing the complete investigation file on the death of Dustin Thornton."

An officer handed a copy to a reporter. The documents were projected onto the screen behind him.

I glanced at the screen. It was the same falsified autopsy report signed by Dr. Hooper. The same doctored witness statement from Alexandra. The same lies.

I didn't say a word.

I picked up the third tool. A cauterizing pen.

With a flick of my wrist, I turned it on. The tip glowed a dull, angry red.

Before anyone in the command center could react, I pressed the hot tip to the skin just above the staple on Dallas' s arm.

There was a soft hiss and the smell of burned flesh. A small, dark mark, a permanent brand, now marred the girl's skin.

"Five chances," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

Bentley Shannon' s face went white. The documents he was holding were nothing but a pile of lies, and he knew I knew it. He had wasted another chance.

I began to apply small, superficial cuts to Dallas's arms with a scalpel, not deep enough to cause serious harm, but enough to draw thin red lines on her skin, a visible countdown.

"This is not the report," I stated calmly. "I want the real one. The one you buried. I want the name of the person who was driving the car that hit my son."

I looked into the camera, directly at him. "Do not try to fool me again. The next time, the damage will be to her face."

Bentley stumbled back from the podium, his mask of authority crumbling. He stared at the screen, at the red lines I was drawing on his daughter's arm, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something beyond self-preservation in his eyes. Raw fear.

Chelsi was hysterical. "Give it to her, Bentley! For God's sake, just give her what she wants!" she screamed, her perfect makeup running down her face in black streams.

But he shook his head, his jaw tight. "I can't."

I watched them, a mother and a father, and I let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but it was hollow and full of pain.

"I know how you feel, Chelsi," I said, my voice thick with a grief so deep it felt like it was physically choking me. "I am a mother too. I know what it' s like to see your child suffer. You are feeling a fraction of what I have felt every single day for the last six months."

The online comments erupted again.

She' s admitting she' s enjoying it! She' s sick!

How can she compare her dead drug addict son to this innocent little girl?

Just accept your son was a loser and let the girl go!

I didn't hear them. My world had narrowed to this white room, this little girl, and the faces of the people who had stolen my son's life and his name.

The clock was ticking. Another chance was burning away. The police were getting closer; I knew they were. But so was the truth. It was a race. And for the sake of my son, I could not lose.

They tried again. They put up another document. The toxicology report. It was the same one, just presented on its own. They were stalling.

I knew what I had to do. My heart hardened into a block of ice. I picked up the cauterizing pen again.

This time, I moved it toward her leg.