Sabine began crying.
Deborah touched her face.
Comforting her.
Then my mother removed something from her purse.
A small blue bottle.
Exactly like the one Julian had drawn.
My chair scraped backward.
“No.”
Quade paused the video.
My mother’s frozen face stared from the screen.
I thought of the coffin.
Her fingers finding my pulse.
Her whispered promise.
Do not move.
I’m getting you out.
I thought of her recording.
Her timing.
Her insistence that we avoid the police.
The trust.
The money.
The phone call.
My stomach convulsed.
I barely reached the sink before I vomited.
Quade waited.
When I could breathe again, he said quietly, “We don’t yet know what’s in that bottle.”
I wiped my mouth.
“Yes, we do.”
“We know what it resembles.”
“Julian saw her give it to Sabine.”
“Yes.”
“She lied to me.”
“Yes.”
I turned toward him.
“She saved me.”
Quade’s expression was gentle.
“Maybe.”
That word frightened me more than anything.
Maybe.
Why would my mother save me if she had helped poison me?
Unless saving me had never been the plan.
We reviewed every frame.
Two weeks after the first meeting, my mother returned.
Another envelope.
Another conversation.
Later, Dr.
Crane appeared.
Then Marian Cole from Fallow Bridge.
Then someone from Kessler, Rowe and Finch.
Everyone connected to my death had been inside my husband’s office.
And my mother had been present.
My supposed rescue collapsed in my mind.
“What if Julian hadn’t seen me?”
I whispered.
Quade understood instantly.
“If your mother knew you were alive…”
“She could have left me in the coffin.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Because Julian announced it.”
The room went silent.
If a seven-year-old boy had not looked through the coffin opening—
I might have awakened underground.
Or died before waking.
My mother had not saved me because she loved me.
She had removed a problem before anyone else could discover it.
Quade leaned forward.
“Renee, where is Deborah now?”
My blood chilled.
“At the cottage.”
“Does she think you’re there?”
“Yes.”
“Then we do not go back.”
I stared at him.
“My things—”
“Forget them.”
“My phone—”
“Leave it.”
“She’ll know.”
“That’s fine.”
He stood.
“She already knows you’re suspicious.”
“How?”
“You disappeared last night and broke into your house.
She found you.”
I remembered.
How had my mother known exactly where I was?
Not guessed.
Known.
My hand moved toward my jacket.
I found my phone.
Quade took it.
He examined the case.
Then removed it.
Behind the battery compartment was a tiny black square.
A tracker.
My knees weakened.
He held it between two fingers.
“She wasn’t protecting you.”
His voice was flat.
“She was keeping you where she could find you.”
7. MY SISTER TELLS THE TRUTH
We needed Sabine.
I hated that.
But the safest way to break a conspiracy is often through the weakest conspirator.
Sabine was frightened.
Preston was greedy.
My mother was patient.
Fear breaks first.
Quade arranged the meeting in the parking garage beneath a hotel forty miles away.
Sabine arrived alone.
She thought she was meeting a representative from Fallow Bridge.
Instead, I stepped from behind a concrete pillar.
She screamed.
Actually screamed.
Her back slammed against her car.
“No.”
I walked toward her.
“No, no, no.”
“Hello, Sabine.”
She covered her mouth.
“You’re dead.”
“So you hoped.”
She started crying.
Not the funeral tears.
Real ones.
“You were supposed to be asleep.”
The words came out before she could stop them.
I froze.
“Supposed to be asleep?”
She realized her mistake.
I grabbed her arm.
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“Renee—”
“Tell me.”
“I swear I didn’t know they were going to bury you.”
My hand loosened.
“What?”
Sabine slid down the car until she was crouching on the concrete.
“He said it was temporary.”
“Who?”
“Preston.”
“What was temporary?”
“Your death.”
The phrase was so insane that I nearly laughed.
Sabine sobbed.
“He said we needed you unconscious.
He said Dr.
