Chapter 9
NINE
I stand in the middle of my daughter’s room, glass shards glinting around the sharp rock.
S-T-O-P.
I repeat the word in my head, letter by letter, the way I used to make Sadie spell hard words when she was little, with the help of alphabet flashcards.
Two things crystallize with terrifying clarity.
Staring at the rock, a horrifying thought lands and I turn to Gabriel, tears welling up in my eyes. Whoever sent me the photo wants to send another message.
“What if Sadie really didn’t drown?” I say to my husband. “What if she… what if she somehow survived but the current carried her far from the camp’s shore?”
“What are you saying?” Gabriel picks Coco up and carries her out the door, closing it so she does not get near the broken glass.
“Gabriel, I think our daughter was washed up on shore and someone found her… kept her.” I let out a loud sob. “And now they want money from us. That’s why they sent that photo.”
A sick twist tightens in my stomach. What if the person I thought was watching me is the kidnapper or someone working with them? What if he was waiting to see how far I would go to get answers?
“But they didn’t ask for money,” Gabriel says, approaching the rock.
“Not yet. I think this is just the start, a test, and they plan to send another photo, making their demands. They waited,” I whisper. “They waited until the press died down. Until people stopped looking.”
Gabriel stares at me for a long moment, something troubled flickering in his eyes, before he bends to grab the rock, and I shout for him to stop.
“Don’t! What are you doing?” I snap.
“We need to get rid of this.” His fingers are a few inches from the rock. His voice is clipped, decisive, the way it always is when he’s already made up his mind.
I grab his wrist, feeling his pulse hammer against my thumb. “That’s evidence. You can’t touch it. You’ll contaminate it.”
He stares at me. “What do you mean? What do you want us to do with it?”
“This is a crime, Gabriel. What we have to do is call the police and they will decide what to do.”
I turn and head for the kitchen, where my phone is in my handbag on the counter. “I’m calling them now.”
Before I can dial, Gabriel’s fingers close around my wrist. He yanks me toward him, the motion so sudden I release a sharp breath.
“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.
“My appointment… it got canceled.” She doesn’t meet my eyes.
And then I see it. The look that passes between her and Gabriel. It’s silent and loaded. A glance that carries shared knowledge.
I turn on her. “You did this.” The words force themselves through my gritted teeth.
“Did what?” She frowns and looks at Gabriel again, too quickly.
What a fool I was. All this time she was pretending she would help me find Sadie, but she was working with Gabriel to try and stop me. Maybe she did not even go to the camp today like she said.
She just wanted to appease me, to pretend she tried so she can tell me what a hopeless case this is. Betrayal is a hot, electric taste in my mouth.
“Please.” I wet my dry lips as my hands clench at my sides. “Don’t lie to me. You threw that rock. Gabriel asked you to.” Tears flood my eyes. “You’re in this together. You are working together to stop me.”
She falls silent, confirming it. She was out there for a few minutes, long enough to head to the beach, find the rock and throw it.
“So, if we call the police,” I continue, “they’ll find your fingerprints on it. Won’t they?”
She nods, barely perceptible. Her eyes won’t meet mine.
“We needed to stop you.” Gabriel goes to stand next to her. “This was getting dangerous. I also suspected what you just told me, that someone has her and if we are not careful, they could hurt her, Judy.”
“I can’t believe this.”
I spin back to face them. “You said you’d help me, Scarlett. You said you were on my side.”
“I am, you know that. I was trying to protect you.”
“You had no right.” I jab a finger in her direction. “You could’ve said you didn’t want to be involved. You could have just said no.” Why didn’t she tell me that Gabriel suspected Sadie has been kidnapped?
“I’m calling the police to tell them about the photo. I need their help to find the monster who has my daughter.”
“You can’t do that.” Gabriel’s voice is sharp and final, but it doesn’t move me.
I snatch my phone back and push past him.
There’s something I need to do before calling the cops. In my bedroom, I yank open the bedside drawer and take out the folded sticky note. I return to the kitchen and slam it onto the table.
“You don’t want me to call the police because you know more than you told me. So, tell me what that is. Please, explain.”
His hand trembles as he reads it, then he sighs.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I got a photo too.
” His voice is almost inaudible. “About two weeks ago. Same girl, wearing the same clothes. But she was against a different background, on the beach.” He grips the island with both hands, head bowed.
“They said Sadie was alive.” He drops his head.
“They did… they asked for money to keep it that way.”
I sink into a chair, my legs weak as it hits me that I was right.
“So, they were already blackmailing you,” I whisper. “And when you didn’t respond, they came to me. Where’s the photo? It’s another piece of evidence.”
“I destroyed it.” Shame flickers across his face. “I thought it was a hoax. I was furious.”
I turn to Scarlett. “And you? Did you know about this?”
She purses her lips before nodding. “Gabriel told me.”
“You both knew.” Pain tears through my chest. “And neither of you told me.”
She comes to put a hand on my shoulder, but I shake it off. “Don’t touch me.”
She steps back and folds her arms. “We knew it would hurt you so much to see that photo. We were protecting you.”
“Protecting me? I’m not a child.” My eyes are burning now, hot with rage as I glare at each of them in turn. “You received proof my daughter is alive and you just… ignored it.”
“I didn’t,” Gabriel says. Tears have filled his eyes and are now trickling down his cheeks.
He swipes them away angrily, then meets my eyes.
“I know it’s probably a fake. But if I went to the police and this was real…
If someone actually has her, it could put her in danger.
I needed to keep quiet and get answers. I hired a PI to look into it. ”
“And you didn’t think I deserved to know? Her own mother?” My whole body is shaking so hard I can barely keep my voice steady. “So while I’ve been losing my mind over the death of our daughter, you’ve been running an investigation behind my back?”
“He didn’t want you to go through more pain,” Scarlett replies.
“We wanted to spare you. We really believed it was probably a hoax or—” She runs out of words, mouth twisted with anguish.
“We still do. Judy, let’s do the funeral and go home.
Whoever sent those photos is just someone desperate to milk money out of Sadie’s disappearance.
They don’t have her. Much as it hurts, we need to accept that she died that night.
” She sucks in a breath. “Someone is just trying to capitalize on Sadie’s case. They don’t actually have anything.”
“She didn’t die, and I’m not leaving until I know the truth of exactly what happened. And I’m not doing the funeral tomorrow or on Sunday.” My voice drops to something colder. “And from now on, you don’t get to decide what I can or cannot handle. No more secrets. No more lies.”
But even as I say those words, I stare at my friend. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more she’s not telling me.