Chapter 1 - TELL THEM SHE FELL
The first thing my brother Harry heard when the ambulance doors opened was my daughter screaming my name.
Not crying.
Screaming.
“Mommy!”
Rain hammered the pavement outside the emergency entrance, turning the hospital lights into red and white streaks across the asphalt.
Harry was carrying my six-year-old daughter, Lydia, against his chest. She had no coat. One sock was missing. Her pajamas were damp from the rain, and she was shaking so violently that Harry had wrapped his jacket around both of them.
Ten feet away, paramedics were rushing me toward the automatic doors.
I was conscious.
Barely.
An oxygen mask covered my mouth and nose. My eyes kept opening and closing beneath the harsh lights.
Then I saw Harry.
I reached toward him.
“Cassidy!”
He tried to move closer.
A hand grabbed the front of his jacket.
Deputy Brock Timmons shoved him backward.
Harry nearly lost his footing on the wet pavement, but his arms tightened around Lydia before she could slip.
Timmons leaned close enough that Harry could smell coffee and rain on him.
“Tell them she fell,” he said.
Harry stared at him.
Timmons lowered his voice.
“Trent’s my friend.”
For half a second, even the chaos around them seemed to stop.
Harry looked toward me.
Then toward the deputy.
“What did you just say?”
Lydia suddenly twisted violently in his arms.
“No!”
Everyone turned.
She pointed at my stretcher with one trembling hand.
“No! Daddy hurt Mommy!”
Timmons’ face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
He stepped toward my daughter and held out one hand.
“Lydia, sweetheart, you’re confused—”
Harry knocked his hand aside.
“Don’t touch her.”
He shifted Lydia behind his body.
Timmons straightened.
“You need to calm down.”
“No,” Harry said. “You do.”
My stretcher had reached the emergency-room doors, but one of the paramedics paused after hearing Lydia.
Several nurses were now watching.
So was hospital security.
Timmons noticed.
His voice became official.
Controlled.
“We’re dealing with a domestic medical incident. The child is distressed.”
Harry stared directly at him.
“You’re not covering this up.”
I lifted my hand from the stretcher.
Harry saw it.
He stepped toward me.
“Cass?”
I could barely speak through the oxygen mask.
But my eyes moved toward Timmons.
Then toward Lydia.
Harry understood.
Something had happened before the ambulance arrived.
Something involving the deputy.
And I had been conscious long enough to know it.
Then the ER doors opened again.
A woman in a dark raincoat strode outside carrying a tablet.
Investigator Elena Santos.
She slapped it onto the intake counter.
“Everybody stop.”
Timmons froze.
Santos turned the screen toward us.
Security footage showed a black pickup leaving my house.
Trent’s truck.
Seconds behind it sat a sheriff’s cruiser.
Santos enlarged the image.
Then she looked directly at Timmons.
“Brock…”
His face lost all color.
“That’s your patrol car.”
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And suddenly Harry realized the deputy had not arrived after I was hurt.
He had been there before anyone called 911.
