Chapter 9 - LYDIA REMEMBERED THE PHONE
Lydia said almost nothing for two days.
She stayed beside Harry whenever possible.
She refused to sleep unless the hospital room door remained open.
Nobody pushed her.
Then, on the third morning, she asked Santos a question.
“Did you find Daddy’s red phone?”
Santos crouched beside her.
“What red phone?”
“The one Uncle Brock gave him.”
Harry and I exchanged looks.
“When?” I asked.
“The night Mommy got hurt.”
My breathing stopped.
Lydia explained in the scattered way children remember frightening things.
Brock had been in our kitchen.
Trent was shouting.
Brock gave him a phone.
Trent said he needed “ten minutes.”
Then Brock took my regular phone from the floor.
“What happened to it?” Santos asked.
Lydia pointed toward the backyard.
“He threw it in the pool.”
We did not have a pool.
But our neighbors did.
Investigators searched it.
My phone was recovered near the drain.
Damaged.
But not destroyed.
Forensic technicians extracted enough data to reconstruct the final minutes before I lost consciousness.
One recording had activated accidentally during the struggle.
Trent’s voice.
Mine.
Lydia crying.
Then Brock.
Clear enough to identify.
“Get her phone.”
A crash.
Then Trent:
“What if she already sent it?”
Brock answered:
“Then we find who she sent it to.”
Harry stared at Santos.
“Sent what?”
I suddenly remembered.
The flash drive.
Six days earlier, when Harry caught me copying files, I had made two drives.
One went into the safe-deposit box.
The other I mailed.
But not to Harry.
Not to Santos.
Not to any lawyer.
I mailed it to someone Trent would never suspect.
Rachel Dunn.
May you like
The woman he had already frightened into disappearing once.
And Rachel had received it the morning I entered the hospital.
