Chapter 16 - The Missing Passenger
Grant could not speak.
"You were in the car?"
Lily nodded.
Emma moved closer.
"What do you remember?"
"Mommy was driving slow. She said she felt funny. Then the car went sideways."
Grant's eyes filled.
"Were you hurt?"
"My shoulder."
He remembered a bruise Lily had two years ago.
Renata told him Lily fell from a swing.
His hands began to shake.
"What happened after the crash?"
Lily swallowed.
"Mommy was talking."
Grant went still.
"She was alive?"
Lily nodded.
"She said my name."
Emma covered her mouth.
"Then Renata came."
"Alone?"
"No. Simon was there."
Lily stared at the floor.
"Renata pulled me out. She said Mommy was sleeping."
Grant's voice broke.
"Did she call for help?"
Lily shook her head.
"She put me in her car."
"Where did she take you?"
"A hotel."
Grant remembered.
The night Claire died, Renata had brought Lily home near midnight, claiming a babysitter had called her because Grant was at the hospital.
He had never asked where Lily was before that.
Because he was drowning in grief.
Ruiz reopened the crash timeline.
Traffic cameras confirmed a black SUV at the scene nine minutes before the first emergency call.
Registered to Simon Hale's firm.
A hotel camera from that night showed Renata carrying five-year-old Lily through a side entrance.
The truth became undeniable.
Lily had been removed from an active crash scene.
Claire had been left behind.
That upgraded everything.
Renata was arrested that night.
When officers led her from her apartment, she shouted toward cameras:
"I didn't kill Claire!"
Ruiz watched the footage.
"Interesting."
Grant looked at her.
"Why?"
"Nobody asked her that question yet."
Then Ruiz's phone rang.
She listened, frowned, and looked at Grant.
"The crash recorder from Claire's car was just recovered from an evidence warehouse."
"After two years?"
"Someone mislabeled it."
Nathan laughed bitterly.
"Or hid it."
May you like
Ruiz nodded.
"Exactly."
