Chapter 2

Helen's expression froze.

Patrick and every officer in the room stood rooted to the spot, their eyes tracking the line of my outstretched finger.

Edward's whole body jerked as though lightning had struck him.

The blood drained from his face in a heartbeat. He went pale as a ghost.

"That day. When the stranger carried me into the car." My voice stayed steady. "He was standing right there. Smoking a cigarette."

Helen's eyes snapped wide. She stared at me with disbelief written across her face, then turned her head toward her husband, slow and stiff. Her lips trembled, yet she could not force out a single word.

Edward swayed on his feet as though every ounce of strength had been drained out of him. He opened his mouth, and a strange rasping sound scraped its way up his throat, as if invisible hands were tightening around his neck.

He finally found his voice, and it came out as close to a roar as a man in that state could manage. "No. That's not true. You're lying through your teeth. You ungrateful brat. You've lost your mind!"

His face twisted with fury, his eyes went bloodshot, and he jabbed a finger in my direction as he kept shouting.

He snapped, "I sold the house to find you. I sold the whole factory. I spent thirteen years looking for you. And now you turn around and pin this on me? What did I ever do to deserve a life like this?"

He pounded his fist against his chest, looking every inch the picture of a man destroyed by grief.

Helen flinched when he exploded, but it steadied her somehow. Like she'd finally gotten her bearings.

She tore her hand from mine like I was something she needed to scrub off.

She snapped, "Lily. How can you speak about your father like that? His hair turned white because of you. How can you have no heart at all?"

Her gaze shifted as she looked at me, sliding from heartache to disappointment, then hardening into rage.

I almost wanted to laugh.

Over thirteen years, they had taught me nothing.

The traffickers, though, had taught me one thing. In the face of absolute violence and despair, tears and screaming are the most useless things one can offer.

I turned to Edward and calmly asked the question that had burrowed inside me for thirteen years.

I said, "Dad. That cigarette you lit at the mouth of the alley thirteen years ago. Did you ever finish it?"

My question hit him like a gut punch.

His raw, throat-tearing shout cut off mid-breath. His whole body froze in place, as if someone had slammed a pause button on him.

The grief and fury drained from his bloodshot eyes in an instant, replaced by a naked, scrambling panic.

Helen missed the shift in Edward entirely. She was still shaking with rage over what she saw as my disrespect.

Helen said, "You! You're still spouting nonsense. Lily, did being in that place too long scramble your brain? You apologize to your father right now."

I ignored her.

My eyes stayed locked on Edward's face like two nails driven deep.

I was searching every small shift in his expression for a tell, anything that might give him away.

The tension in the conference room was thick enough to choke on.

Patrick and the other officers stayed quiet. They were seasoned detectives, every one of them, and they could read a room. Something here was badly off.

Their eyes kept tracking between Edward and me.

One was a daughter stolen thirteen years earlier, only just pulled out of hell, her face cold enough to cut glass.

The other was a father who had bankrupted himself searching for her, and who now stood accused of handing her over in the first place.

This was not a reunion anymore. It had turned into a reckoning thirteen years overdue.

Patrick cleared his throat and broke the silence.

He turned to Edward. His voice came out level, but the question underneath had an edge to it.

He said, "Mr. Warren, I need you to take a breath and stay with me. Thirteen years ago, the afternoon your daughter Lily disappeared, where were you? What were you doing?"

Edward flinched hard. He pulled in a long breath and forced himself to settle.

He kept his eyes off mine and locked them on Patrick instead.

"Patrick, that afternoon I was at the plant. I was on shift. We worked piece rate, so I was grinding to hit my count. Plenty of guys on the floor can back me up on that."

He delivered the words clean and firm, as though he had run through them a thousand times in his head.

Helen rushed to back him up. "That's right, that's right. He was at work that day. I came home from my own shift, saw Lily was gone, and called him. He drove back from the plant as fast as he could."

She was scrambling to clear Edward's name. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself at the same time.

Patrick gave a small nod, signaling the officer beside him to take it down. "All right. We'll look into it."

Then he turned back to me. "Lauren, your father said he was at work that day. Are you certain it was him you saw? Is there any chance you got it wrong? Or that it was someone who looked like him?"

I shook my head. "There's no mistake."

My voice was low, but it didn't waver. "I'd know him even if he were nothing but ashes."

The hatred behind those words drained another shade of color from Helen's face.

Edward's fists clenched at his sides, the veins standing out sharply along the backs of his hands.

I closed my eyes, and that afternoon came back to me frame by frame, like a film running in slow motion.

I said, "It was hot that afternoon. The cicadas wouldn't stop screaming in the trees. I was playing marbles by myself at the mouth of the alley. He'd bought them for me that morning.

"This stranger walked up to me. He reeked of sweat. He told me my mom was waiting at the far end of the alley, said she had popsicles for me.

"I didn't buy it. My mom never let me walk down there alone. So I turned to run home, and he grabbed me."