Chapter 4

The moment Rachel heard Emily's voice, her crying and cursing stopped. Her whole body went rigid. Slowly, in disbelief, she raised her eyes. And there was Emily, standing before her, right in front of me, alive and untouched.

Time seemed to stand still.

Rachel's eyes went round and wild. Her mouth opened further and further, stretching into something barely human. She stared at Emily's face. The face from her memory. Every detail was the same.

Then her eyes moved up, past Emily, and met mine. What I saw there was terror. Pure terror. And behind it, something unhinged. "No," She breathed the word, and the sound was thin and ragged, like wind through a crack. "It can't be."

She stared at Emily, alive and whole. And then she thought of the other child. The one under the wheels. The two images slammed into each other, and she shattered.

A scream burst out of her, a sound that had nothing human left in it.

She grabbed her head and fell from the chair. She hit the floor, and her body started jerking, her arms and legs flailing without control.

"You're not real," she screamed, pointing at Emily, her face twisted with horror. "You're a fake! Why do you have that face? You're not her. You're a ghost!"

She broke. Right there in front of us, she went completely insane.

Her scream was so sharp it felt like it could pierce through bone. It was guttural. Primal. The sound of a dying animal.

She tore at her hair and drove her skull into the floor. Each dull thud landed in my stomach.

Ryan and David rushed in and tried to hold her down. But the strength that came out of her was shocking. She surged against them, clawing and kicking, and her nails raked deep into David's forearms, leaving bloody tracks.

"She's a ghost," she screamed. "She came back. She came back for me!" Her gaze was fixed on Emily, unblinking, and all I saw in it was terror. Pure, consuming terror. "It wasn't me. I didn't kill you!"

Emily's face had gone white. She buried herself against my leg, shaking uncontrollably. "Mommy, what's wrong with her?"

I crouched down and covered her eyes and ears with my hands. "It's okay, Emily. Mommy's here." My voice came out so steady and calm that I barely recognized it as my own.

I pulled her tighter against me, trying to shut out the chaos around us.

Everything else fell away. There was only the warmth of her body and the sound of her breathing. That was all I needed to protect.

And Rachel, the woman I had called my best friend. The person I had trusted most in the world. She had become something I didn't recognize. Something monstrous, wearing a human face.

Marcus stood to the side and watched in silence, his gaze sharp and clinical, taking apart every detail of the scene before him.

He glanced at Rachel, thrashing on the floor, then at Emily, trembling in my arms. Finally, his gaze settled on me.

Whatever suspicion he had held earlier had faded. In its place was a quiet, deepening concern. He had just begun to grasp how much trouble I was really in.

This was not a simple traffic accident. This was not a family drama. This was something deeper, darker. A swamp with no bottom.

The medical team rushed in and quickly subdued Rachel. One of them injected her with a sedative.

The shrieking died down. Rachel collapsed into a heap on the ground, boneless. But her mouth still worked, shaping the same sounds again and again. "Ghost... Not her... Not me..."

"Take her away," Marcus said to the officers. "Psychiatric unit. Twenty-four-hour hold. I want eyes on her at all times. Nothing happens until she's awake and coherent."

"Got it." The officers lifted Rachel onto a gurney and wheeled her out.

As the gurney passed, Rachel's eyes fluttered open a slit. The terror had drained from her eyes. What was left was pure, cold loathing. She stared at me, her lips moving, forming silent words.

I read the words off her lips. She said," Why? Why are you still alive?"

I felt my heart stop. A cold fist gripping it, holding it still.

She wasn't lying. She believed every word she said. In the world she constructed, Emily died at the amusement park. And I was meant to crumble. The grieving mother. Or the guilty one. The one who had arranged her own daughter's death.

But Emily was standing right here. And when Rachel saw us together, the world she had built just collapsed. That was what broke her.

Seeing Emily alive was only part of it. What really pushed her over was the collapse of her scheme. That was what shattered her.