Her eyes went first to Harper.
Then to me.
Then to the open laptop.
For the first time since I had met her, Clara Monroe’s perfect face cracked.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
The mask slipped, and something monstrous looked out.
PART 3
“Harper,” Clara said softly, “go to your room.”
The little girl did not move.
That was the first miracle.
Clara smiled.
Not at Harper.
At me.
“Ethan, sweetheart, I don’t know what she told you, but she has episodes. I warned you about her imagination.”
I stood between them.
“Don’t.”
Clara blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t call evidence imagination.”
Her eyes slid to the laptop again.
Then she laughed once, sharp and empty.
“You have no idea what you’re looking at.”
“I know enough.”
“No,” Clara whispered. “You know what a disturbed child wants you to know.”
Harper made a tiny sound behind me.
Clara heard it and tilted her head.
“Oh, Harper. Did you show him your little treasures?”
The way she said it made the room feel smaller.
I reached back and touched Harper’s shoulder gently.
“She’s safe.”
Clara’s gaze hardened.
“No child is safe with a man she barely knows.”
The cruelty of it was clever. She wanted to make me step back. She wanted to make me doubt my place, my right to protect Harper, my right to interfere.
But she had miscalculated one thing.
I had spent years standing between bleeding people and death.
I knew exactly when stepping back was not an option.
“Police are coming,” I said.
Clara’s face emptied.
Then, with terrifying calm, she removed her gloves and placed them on the entry table.
“You called the police on your wife?”
“I called the police for a child.”
A faint sound came from outside.
Sirens.
Distant, but approaching.
Clara heard them too.
Her eyes flicked toward the basement door.
Harper grabbed my shirt.
“She’s going to make it come,” she whispered.
Clara moved fast.
She lunged toward the basement.
I caught her wrist before she reached the door. She twisted with surprising strength, slammed her elbow into my ribs, and knocked over a hallway lamp. Glass shattered across the floor.
Harper screamed.
“Run to the front porch!” I shouted.
But Clara seized the fallen lamp cord and yanked hard. Sparks snapped from the socket.
Then I smelled it.
Gasoline.
Not fresh from the basement.
Already spread.
Already waiting.
My pulse thundered.
Clara had prepared the house before leaving for her “business trip.”
She had planned the ending before Harper ever opened her backpack.
Clara backed away from me, breathing hard, her beautiful hair falling loose around her face.
“You should have left,” she said.
I stared at her.
“You burned your sister alive.”
Her mouth trembled.
Not with grief.
With rage.
“She took everything.”
“She had a baby.”
“She had my life!” Clara screamed.
The sirens grew louder.
Harper sobbed behind me.
Clara looked at the child, and for one horrifying instant, I understood the depth of her hatred. Harper was not a daughter to her. Harper was proof. Proof Maggie had existed. Proof Daniel had loved. Proof Clara had never truly won.
Then Clara pulled a silver lighter from her coat pocket.
My body moved before thought could catch up.
I shoved Harper behind the kitchen island and grabbed the heavy wool blanket from the couch. Clara flicked the lighter once.