Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips
County lockup smelled like bleach, cold iron, and industrial floor wax.
I stood behind the one-way observation glass beside Detective Vance, staring into Interview Room C. Amanda sat at the corner of the table, wearing orange scrub-style detention scrubs. Her manicured nails tapped an impatient rhythm against the stainless steel surface. She looked neither frightened nor broken. She looked annoyed, like an executive whose flight had been delayed by weather.
The heavy steel door clicked open, and a man walked in.
He was impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit that looked like it cost more than my first car. He carried a slim leather briefcase with gold hardware. He didn't rush to hug her. He didn't kiss her cheek.
He sat down across from her, placed the briefcase flat, and clicked the latches open.
"You were reckless," the man said. His voice came through the intercom speaker clear, low, and completely devoid of warmth.
"The sixteen-year-old had a camera," Amanda snapped back, her composure slipping into venomous irritation. "I told you we needed to disconnect the local network router before today. You insisted the cloud backup was inactive."
"I told you to wait until the weekend, Amanda," Cody Sterling replied, leaning forward and lowering his tone. "David was scheduled to be in Columbus for the regional architecture symposium from Friday through Sunday. That gave us seventy-two hours to stage the perimeter breach and file the emergency protective order while he was out of county. Why did you pull the trigger today?"
Amanda leaned back, folding her arms. "The three-year-old wouldn't stop crying. She broke the porcelain lamp my mother left me. She looked at me with his eyes. I couldn't stand being in the same room with his bloodline for another forty-eight hours."
My knuckles cracked as I gripped the counter below the glass. Detective Vance placed a firm hand on my shoulder, warning me with a quiet shake of his head not to make a sound.
"You stabbed him with kitchen scissors in broad daylight," Cody said, shaking his head with thinly veiled disgust. "Do you have any idea what that looks like on high-definition video? Emma streamed the entire altercation directly to an off-site family cloud server. The footage is already sitting in the prosecutor’s felony intake folder. It’s unassailable."
"Then find an angle, Cody!" she hissed. "That’s why I transferred eight hundred thousand from his firm’s operating liquidity into your offshore account last Tuesday! You’re the architect of this transaction! Fix it!"
"The charges filed right now are attempted first-degree murder, aggravated domestic battery, and felony child endangerment," Cody said, pulling several printed motions from his briefcase. "There is no bail for violent felonies involving minors in this jurisdiction without an emergency judicial hearing. And Judge Morrison is on the bench tomorrow morning. She eats abusive parents alive for breakfast."
Amanda’s lips curled into a vicious sneer. "Then we execute Contingency C."
Behind the glass, Detective Vance leaned closer to the monitor. "Contingency C?" he muttered under his breath.
Cody paused. He tapped his gold pen against the file. "It’s risky. David is still alive. If he testifies—"
"David won't testify," Amanda interrupted smoothly.
A chill ran down my spine.
"And why wouldn't he?" Cody asked.
"Because David is a father first," Amanda whispered, her eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying certainty. "He thinks he protected Emma today. He thinks he saved Lily and Noah. But he hasn't checked his personal safe in the crawlspace yet. He doesn't know what I planted in his hunting lockbox three weeks ago."
Cody smiled for the very first time. It was a thin, predatory grin that reached nowhere near his eyes.
"The offshore ledger?" Cody asked.
"The ledger," Amanda confirmed. "Along with the counterfeit prescriptions for fentanyl and the child custody surrender forms bearing his notarized signature. By sunrise tomorrow, Detective Vance and his squad won't be looking at me as a monster. They'll be looking at David as a bankrupt addict who staged his own domestic dispute to cover up the fact that he was selling his children to private adoption syndicates."
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In the observation room, the blood drained completely from my face.
She wasn't trying to outrun the law. She was preparing to turn the entire justice system into her personal executioner.