The Police Report

His fingers tightened around the black rubber casing of the power cord. One yank. That was the distance between her son breathing and the silence of a tomb. Elena didn't lunge. She didn't scream. She froze, her mind snapping into a cold, crystalline focus that transcended panic. The tablet in her hand was useless—he was right, he had backups—but the information she had harvested from the freezing dark of the attic was radioactive.

"Go ahead," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the pressurized air of the nursery like a razor. "Pull it. Kill him. Add another body to the timeline. It worked so well with Sarah."

Marcus paused. His grip remained firm on the plug, the tendons in his hand standing out like wire cables, but his head turned slightly. He was listening. Val looked bored, the gun still trained on the battery pack, but Marcus was calculating. The predator in him sensed a trap.

Elena dropped the tablet. It hit the rug with a muffled thud, a heavy, expensive piece of trash. She didn't need it. She took a step forward, empty-handed, moving into the light of the flashlights.

"Case number 492-dash-B," she recited. The numbers were burned into her memory from the PDF attached to the draft folder on the cracked pink screen. "Las Vegas Metro Police Department. Suspicious Death Investigation. Victim: Sarah Vance."

The air in the room shifted. It wasn't just cold anymore; it was vacuum-sealed. Marcus released the cord, his hand hovering in the air as if he'd been burned. The arrogance that had coated him moments ago cracked, revealing a sharp, jagged edge of panic beneath the handsome mask.

"The medical examiner noted bruising on the upper arms inconsistent with a fall down the stairs," Elena continued, her voice gaining strength, fueled by the ghost of the woman who had died in this man's shadow. "Consistent with being held down. They couldn't prove it then. But they didn't have her phone. They didn't have the photos of 'Cousin Diana' wearing her clothes three days before she died."

Val shifted, the gun wavering for the first time. She looked at Marcus, her eyes wide and hard. "You said you scrubbed everything. You said the phone was destroyed."

"I did," Marcus snapped, his voice tight, losing its smooth, baritone control. But he wasn't looking at Val. He was looking at Elena. Specifically, he was looking at her chest, where the outline of the rectangular device pressed against her skin beneath the wool cardigan.

He knew. He knew she had found it. The first wife had just walked into the room.

"The texts are drafted, Marcus," Elena said, stepping closer to the crib, placing her body between him and the machine. "Time-stamped. Geotagged. She wrote them while you were downstairs pouring drinks. Just like you're doing now. She documented everything. The brakes. The 'cousin.' The passport with the name Valerie King."

Marcus took a step toward her, his face twisting into a snarl that distorted his features into something unrecognizable. "Give it to me, Elena. Now."

He wasn't playing the husband anymore. He was the killer who had stood at the top of a staircase in Vegas and pushed.

Elena backed up until her legs hit the metal frame of the crib. She could hear the *hiss-click* of the machine behind her, the sound of life continuing despite them. She looked him dead in the eye, channeling every ounce of rage she possessed.

"I sent it to the cloud," she lied. "If I don't enter a code in ten minutes, it goes to the FBI."