Chapter 12 - Out the Back

Chaos exploded at once.

Ortiz hit Claire low, driving the gun arm sideways. Another officer kicked the revolver across the floor. I ran for the back hall because that was where the slam had come from.

“Emma!”

The back mudroom door was open. Cold air blasted in.

Outside, I saw a flash of blue moving toward the treeline.

Not Emma.

Claire.

She had slipped out in the struggle.

“Damn it!” Ortiz shouted behind me.

Then, from upstairs, my daughter cried, “Daddy!”

I spun and took the steps three at a time.

Emma was locked in the small upstairs sewing room. I rammed the door with my shoulder until the brittle old latch gave way.

She threw herself into me so hard I staggered.

“It’s okay,” I said into her hair. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“She said if I made noise, she’d burn the house.”

The gasoline smell punched through me again.

I carried her downstairs and met Ortiz in the front room. “Claire fled out back,” she said. “Units are searching.”

“Emma comes first.”

Ortiz nodded. “Always.”

We got her to the car. A paramedic checked her vitals while I crouched beside the open door holding her hand.

She looked exhausted, but alert.

“Did she hurt you?” I asked.

Emma shook her head. “She kept crying. Then she got mad. Then she cried again.”

That was somehow worse.

Ortiz came over with something clenched in her hand.

“Found this in Claire’s purse,” she said.

She opened her palm.

Inside was a folded packet of papers.

Debt notices. Lawsuit threats. One line item circled in red: FINAL EVICTION NOTICE.

Buried under them was something else.

A copy of Emma’s school emergency contact form.

My mother’s handwriting had added Claire’s name back onto it.

I looked up so fast my neck hurt. “My mother did this?”

Ortiz’s expression told me the answer.

Before I could process it, one of the officers on the radio barked, “Suspect not in perimeter. Vehicle stolen from lower access road.”

Claire was gone.

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