Chapter 4 - The Phone in My Pantry
I could not stop staring at the evidence bag.
My pantry.
My cereal boxes.
Ethan’s snacks.
For fourteen months, Chloe Shaw’s missing phone had been hidden six feet from where I made school lunches.
Mark looked as horrified as I felt.
“I swear I didn’t put that there.”
Daniel turned on him.
“Stop lying.”
“I’m not.”
Owens raised her voice. “Enough.”
She ordered everyone out of the kitchen while the crime-scene team photographed the wall.
I stood in the living room feeling like a stranger in my own house.
Mark came near me.
“Laura.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped.
“I didn’t hide that phone.”
“Then someone came into our house and did.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew people were threatening you.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
His face crumpled.
“Yes.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead I whispered, “Our son was sleeping here.”
“I know.”
“No, Mark. You keep saying that. You don’t know. Because if you knew what that means, you would’ve told me.”
He lowered his head.
The phone could not be unlocked that night.
But technicians recovered a partial device backup from the cloud.
At 11:38 p.m., Detective Owens called me at Denise’s house.
“We found messages.”
“From Chloe?”
“Yes.”
“To Mark?”
“No.”
My heart began pounding.
“To who?”
“There are several to an unknown number. But one contact has a name.”
She paused.
“Laura, do you know someone named Rebecca Lane?”
I nearly dropped the phone.
Rebecca Lane was my sister.
My older sister.
The woman who had helped babysit Ethan when he was a toddler.
The woman who had moved to Arizona eight months earlier after what she called a sudden job opportunity.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “She’s my sister.”
Owens went quiet.
“What?”
“The last outgoing text on Chloe’s phone before it went dark was to Rebecca.”
I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter.
“What did it say?”
Owens read it.
Three words.
HE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
Then she added, “And Rebecca replied.”
I could barely speak.
“What did she say?”
May you like
Owens’s voice lowered.
“Then get out now.”
