Chapter 3 - The Fifteen-Minute Window
I scrambled down the stairs to Mrs. Harris’s apartment on the fourth floor. My knees felt like water, but the adrenaline running through my veins was like ice water, keeping my vision sharp and clear.
When Mrs. Harris opened the door, Lily was sitting on the sofa, her face smeared with red cherry popsicle, watching a cartoon about blue dogs. When she saw me, her little eyes filled with fresh tears, and she threw her arms up.
"Mommy!" she sobbed, burying her sticky face into my neck. "Daddy locked the door. The big noise happened. The red water went splash."
"I know, baby. I know," I whispered, holding her so tightly I was afraid I’d hurt her ribs. I looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Harris, whose kind, wrinkled face was full of deep concern.
"The police said they took him to the central precinct," Mrs. Harris said, her hand resting on my arm. "They said you should go down there to sign the protective order. Maya, if you need me to keep her for the night..."
"Mrs. Harris, I need you to do something else," I said, my voice dropping into a fierce whisper. "I need you to take Lily to your sister’s house in the county. Right now. Don't tell the building manager where you're going. Don't leave a note."
She blinked, her old eyes narrowing as she saw the sheer panic behind my expression. "Is he coming back?"
"He’s already out," I said. "And he didn't just want to discipline her. He’s doing something else. Something worse."
She didn't ask questions. That was the beauty of Mrs. Harris; she had lived through forty years of a bad marriage before her husband died, and she knew the look of a woman who was running for her life. "Give me five minutes to grab my keys and her diaper bag. We'll go out through the basement garage."
Three minutes later, I watched Mrs. Harris’s old Buick back out of the garage gate and disappear into the late afternoon traffic. Lily was safe. For now.
I went back up to the fifth floor. I had twelve minutes left according to the text message.
I didn't pack clothes. I didn't pack jewelry. I went straight to Tyler’s home office—the small, locked room at the end of the hall that he called his "sanctum." He kept the key on his main keychain, but I knew he also kept a spare hidden inside the hollow base of the bronze trophy he had won at the member-guest tournament last year.
I smashed the trophy against the edge of the desk. The cheap walnut base cracked open, and a small, brass key fell onto the rug.
I unlocked the door.
The office was spotless. Tyler was an organized sociopath; everything was filed by color and date. I went to the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet—the one marked Personal Insurance.
Behind the folders for our health insurance and car titles was a large, manila envelope sealed with red wax. I tore it open.
Inside were three passports. One was Tyler’s. One was Mark’s.
The third one was Lily’s. But her name wasn't Lily Sterling on the blue cover. The name printed beneath her photo—the photo taken just three months ago at the AAA office—was Lillian Vance. Her place of birth was listed as Montreal, Canada.
He wasn't just planning to steal her trust fund. He was planning to take her out of the country. The "distraction" on the balcony wasn't just to hide the fraud; it was the setup for a custody dispute that would give him the legal right to take her across the border before I could get a judge to sign an injunction.
The front door of the apartment clicked.
The electronic lock beeped twice—the specific, high-pitched tone that meant Tyler’s code had been entered from the outside.
"Maya?" his voice called out from the living room. It wasn't the voice of a man who had just been arrested. It was smooth, calm, and completely unbothered. "Maya, honey, are you here? We need to talk about the police. They had some very wrong ideas about what happened today."
May you like
I stood in the center of the dark office, the three passports clutched in my right hand, my purse over my shoulder. The only window in the room was a small, high transom that didn't open.
There was only one way out, and he was standing right in the middle of it.
