“Mydaughter is eight years old.”
“I know.”
“No,” Gavin said, voice cracking. “You don’t know. They put me in a cage.
They made her think her mother was dead. They made my wife live as a ghost.
And now they’re saying Chloe was safer because I was guilty?”
Mitchell did not argue.
Because Gavin was right.
By midnight, the grandmother’s disappearance had become the center of the investigation.
Her house had been stripped clean with military precision. No medicine in the cabinets.
No photographs on the walls except Chloe’s. No laptop. No purse. No car in the garage.
But people running in panic always missed something.
In the freezer, beneath a bag of vegetables, investigators found a sealed envelope wrapped in foil.
Inside were copies of land contracts.
County acquisition agreements.
Development easements.
Emergency relocation orders.
And one map marked with red circles around five rural
