“Those messages aren’t what they look like.”
“What do they look like?” Reynolds asked.
“Business.
A private business matter.”
“Which business requires a ten-year-old girl to disappear?”
Andrew turned toward me.
“She went through my phone?”
The accusation in his voice was so familiar that, for one disorienting second, I almost felt guilty.
Then I remembered Katie lying beneath a hospital blanket with an IV taped to her arm.
“Your password was our wedding date,” I said.
“You had no right.”
One of the officers gave him a look of open disbelief.
Andrew noticed and softened his tone.
“I’m sorry.
I’m under a lot of stress.
My stepdaughter was nearly killed.”
It was the first time he had used the word stepdaughter in years.
At home, when he wanted praise, Katie was his little girl.
In front of teachers, neighbors, and relatives, he spoke about raising her as though he had rescued both of us.
