“I am pulling every file we have. I am waking up the paralegals,” Jennifer commanded. “Get in your car. Go to your sister’s house immediately. Do not engage with the mercenary at the gate. Do not let Brent build a narrative of an unhinged, postpartum wife.”
“He thinks he’s checkmated me, Jen,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cold, wet wood of my own front door. “He thinks because he filed a dispute, the local cops won’t touch it over the weekend. He flew to Miami with his mother. He thinks he’s untouchable until Monday.”
There was the rapid, aggressive clacking of a mechanical keyboard on Jennifer’s end. Then, a sudden, chilling pause. The typing stopped entirely.
“Tessa,” Jennifer said, her voice dropping an octave, losing its usual clinical detachment. “I just pulled the FAA flight manifests for the private charter he booked out of Denver this afternoon.”
“And?” I demanded, a fresh wave of adrenaline pushing through my exhaustion.
“His mother, Diane, is on that plane. His sister is on that plane. The wheels touched down in Florida twenty minutes ago.” Jennifer took a breath. “But Brent didn’t get on that flight, Tessa. His boarding pass was never scanned.”
“What?” I gasped, looking around the dark, rain-swept property.
“He’s not in Miami,” Jennifer said, the urgency in her voice spiking. “He is still in Colorado. And based on the internal grid sensors I’m looking at… he is inside your house.”
The drive down the mountain to my sister’s house was a blur of torrential rain, frantic windshield wipers, and the rhythmic, soft breathing of my newborn daughter in the backseat. My sister, Molly, lived fifteen minutes away in a modest, brightly lit craftsman home that felt like another universe compared to the dark, sprawling fortress of Redwood Crest.
