Garrett didn’t answer. He just floored the accelerator.
We reached Oak Ridge Lane in record time. My normally quiet, affluent neighborhood was bathed in the chaotic strobe of red and blue lights. Four police cruisers were parked haphazardly on the lawn. Crime-scene tape was already being strung across the hedges.
I leaped out of the SUV before it fully stopped, sprinting up the walkway. A heavy-set officer, Lieutenant Harris, stepped in front of me, holding up a hand.
“Sir, you need to step back. This is an active scene,” Harris barked.
“I’m Colonel Elias Reed. It’s my house. Where is my daughter?” I pushed forward, but two more officers moved to block me.
“Colonel Reed, I need you to calm down,” Harris said, his tone shifting from authoritative to something dangerously sympathetic. “Your wife is inside. She’s… she’s pretty banged up.”
I froze. “My wife? What about Lily?”
“Your daughter is being treated by paramedics in the ambulance round back,” Harris said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Colonel… your wife stated that your daughter suffered a severe psychotic break. She said Lily found some industrial cleaner in the garage, poured it on herself, and started attacking the family when they tried to stop her.”
The world tilted on its axis.
I looked past the officer, through the open front door. Claire was sitting on the edge of the ambulance bumper. Her hair was disheveled. Her clothes were torn. She had deep, angry scratch marks down her arms and across her cheek—wounds she had clearly inflicted upon herself in the dark after she cut the power.
