Chapter 1
Rourke did not hit Althea again.
The old Rourke would have.
The garden went silent as guests stared from behind the hedges.
Posie’s small arms were locked around his neck.
Her ankle was red where the short chain had rubbed, but not cut.
Rourke turned to his captain.
“Call 911.”
Althea laughed once.
“You’re calling police?”
Rourke looked down at his daughter.
“Yes.”
Paramedics arrived first.
Then police.
Then a child-protection investigator.
The decorative kennel was photographed.
The chain was photographed.
The bracelet was placed inside an evidence bag.
Rourke watched the jeweled clasp disappear into plastic.
His wife, Celia Bellacourt, had worn that bracelet the night she vanished four years earlier.
At least, that was what everyone had been told.
Althea had repeated it more than anyone.
“She left wearing her favorite jewelry.”
“She wanted a new life.”
“She abandoned both of you.”
Now the bracelet was under bedding inside a kennel where Althea had just locked Posie.
Detective Mara Hayes asked Rourke how Celia disappeared.
He answered carefully.
“She left the mansion after an argument. Her car was found near the north river road. No body.”
“Police report?”
“Yes.”
“Who filed it?”
Rourke looked at Althea.
“She did.”
Mara followed his eyes.
Althea stood with her lawyer near the patio doors, one hand still pressed to her cheek.
Her face had recovered its color.
Her control had not.
Posie whispered into Rourke’s collar:
“She puts me there when people come.”
Mara heard it.
So did the child-protection investigator.
Rourke closed his eyes.
May you like
The investigation was no longer only about a child locked in a kennel.
It was about a missing wife, a bracelet that should have been gone, and a little girl who had been hidden from guests for reasons nobody had asked about until the wrong person saw the cage.
