Chapter 2 - THE ASHES OF A LIE
My breath hitched. Derek hadn't just given them a key. He had turned my own phone into a homing beacon for the men sent to kill us.
Without hesitation, I popped the phone out of its plastic case, ripped the SIM card tray out with my fingernails until one tore and bled, snapped the small electronic chip in half, and hurled the phone into a deep puddle under the neighbor's drainage pipe.
"Mommy..." Lily whimpered, her face pressed into my shoulder. "Is Daddy bad?"
The innocence of the question broke something inside me, but it replaced my terror with a blistering, white-hot rage.
"Daddy lied to us, baby," I whispered, my voice trembling with an emotion I couldn't control. "He lied about everything. But I promise you, I will never let anyone hurt you."
Before Lily could answer, a low, muffled THOOM vibrated through the ground beneath our knees.
The windows of my home—the home where I had spent seven years cooking dinners, tucking Lily into bed, and trying so desperately to fix a failing marriage—shattered outward in a bright, orange flash. Thick, black smoke instantly began billowing into the gray morning sky, choking the air with the smell of burning drywall, synthetic carpet, and gasoline.
"Look at that," the man with the gun muttered into his earpiece, standing just twenty feet away in the alley, watching the flames engulf my kitchen window. "House is gone. If they were inside, they're ash. I'm sweeping the perimeter."
He began walking toward our hideout. His heavy boots crunched closer—ten feet, eight feet, six feet.
I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut and shielding Lily's head beneath my arm. I gripped a sharp, broken piece of concrete lying in the mud beside me, ready to drive it into his neck if he stepped through the bushes.
Suddenly, a loud siren wailed in the distance.
A neighbor down the street must have seen the explosion. The assassin stopped, cursed under his breath, turned on his heel, and jogged back toward the waiting SUV. The heavy doors slammed shut, and the vehicle accelerated out of the alley, its tires spraying wet gravel behind it.
Silence returned, save for the crackle of the inferno consuming my life.
I pulled Lily out from the thorny bushes. We stood in the alley, watching my home turn into a pyre. Everything was gone—our clothes, our memories, our sense of safety.
All I had left was my six-year-old daughter, a blue folder of documents, and a burning demand for answers.
"Come on," I said, wiping a mixture of soot and tears from Lily's cheek. "We have to walk."
We walked three miles in the freezing dampness, avoiding main roads, keeping to tree-lined side streets where suburban families were just waking up, entirely unaware of the nightmare unfolding a few neighborhoods over. Lily didn't complain once. She held my hand so tight her fingers were numb, her little sneakers squishing with every step.
We reached a small, dingy strip mall on the edge of town. Tucked between a laundromat and an abandoned video store was an old-fashioned payphone—one of the last ones in the city.
My hands shook as I dug into my purse. I pulled out a crumpled piece of paper I had kept tucked in my wallet for three years.
It was a phone number given to me by Derek's estranged brother, Marcus.
Derek had always told me Marcus was a dangerous criminal, a black sheep who had been disowned by the family for illegal dealings. Derek had forbidden me from ever speaking to him. But right now, the man who claimed to be a respectable accountant had just set my house on fire, and the "criminal" brother was the only person left alive who might know why.
I dropped three quarters into the slot and dialed the digits.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Click.
"Speak," a sharp, gravelly voice answered.
"Marcus?" my voice cracked. "It's Sarah. Derek's wife."
Silence stretched over the line for three agonizing seconds.
"Sarah? Where are you?" Marcus's tone instantly shifted from cold to sharp intensity. "Are you with Lily?"
"We're... our house... Derek tried to kill us, Marcus! He set the house on fire! There were men with guns!" I broke down, sobbing against the cold metal casing of the payphone booth.
"Listen to me very carefully, Sarah," Marcus said, his voice dropping to an urgent, commanding whisper. "Do not go to the police."
"What? Why?!" I gasped. "Marcus, they burned my house down!"
"Because the police chief in your district is on Derek's payroll," Marcus revealed, dropping a bomb that sent a chill straight down my spine. "If you go to a precinct, Derek will know before you finish filing the report. Where are you right now?"
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"A-At the strip mall on 4th and Elm. By the laundromat."
"Stay in the back alley behind the laundromat," Marcus commanded. "Don't talk to anyone. I'm ten minutes away. And Sarah... if a black Ford sedan approaches before I get there... run."
