SHATTERED GLASS, HIDDEN SINS

My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the plastic baggie. Maya’s phone. The police had searched for it for weeks. They assumed it had been washed down a storm drain during the torrential downpour the night she died.

I stared at the cracked pink glitter case. Three years of grief, of agonizing over Maya’s final moments, suddenly contorted into something much darker.

"He didn't just hit her," I whispered, the realization suffocating me. "She was in the car with him. Or... he got out and took it."

"There's more," Chloe said, grabbing my arm. "We have to get out of here. If he finds us—"

"I am not leaving without Lily," I snarled, ripping my arm away. "She's upstairs."

"Linda, look at me," Chloe pleaded, stepping into my line of sight. "David already has her."

My heart physically stalled. "What?"

"When the guests started running out, I hid in the pantry. I saw David come barreling down the back stairs. He was carrying Lily. She was wrapped in her yellow blanket, half-asleep. He shoved her into Eleanor’s Mercedes out front, and Eleanor drove off with her."

Panic, raw and blinding, clawed at my throat. "Eleanor took my daughter? Where did they go?"

"I don't know, but he stayed behind to find you in the bathroom. Linda, they're clearing out the house. They’re running. If we stay here, he's going to find us, and you're the only one who can prove what he did."

She was right. I couldn't save Lily if I was dead in my own backyard.

"My truck is parked two blocks down," Chloe said. "Come on."

We ran. We bolted through the manicured lawns of my neighbors, my bare feet sinking into the wet grass. By the time we reached Chloe’s battered Ford Ranger, my lungs were burning. I climbed into the passenger seat, locking the door as she cranked the engine.

As we sped away, I looked down at the phone in the baggie. "Do you have a charger?"

Chloe reached into the center console and tossed me a tangled white cord. "It’s an older model, but it should fit."

I plugged it in. For a long, agonizing minute, the screen remained pitch black. Then, a faint white apple logo flickered to life.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "It works."

"Do you know her passcode?" Chloe asked, keeping her eyes glued to the rearview mirror.

"We shared the same one since high school," I said. "Our childhood zip code."

The home screen lit up. There were no new notifications—the SIM card had likely been deactivated years ago. But the moment the phone unlocked, it opened directly to the last app Maya had been using before the impact.

The Messages app.

It was an unsent text, drafted to me. The timestamp was 11:42 PM, three years ago. Exactly fourteen minutes before the police estimated she was killed.

Lin, I’m so sorry. I found the ledger. David isn’t just cheating. He’s draining the trust fund Dad left us. He’s been doing it for years. I confronted him at the office. He’s furious. I’m walking to your house now, but he’s following me in his SUV. He’s driving erratic. Lin, please wake up and open the—

The text cut off. She never got to hit send.

A choked sob escaped my lips. "Oh my god, Maya."

"What does it say?" Chloe asked softly.

I read it aloud, my voice breaking on every syllable. It wasn't a tragic accident in the rain. It wasn't a drunk driving mistake. Maya had discovered David was bankrupting my family’s legacy. He had hunted her down in the dark to shut her up.

"He murdered her," I breathed, the reality settling over me like a suffocating blanket. "He hunted my sister down and killed her for money."

"Linda," Chloe said, her voice tight. "If Maya found a ledger proving he was stealing... where is it?"

I stared blankly at the dashboard. "The police searched her apartment after she died. They gave me everything in boxes. I went through all of it. There was no ledger."

"Because he took it," Chloe reasoned. "He hit her, got out of the car, took her phone, and took whatever proof she had on her. But why keep the phone? Why not throw it in the river?"

"Because David is a coward," I said, a dangerous new clarity sharpening my mind. "He wouldn't trust the river. He would want to make absolutely sure the phone was destroyed. He must have hidden it in the car, planning to smash it later, but in his panic to pay you off and fix the damage, he lost it in the vents."

My phone buzzed in my lap. It was my device, currently sitting at a fragile 8%.

It was a text from David.

Come to my mother’s house. Alone. Or you will never see Lily again.

I stared at the screen, the mother-bear instinct overriding every ounce of fear in my body.

"Turn the truck around," I told Chloe, my voice eerily calm.

"Linda, no. It's a trap. We need to go to the police right now."

"We go to the police, David panics. If he panics, he hurts Lily. We go to Eleanor’s house."

Chloe swallowed hard, gripping the steering wheel. But before she could make a U-turn, my phone buzzed again.

Not a text. A photo from David.

I opened it. It was a picture of Lily, asleep on Eleanor's vintage floral sofa. But sitting on the coffee table right in front of her was a heavy, black handgun.

And next to the gun was an ornate, silver pocket watch.