Chapter 1 - THE FIRST HOUR
“They’re about to find out who they really challenged.”
Hannah turned toward me.
For several seconds, she simply stared.
Then her face crumpled.
“Mom, I should’ve told you.”
“You should have,” I said quietly. “But you’re telling me now.”
She lowered her eyes to her trembling hands.
“It didn’t start like this.”
It never did.
Grant had begun with comments about her clothes. Then her friends. Then the diner. He told her that people from families like ours didn’t understand the pressure of being a Holloway.
After that, he took control of the bank accounts.
He canceled her credit cards.
He checked her phone.
Margaret began entering their bedroom without knocking. She criticized the way Hannah cooked, cleaned, dressed, and spoke.
Whenever Hannah protested, Grant called her unstable.
“Last month, I tried to leave,” Hannah whispered. “Grant took my keys. Margaret said she’d tell everyone I stole from the family.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why were you afraid?”
Hannah looked at me with exhausted eyes.
“Because they already had documents.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“What documents?”
“Receipts, contracts, wire transfers. They put my name on things I never signed.”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know. Grant only showed me part of one file. He said if I ever embarrassed him, the police would believe I had stolen from the company.”
I pulled into the diner’s back parking lot and killed the engine.
The kitchen staff had not arrived yet. The neon sign flickered weakly through the fog.
I turned toward my daughter.
“Did you bring anything from that house?”
Hannah reached into the pocket of her pajama top.
Her fingers closed around a tiny silver object.
A memory card.
“I took this from Grant’s office last night,” she said. “That’s why Margaret attacked me.”
I stared at it.
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered without speaking.
Grant’s voice came through the line.
“You have seventy:one hours and forty:eight minutes.”
Then he added softly,
“And Evelyn… check your diner’s front window.”
I looked up.
A black SUV was parked across the street.
Inside it, someone raised a camera.
May you like
And took our picture.
:::
