Chapter 12 - The Bottle
Ryan’s father had taken a powerful sedative during the last months of his illness.
The medication should have been destroyed after his death.
Linda had handled that too.
Police found no bottle in the bathroom after the incident.
Which meant Linda had taken it with her.
“What was she going to do with it?” I asked.
Harper did not speculate.
I did.
The fake messages. The fake note. The 911 call. The planned scene.
She needed me to look unstable.
What better evidence than a drug in my system?
My blood had been drawn at the hospital because I had almost fainted while holding Lily.
Harper requested the sample.
The result came back the next morning.
Negative.
Relief lasted less than ten seconds.
Then the hospital toxicologist called about something else.
A trace amount of the same sedative had been found on the rim of my travel coffee mug recovered from the house.
I remembered Linda handing me coffee that morning.
“You need caffeine,” she had said.
I had taken one sip.
Then Lily cried and I forgot the mug on the counter.
Ryan sat down as if his legs had stopped working.
“She was going to drug you.”
“Yes.”
“And when you woke up—”
“Maybe I wouldn’t remember clearly.”
He looked at me with horror.
For the first time, he seemed to understand how carefully Linda had studied us.
Not just our schedules.
Our reflexes.
Our grief.
Our weak spots.
That afternoon, a state trooper spotted Linda at a motel near Albany.
By the time officers entered the room, she was gone.
But she left another folder.
This one was labeled RYAN.
Inside were copies of his father’s medical records.
Medication logs.
Nurse schedules.
And a photograph of his father taken three days before he died.
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On the back, Linda had written one sentence.
HE TRUSTED ME TOO.
