Chapter 5 - SOMEONE WAS STILL WATCHING

I drove to Emma's preschool so fast Ramirez threatened to have an officer pull me over.

Emma was safe.

Two detectives were already outside.

The photograph had been taken less than an hour earlier.

Vanessa was still at the station giving a voluntary statement.

So someone else was watching.

Ramirez showed the preschool director a picture of Owen Cross.

She went pale.

"That's Dr. Cross."

"Doctor?"

"He gave a child-safety seminar here last spring."

My skin crawled.

"Was my daughter enrolled then?"

"Yes."

Ramirez asked for security footage, but the school only kept recordings for ninety days.

Then the director remembered something.

"He asked which children had lost a parent."

Nobody spoke.

"He said grief changes risk behavior."

Ramirez wrote it down.

"What did you tell him?"

"Nothing specific."

"Did anyone?"

The director looked toward the office.

"Our former counselor might have."

Her name was Melissa Ward.

She had left suddenly seven months earlier.

Hearth had hired her.

The suite was almost empty.

Desks.

Two locked cabinets.

A server rack with the drives removed.

On one wall hung photographs from support events.

Widowed parents smiling beside counselors.

Children holding balloons.

I found myself in three pictures.

Emma in five.

Someone had circled her in red marker.

Beside her name were three notes.

MOTHER DECEASED.

FATHER HIGH-CAPACITY EARNER.

MATERNAL TRUST ACTIVE.

I stopped breathing.

Ramirez stepped beside me.

"They profiled you."

I pointed lower.

Another note had been added six months later.

PRIMARY ATTACHMENT: FATHER.

RESISTANCE TO REPLACEMENT MATERNAL FIGURE.

Ramirez's jaw tightened.

"Emma wasn't the problem."

"What?"

"She was the obstacle."

On the desk beneath the photograph board, an officer found a binder.

Inside were eleven family names.

Michael Bennett was number four.

Daniel Mercer was number nine.

Family number ten had a red stamp across the page.

COMPLETE.

Number eleven had one word.

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ACTIVE.

And beside it was the photograph of another widowed father holding a three-year-old boy.