My mother covered her mouth.
“Are you saying someone tried to kill them?”
Reed didn’t answer directly.
“We’re reopening the investigation.”
I asked him whether Derek knew.
“Not yet.”
That changed two days later.
Police obtained a warrant for records connected to the insurance policy.
Then they recovered deleted cloud data from Derek’s phone.
One file was a voicemail.
Priya insisted I didn’t need to hear it.
I insisted I did.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“She survived. What are we going to do now?”
Six words.
That was enough.
I recognized Simone.
The woman with the flowers.
The woman who had stood beside my hospital bed staring at my burns.
The woman sleeping with my husband.
