My hands began shaking.
Detective Reed stopped the recording.
“There are additional messages.”
“Play them.”
“Elena.”
“Play them.”
He did.
Simone’s voice again.
“You said she’d be asleep.”
Another.
“You said the smoke would do it before anyone noticed.”
My mother began crying.
My father stood so abruptly his chair fell backward.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Dad.”
“He let you go back into that house!”
Detective Reed looked at me.
That sentence stayed with me.
Derek knew I was outside.
He knew I had escaped.
And when I realized he was still inside, I went back for him.
Why would a man planning to kill me remain inside a burning house?
The answer was worse than anything I expected.
He hadn’t intended to be there.
PART 5 — THE WRONG BEDROOM
Investigators reconstructed the night.
Derek had told Simone he would leave after I fell asleep.
She was supposed to enter through the rear door.
The plan was to start a small fire near the hallway and leave.
Derek expected me to be sleeping upstairs.
He planned to return later and pretend he had been out all night.
But he came home drunk.
