Page 63 of Lethal Weakness

Just as I nearly resign, with my hand already holding the lever for my seat to recline so I can attempt to relax for the final 45 minutes of this visit… I see it.

A shadow in a second-floor window that moves against the light of the setting sun. Nothing else indicates that this is what I’ve been waiting for, but my legs are moving across the driveway with conviction.

I only take pause when I encounter the verified security guard standing at the side door to the mansion.

“Hi, I’m waiting for my daughter’s visit with her grandparents to be over, but I need to use the restroom.”

He stares at me with boredom. He’s armed like they all are. I never questioned why the Scotts have so much armed security until I noticed the assassin-looking one lurking throughout the house.

If my daughter is in this house, then I want to know what she needs protected from.

“You’re not on the authorized guest list.”

Of course I’m not. “My daughter is, though, and I’m sure you can understand that a 3-year-old can’t drive herself here. I just need to go to the bathroom while I wait for her.”

His gaze flickers back and forth with uncertainty.

“Please. I ate my dinner too fast trying to get her here on time, and my stomach is killing me. I don’t want to puke in Merrill’s rose bushes.”

I actually wish I could. To spite her would thrill me.

“Sure, go ahead.” He opens the door for me, letting me pass through, and I start walking toward the stairs with confidence before he has a chance to question it. I know where the closest bathroom is, and it doesn’t involve stairs.

Once I’m up the two flights and standing on the landing all by myself, my confidence disappears. Now what?

“Where are you?” I whisper to myself. If there is any chance that it is Jack… I just want to know.

So I can quiet the delusions in my head.

I start down the hallway to the room where I saw the shadow pass by, and quickly realize that I’m going in the direction of Edmund’s office.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in this wing of the building, but I can hear Edmund talking on the phone in French.

My steps are silent across the plush carpet as I peek through his open door. He’s on the phone, but that’s not all…

He’s tapping a tiny straw onto a square of glass.

Surely, he’s not..?

He brings it to his nose and sniffs a long line of white powder.

My jaw hits the floor. Is he doing cocaine while my daughter is in the house?

With my teeth clenched to control my breathing, I snag my phone out of my back pocket, pulling up the camera to record him.

Within 12 seconds, I have footage of him doing a second line.

He moves out of my view, and I take a small step to the side to get a better angle, but my toe bumps the leg of the console table that’s tucked against the wall. The decorative bowl of black rocks on top jostles just enough to make me freeze.

“Hold on,” I hear Edmund say in English to whoever he’s speaking to.

Air whooshes out of my lungs as my body is ripped out of the hallway and into a pitch-black room. Any noise from my mouth is muffled by a large hand, barely leaving me enough room to breathe through my nose.

I blink against the dark, but I can’t make anything out. I can hear Edmund in the hallway, opening and closing doors.

Suddenly, the door two feet from me is thrown open, but my body is moved again without my consent, being shoved deeper into the shadows behind the door.

I’m suffocating, barely able to get enough oxygen in my lungs to keep from passing out when the door shuts again, and the blackness returns.