Chapter 12 - THE RIDE AWAYRobert remained in custody overnight.
The judge set a high bond and prohibited all contact with Sarah and the children if he was released.
Sarah should have felt safe.
Instead, she spent the night listening for footsteps in the hallway of the shelter.
The safe house occupied an ordinary brick building outside Nashville. Its address was confidential. The windows had alarms, and every entrance required a code.
Still, Sarah placed a chair beneath the handle of their room.
Emma watched her.
“Can he come here?”
“No.”
“Then why did you move the chair?”
Sarah looked at it.
“Habit.”
Emma climbed beneath the blanket beside Mia and Lily.
Ava slept in a borrowed crib.
“What’s a habit?”
“Something you do so often that your body remembers it.”
“Even when you don’t need to?”
“Especially then.”
In the morning, Hannah brought clean clothes and news.
The court had issued a temporary protective order.
Sarah would retain emergency custody until a full hearing.
Robert had surrendered the shotgun as a condition of bond.
His brother paid the required amount shortly after noon.
Robert was free again.
Sarah’s fingers went cold.
“He can’t contact you,” Hannah reminded her.
“He never cared what he was allowed to do.”
“Police will act if he violates the order.”
“They have to find him first.”
Hannah sat beside her.
“Fear kept you alive. But now we need to make sure it doesn’t convince you that nothing has changed.”
Sarah looked at her daughters.
Everything had changed.
Nothing felt different.
Lucas visited later with an update on the evidence.
Robert’s phone contained the forced recording.
Its metadata showed it had been created fourteen minutes before Emma’s emergency call.
The phone also contained an unfinished message addressed to Sarah’s cousin Rachel.
Sarah took the girls. She said she needed space. I think she may be heading north.
Robert had never sent it.
“He was preparing a story,” Lucas said.
“Will that keep him away from us?”
“It strengthens the criminal case.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Lucas did not pretend certainty.
“No single piece of evidence can promise that. We’re monitoring the protective order. Patrol officers have his vehicle information. The shelter is secure.”
Emma sat at the table drawing five figures beneath a yellow sun.
She looked up.
“What was on the little recorder?”
“The technicians are still recovering it.”
“Will Daddy hear it?”
“If it becomes evidence.”
Emma returned to the picture.
Lucas lowered his voice.
“There is something else you should know. My body camera recorded Robert as he was placed in the cruiser.”
Sarah remembered his whisper.
You should have stayed quiet.
“There was more,” Lucas said.
After Robert entered the vehicle, he believed the doors blocked sound.
They did not.
The rear microphone remained active.
Robert spoke to himself for nearly two minutes.
Most of it was angry and disorganized.
One sentence was clear.
“He said, ‘The oldest one ruined everything.’”
Sarah looked immediately at Emma.
The girl was still drawing.
“He meant her.”
“We believe so.”
“Then she’s the one in danger.”
“We are adding that statement to the protective order request.”
Sarah crossed the room and knelt beside her daughter.
Emma had drawn Sarah holding Ava, with Lily and Mia on either side.
Emma stood slightly apart.
Between her and the family was a dark figure holding a bottle.
Sarah picked up a yellow crayon.
She drew a line around all five of them.
“What is that?” Emma asked.
“A wall.”
Emma studied the picture.
Then she drew a small blue-and-red car outside the line.
That night, after the girls fell asleep, a telephone rang at the shelter’s front desk.
The caller did not give a name.
May you like
He asked only one question.
“Is Sarah Mitchell there?”
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