Chapter 5 - The First Move
The door pushed open, and Mark walked back into the room, tossing his car keys onto the bedside table. He looked relaxed, completely unaware that the ground beneath his feet was about to open up into an abyss.
"Traffic in the garage was a nightmare," Mark said lightly, pulling off his jacket and tossing it over the chair. He looked at Judy with a polite, dismissive smile. "All done here, nurse?"
"All done, Mr. Reynolds," Judy said evenly, keeping her eyes fixed on her clipboard. She offered me a brief, subtle nod before turning and walking briskly toward the door. "Get some rest, Mrs. Reynolds. You have a big day tomorrow."
The door clicked shut.
Mark sat down beside the bed again, resting his elbows on his knees and looking at me with that sickening, patronizing affection. "Penny for your thoughts, sweetheart? You look like you're plotting a grand escape."
I forced a tight, tired smile to my lips, keeping my left hand hidden beneath the heavy blanket, where my fingers tightly gripped the prepaid burner phone against my thigh.
"Just thinking about how lucky we are," I said, my voice dripping with deliberate sweetness. "Just you, me, and our little boy. A brand-new family."
Mark’s smile widened, entirely blind to the double meaning behind my words. "That's right, honey. Just us. Nothing is ever going to tear us apart."
"I know, Mark," I whispered, staring straight into his eyes. "I know."
He leaned forward to kiss my cheek, but as his lips brushed my skin, I felt a surge of cold fury so intense it burned clean through the pain in my abdomen. He had no idea what was waiting for him at midnight. He had no idea that the trap he thought he had engineered so perfectly was about to snap shut around his own neck.
When Mark finally leaned back and checked his watch—muttering something about needing to step out for a quick phone call with a "contractor"—I waited until the door closed behind him for the second time.
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The digital clock glowed 7:45 PM.
I pulled the burner phone from beneath the blanket, dialed Detective Clara Hayes’s number, and pressed it to my ear as the first ring echoed softly through the dark room.
