On Christmas, my mother put a dog bowl in front of my premature baby and told everyone she didn’t belong in the family pictures. I started leaving—until Mom accidentally revealed why she desperately needed me to stay.

"Get in," I whispered.

Jason didn't wait. He sprinted around the front of the car, yanked the passenger door open, and threw himself inside, slamming the heavy door behind him. The scent of copper blood and freezing sleet rolled off him in waves.

"Turn south," Jason ordered, his voice raw as he strapped himself in. "Route 9 toward Worcester. If we try to hit the Massachusetts Turnpike, they’ll have the toll gates watched. Evelyn’s attorney—"

"Marcus is dead," I interrupted, throwing the Lincoln into gear and flooring the gas. The car surged forward, spraying slush across the abandoned cruiser as we shot down the empty highway.

Jason stared at me, his eyes wide in disbelief. "Marcus? You saw Marcus?"

"He came to the cabin," I said, my knuckles white on the steering wheel as the tires skidded slightly on the black ice before biting the road. "He tried to take Emma. He’s at the bottom of the stairs. If he isn't dead, he won't be speaking for a long time."

Jason let out a shaky, trembling exhale, burying his face in his hands. "It doesn't matter. Marcus was just the legal face. The real muscle belongs to a private security firm called Apex Holdings. They’re based out of Providence. Evelyn has had them on retainer since the day Sarah died."

The Lincoln sped through the dark, the snow-covered hemlocks whipping past our windows in a blur of black and white. The dashboard clock read 4:18 AM. The sky to the east was still pitch-black, an impenetrable void showing no sign of dawn.

In the back seat, Emma let out a sudden, high-pitched scream.

Not a whimper. A piercing, terrified cry that sent a bolt of maternal terror straight through my heart.

"Jason, check her," I said sharply, glancing into the rearview mirror.

Jason unbuckled his seatbelt, turning in his seat to reach toward the rear. "She’s okay, she’s just—wait."

He froze.

"What is it?" I demanded, my gaze darting between the icy road ahead and the mirror. "Jason, what is it?"

"Her monitor," Jason said, his voice dropping an octave, completely drained of breath. "Clara... Emma’s cardiac sensor. It’s blinking red."

Emma had worn an apnea and heart-rate band around her ankle ever since she left the NICU—a safety precaution for preemies prone to respiratory lapses.

"Pull over," Jason said.

"I can't pull over! We’re in the middle of a forest—"

"Pull the car over, Clara! Her pulse is dropping! It’s down to eighty!"

I slammed on the brakes, steering the car onto the narrow shoulder of the highway. Snow hissed against the undercarriage as the car slid to a halt beneath the skeletal canopy of ancient oak trees.

I unbuckled my belt, throwing myself into the back seat. Emma was pale, her lips tinged with a faint, terrifying shade of lavender. Her small chest was barely rising.

"No, no, no, no," I cried, ripping open her fleece swaddle. "Emma, look at Mommy! Look at me!"

I tapped the soles of her feet, rubbing her back vigorously, performing the stimulation protocols the nurses had drilled into my head during our six weeks in the hospital. She took a ragged, gasping breath, her little lungs struggling against an invisible weight.

"What's wrong with her?" Jason stammered, his hands hovering uselessly in the air. "She was fine an hour ago!"

My eyes caught something on the collar of Emma’s onesie.

A tiny, pinprick spot of dried blood.

Right near the soft curve of her neck.

My blood turned to liquid nitrogen. "Marcus," I whispered.

"What?"

"Marcus didn't just try to grab me on the stairs," I breathed, my mind flashing back to the violent struggle on the oak staircase, the way Marcus had looked up toward the nursery door before he lunged, the heavy minutes he spent in the dark living room before I ever came down the stairs.

He hadn't been searching the hearth when I caught him.

He had already been upstairs.

Before he ever confronted me, he had spent five minutes alone in the dark nursery with my daughter.

Suddenly, Jason’s phone—sitting on the center console between the front seats—buzzed violently against the plastic.

The screen lit up with an unknown number.

Jason reached forward with a trembling hand and hit the speaker button.

A woman’s voice spilled out of the speakers—smooth, melodic, utterly devoid of warmth, like silk dragged across frozen glass.

"Happy New Year, Clara darling," Evelyn’s voice purred through the car. "Did you really think Sarah’s foundation would allow an imperfect child to inherit forty million dollars? Potassium chloride is remarkably difficult to detect in a preemie’s toxicology screen, especially when she has a preexisting cardiac history."

"You monster," I screamed into the phone, tears pouring down my face as I pumped Emma’s tiny chest with two fingers. "What did you give her?!"

"There's an antidote, of course," Evelyn continued, her voice light, conversational, as though she were discussing the floral arrangements for a garden party. "A targeted beta-blocker reversal agent. I have two vials of it sitting right here in my purse. And I’m parked at the Mobil gas station on Exit 11, just four miles south of your current location."

A pause stretched across the line—long, suffocating, and cruel.

"You have twelve minutes before her heart enters ventricular fibrillation, Clara," Evelyn whispered. "Bring me Sarah’s lockbox. Bring me the birth registry. Come alone. If Jason is with you, or if I see a single flashing police light on that highway, I’ll drop both vials into the storm drain and watch your little stray take her last breath from the front seat of my Mercedes."

The line went dead.

Emma’s monitor gave a long, high-pitched, continuous beep.

Her heart rate had dropped to sixty-two.

In the front seat, Jason reached into the glove compartment, his hand closing around the grip of a cold, black nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol I never knew he owned. He pulled the slide back with a sharp, metallic *clack*, chambering a round.