PART 2
The dispatcher kept me on the line.
“Ma’am, I have officers heading to the address now. Can you stay with me?”
“Yes.”
My voice sounded strange to me. Flat. Far away. Like it belonged to a woman calmly reporting a fender bender, not a woman watching her ex-husband carry a flat-screen television into the home she’d bought to finally get away from him.
On the screen, Vanessa came back out of the side door. She stretched her arms over her head, then pulled her sunglasses from her hair and settled them on her nose. She looked relaxed.
She looked like a woman who was home.
“Diane,” Rachel whispered. “Breathe.”
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped.
“Ma’am,” the dispatcher said, “you mentioned the door has a keypad. Do you have an app for it? Some of those systems keep a record.”
A record.
I hadn’t even thought of it.
