Officer Bell reached for the padlock, and Derek’s voice broke through the speaker one more time.
“Hannah, don’t open it.”
Bell glanced at me.
I looked at Lily instead.
My daughter was still on the stretcher, pale beneath the oversized pajamas she had been wearing for who knew how long. A medic had started an IV, and another was asking me questions about her last meal. I could not stop thinking about the cereal bowl she had been clutching when I found her.
Three days alone.
Three days while her father sat on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.
And now he was more frightened of a closet than he was concerned about his starving daughter.
“Open it,” I told Officer Bell.
The brass lock snapped under the force of the bolt cutters.
The sound seemed impossibly loud in the silent house.
The door swung inward.
At first, I saw only shelves packed with folded towels and old blankets. Then Bell crouched and pulled aside a stack of linen from the bottom shelf.
Behind it was a second door.
Not a closet door.
A narrow steel access door had been installed directly into the wall.
