“You’re interrupting the birth of my daughter.”
Ortiz didn’t move.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Evan looked at me.
“Brooke, what the hell is going on?”
I said nothing.
He looked toward Noah.
Noah’s jaw was clenched.
Then Evan saw the second officer holding an evidence bag.
Inside was the envelope recovered from Dr. Bell’s office.
Everything drained from his face.
“No.”
Ortiz took his wrist.
Evan jerked backward.
“No. No, no, wait.”
The handcuff closed.
Click.
That sound was softer than I expected.
Yet somehow it filled the entire room.
Evan stared at me.
“You recorded us.”
Not a question.
I held our daughter against my chest.
“Yes.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Then the mask shattered.
PART FOUR — WHEN LIARS RUN OUT OF PEOPLE TO BLAME
“This is insane!”
Evan twisted against the officers.
“She doesn’t understand what she heard!”
Detective Ortiz looked unimpressed.
“You can explain it downtown.”
“No! Play the recording. Play the whole thing. It was hypothetical.”
I almost smiled.
“Hypothetical?”
Evan looked at me desperately.
“Brooke, I was angry. I had debts. Bell was joking around. You know how people talk when they’ve been drinking.”
“You paid him fifty thousand dollars.”
His face twitched.
“I owed him money.”
“For what?”
“Consulting.”
Detective Ortiz raised one eyebrow.
“Your obstetrician consults on commercial real estate?”
Evan stopped speaking.
Then came the strategy I should have expected.
He blamed Tessa.
“She pushed me into this.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Tessa is unstable. She told me you were going to cut me out. She said you were hiding money. She kept telling me our baby would have nothing.”
“Our baby?”
His eyes closed.
Wrong words.
Wrong woman.
Wrong moment.
I looked down at the newborn daughter in my arms.
“Our daughter is forty minutes old, Evan.”
He started crying.
“Brooke, please.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand what happened.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“Please don’t do this.”
That almost made me laugh.
“You arranged to have me die during childbirth.”
“I never meant for it to go this far!”
“You brought money.”
“I panicked!”
“You drugged my tea.”
His face froze.
The detectives looked at him.
I had never mentioned that detail to him.
He had just confirmed it himself.
Ortiz immediately glanced toward his partner.
Evan realized what he had done.
“No, I mean—”
Too late.
I leaned back against my pillow.
