Chapter 14 - The Last Performance.
Nathan reached the private waiting room and saw Isabella's repaired stuffed rabbit lying on the floor.
The child advocate was frantic.
"I stepped into the hall when the alarm started."
Nathan's vision narrowed.
"How long?"
"Less than a minute."
A deputy checked the service corridor.
Another sealed the elevators.
The courthouse alarm had been triggered manually on the second floor.
Security footage showed Camille entering the child waiting area through a staff door moments before the alarm.
Then both Camille and Isabella disappeared into a stairwell.
Nathan ran down two flights with deputies behind him.
The emergency exit opened into a fenced employee parking lot.
A beige sedan was backing toward the gate.
Nathan recognized the driver.
Grant.
Camille was in the passenger seat.
Isabella sat in the back.
Nathan shouted her name.
The sedan stopped.
Grant looked over his shoulder.
A courthouse security vehicle blocked the gate from the other side.
For three terrible seconds, nobody moved.
Then Camille opened the passenger door and stepped out.
She held Isabella's wrist.
Isabella stumbled after her.
Nathan stopped several yards away.
"Let her go."
Camille's face was no longer sweet, wounded, or elegant.
Every mask had fallen away.
"Tell them to move the car."
Nathan looked at Isabella.
Her face was pale, but she was standing.
"Sweetheart, are you hurt?"
Camille tightened her grip.
Isabella winced.
Nathan's hands curled into fists, but he did not advance.
"Camille, this is over."
"It was over the moment Amelia wrote that letter."
Grant stepped out of the driver's side.
He looked terrified.
"Camille, let the kid go."
She turned on him.
"Don't pretend you care now."
Grant raised both hands.
"The police have the recordings."
"Because you couldn't do one thing without panicking."
Nathan heard sirens approaching from the street.
Camille looked at the gate, then at the courthouse doors, calculating distances that no longer offered escape.
Nathan spoke carefully.
"Isabella has nothing to do with what happened between you and Amelia."
Camille's eyes flashed.
"She has everything to do with it."
Nathan felt sick.
"Why?"
"Because Amelia built the trust after she discovered the money was missing."
Grant looked at Camille in shock.
"What are you doing?"
Camille ignored him.
"She made sure Isabella would inherit what she thought I tried to take."
Nathan finally saw the shape of Camille's rage.
Isabella was not merely a child standing between Camille and money.
She was, in Camille's mind, the living proof that Amelia had won.
"So you punished a seven-year-old for surviving her mother."
Camille flinched as if he had slapped her.
For the first time, Isabella spoke.
"My mom didn't take your life."
Camille looked down at her.
Isabella's voice trembled, but she kept going.
"You did."
Camille's grip loosened.
It lasted only a second.
That second was enough.
Isabella pulled free and ran.
Nathan crossed the space between them and dropped to his knees as Isabella collided with him.
He wrapped both arms around her and turned his body away from Camille.
Deputies moved in immediately.
Grant surrendered without resistance.
Camille screamed that everyone was lying, that Amelia had started it, that Nathan had been manipulated by a child.
Her voice echoed across the parking lot as deputies placed her in handcuffs.
Nathan did not look back.
He held Isabella until her breathing slowed.
"I knew you'd come," she whispered.
Nathan closed his eyes.
"I should have come sooner."
Isabella pulled back.
"You didn't know."
Nathan looked at the bruises still faintly visible on her arms.
"I knew enough to ask more questions."
He would not make her carry the burden of forgiving his blindness.
A detective approached with a phone sealed in an evidence pouch.
"We found this on Grant."
It was an old phone, not the one Grant normally used.
The detective said a deleted voice memo had been recovered while officers searched the car.
Nathan expected another conversation about the trust.
Instead, the first voice on the memo belonged to Grant, recorded six years earlier.
"Camille, stop calling me about Amelia's car."
Nathan went completely still.
May you like
The second voice belonged to Camille.
"Then tell me whether the maintenance code worked."
