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CHAPTER 43

Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024

MARGOT GRAY CONTINUED TO ROCKAT THE FOOT OF THE BED AFTER Sloan Hastings was gone. She searched for feelings that should be coursing through her body right about now. She waited for the relief she thought she’d feel after finally getting her secret off her chest. She tried to sense the weight of a thirty-year burden being lifted from her shoulders. She anticipated the joy of having finally done the right thing. She looked for the pride she should be feeling for having pieced together what had happened all those years ago, and the righteousness for tracking Sloan Hastings down to tell her the truth. She looked for the inner peace that should have been on the other side of three decades of lies. But none of those emotions were there with her. The only thing present in that hotel room was fear.

She didn’t know much about the law, but it was hard to imagine that she wouldn’t be in some kind of trouble for what she had done all those years ago. Even if the cops believed her story—that she didn’t know the baby had been kidnapped at the time she went through with the adoption—she had still fraudulently posed as the baby’s mother. That, alone, was probably some sort of crime.

She bit her thumbnail down to the cuticle, until she tasted the iron bitterness of blood. A thought occurred to her to run. To get in her car and drive far away from Cedar Creek. But where would she go? And how far would she get? She’d told Sloan Hastings her real name, and it wouldn’t be hard for police to find her no matter where she went. Plus, all the money she had in the world was in her pocket, and it might last a week.

She stood from the bed and pulled her phone from her back pocket. Mr. Menendez’s number was still displayed on the screen from when Margot had shared it with Sloan. A thought occurred to her, and it made sense. At some point in this process she would need a lawyer.

She looked at Mr. Menendez’s number and pressed send. It rang three times before the man answered.

“It’s Margot. I need your help.”