Chapter 5: The Reunion
Lila was found three days later in a modest apartment under the name Anna Reed.
When detectives brought her to the prison hospital wing where Gavin was being held for observation, she walked in with her head high and her eyes defiant. Then she saw Chloe sitting beside her father’s bed, and her composure cracked.
“Mommy?” Chloe whispered.
Lila’s knees buckled. She dropped to the floor and reached for her daughter with shaking hands.
Gavin watched them from the bed, still weak from the stress and the medication they had given him to calm the panic attacks that had begun after Chloe’s visit.
“You let them try to kill me,” he said quietly. “For five years.”
Lila looked at him, tears streaming down her face.
“I thought I hated you enough to let it happen,” she said. “I was wrong.”
The room was silent except for Chloe’s soft crying as she clung to the mother she had thought was dead.
Gavin turned his head away.
The state had almost killed an innocent man.
His wife had helped them do it.
And their daughter had been the only one brave enough to stop it.
May you like
The story was far from over, but for the first time in five years, Gavin Cole was no longer waiting to die.
He was waiting to live.
