My mother gasped, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe as the metal handcuffs clicked around her wrists.

They loaded me into the back of the ambulance first, the cold metal gurney stiff beneath my back.

Wyatt climbed in beside me, holding my hand so tightly my fingers went numb.

“I’m not leaving your side, Sadie,” he said, his eyes scanning the cuts on my arms.

The paramedic reached for a sterile antiseptic wipe to clean the dried blood from my temple.

“No,” I said, pulling my head back. “Leave it. I want the forensic team at the hospital to photograph everything first.”

The paramedic looked at Wyatt, who gave a firm, quiet nod.

“She’s right,” Wyatt said. “We need every mark documented before anything is washed away.”

We arrived at Columbus General Hospital twenty minutes later, the tires humming against the highway.

The bright fluorescent lights of the emergency room corridor hurt my eyes.

A forensic nurse wheeled me into a private examination room, and Wyatt stayed by the door, watching the hallway like a guard dog.