“His mother will find a way to cover for him,” I said, thinking of Margaret’s cold, calculating eyes. “She always does.”

“Margaret can’t save him from a subpoena,” Thomas said. “Not this time.”

The second officer walked back into the bedroom, holding a small, black external hard drive he had found under the bed.

“Is this yours, ma’am?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “That’s Ryan’s. He backs up his work files and his personal laptop onto those.”

“We’ll take that too,” Miller said.

I looked around the ruined bedroom, feeling a strange mix of grief and emptiness.

The home I had spent three years building, the nursery I had prepared with so much hope, was gone.

But as I looked at Thomas, and then down at my own hands, the fear began to subside, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.

“Let’s get what we can and go,” I said. “I don’t want to be here when the sun goes down.”

“We’ll help you pack a bag of whatever clothes are still intact,” Thomas said.

We spent the next thirty minutes gathering what we could.