Chapter 195
Chapter 195:
Cailin sat at the metal table, one wrist cuffed to the bar bolted to its surface. The steel bit into her skin — cold and unforgiving — a sharp contrast to the feverish heat radiating from her injured arm.
She stared at her reflection in the one-way mirror. Her hair was a wreck, damp and tangled from the rain and the struggle on the Ferris wheel. Her coat was torn. She looked like a criminal. She looked like a woman who had lost everything.
But her mind wasn’t on her appearance. It was on the twenty-fifth floor of The Sanctuary Hotel.
Aron. Davy. Elia.
Kegan’s call confirming the children were being extracted was a lifeline she clung to with both hands. But how long did an extraction take? Every second she sat in this room was a second closer to a search warrant, a second closer to police finding the empty vent and the small signs of children who weren’t supposed to exist.
The door buzzed and swung open.
Cailin stiffened, expecting a detective with a notepad and a bad attitude.
Instead, Hilliard walked in.
He looked impeccable despite the chaos of the last hour, carrying an air of authority that seemed to suck the oxygen from the small room. Behind him was a man in a sharp gray suit with a briefcase.
One of the Holloway family’s army of lawyers.
Hilliard didn’t sit. He stood by the door, watching her with an expression she couldn’t decipher — not anger, not pity, but a cold and calculating assessment. The lawyer leaned out and spoke in a low, urgent tone to an officer in the hallway, then stepped back inside and gave Hilliard a slight nod. The officer pulled the door almost shut, leaving it cracked just enough to be technically compliant.
𝖶𝗁a𝘁 e𝘷e𝗋𝗒oո𝘦 𝗂𝗌 𝗋е𝖺𝖽іn𝘨 𝗈𝗻 ѕ.𝖼𝘰𝗺
“You have five minutes,” Hilliard said quietly. “That’s all my lawyer could negotiate p>
He glanced at the red light on the camera in the corner. It blinked once, then went dark.
“They’ve paused the recording,” he added. Then, to the lawyer: “Leave us p>
The lawyer nodded and slipped out. The door clicked shut with heavy finality.
Now it was just the two of them. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Hilliard pulled out the metal chair opposite her and sat down. He placed his hands on the table, fingers laced together. He looked at her cuffed wrist, then up to her eyes.
“The English family is pressing for attempted murder in the first degree,” he said, his voice flat, stripped of all the passion he had shown at the hotel. “Victoria has given a statement. Gregg has called the District Attorney. They have witnesses who saw you attacking Charla in the car p>
Cailin let out a harsh, incredulous laugh. “Attacking her? She had a knife, Hilliard. She tried to gut me p>
“There was no knife found at the scene,” Hilliard said calmly. “Just a distraught woman with a broken leg and a shattered nose, claiming her fiancé’s jealous ex-wife tried to throw her to her death p>
“My phone,” Cailin said, leaning forward, the handcuff chain rattling against the bar. “I recorded it. The audio is on my phone p>