Within eleven minutes, Chicago police entered the Cole residence.
Within nineteen, Detective Mitchell called.
Naomi answered on speaker.
“We found something.”
Lauren’s fingers curled around the edge of the table.
“What?”
“A burner phone taped beneath the crib mattress.”
Naomi looked at Lauren.
Detective Mitchell continued.
“It was powered off.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
“A small digital recorder.”
Lauren closed her eyes.
“What was on it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Then Mitchell paused.
“Dr. Cole, there’s one more thing.”
Lauren opened her eyes.
“What?”
“The nursery camera wasn’t disabled by a Wi-Fi outage.”
Naomi stopped breathing.
“It was disconnected manually.”
“By who?”
“We pulled your home-security entry logs.”
Lauren waited.
Mitchell continued.
“Someone used an authorized biometric profile.”
Ethan.
That was Lauren’s first thought.
The obvious thought.
Maybe Naomi thought it too, because she reached for Lauren’s hand.
But Detective Mitchell kept talking.
“It wasn’t your husband.”
