Chapter 3 - The Crimson Glow
The crimson light cast a bloody hue across Officer Miller’s stern jawline. In the cramped hallway, the silence became absolute, broken only by the refrigerator humming a low, mechanical drone from the kitchen.
Chloe stared at the blinking red light as if it were a ticking bomb. The baseball bat felt suddenly heavy, dead weight in her grip. She let the barrel drop, the wood hitting the linoleum floor with a dull, echoing thump.
"What's on that drive?" Chloe asked, the fury draining out of her, replaced by a sudden, hollow dread. Her knees felt weak beneath her brown sweater.
Miller didn't answer right away. Her thumb tapped rhythmically against the side of her belt as the camera interface decrypted the secure partition on the tiny flash drive. A list of file names scrolled rapidly across the tiny screen of her body-worn monitor. Incident_01_Audio.wav, Stairwell_Confrontation_1012.mp4, Medical_Report_Scans.pdf.
Clara closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping inside the blue cardigan. The defiance seemed to leak out of her all at once, leaving behind an exhausted, broken woman in handcuffs.
"You didn't want anyone to see those, did you, Mom?" Chloe whispered, her voice cracking. The hostility was entirely gone, replaced by a terrifying curiosity. "You weren't hiding things from me because you were guilty... you were hiding them because you were protecting someone."
Miller looked up from the screen, her professional detachment faltering for a fraction of a second. She glanced at the male officer, giving a subtle, almost imperceptible nod. The handcuffs clicked open, the metal bracelets falling away from Clara’s bruised wrists with a metallic clatter that made everyone flinch.
Clara rubbed her raw, red wrists, her eyes welling with sudden, hot tears that she angrily blinked away.
"I was protecting our lives, Chloe," Clara said, her voice raspy and worn down to a nub. "You think I hit you because I lost my temper? Look at the date on the first file on that screen."
Miller tapped the screen, expanding the preview window. A thumbnail image popped up, filling the small display with a terrifying clarity. It wasn't a picture of Clara’s battered face. It was a photo of Chloe, smiling innocently, standing next to a man whose face had been aggressively scratched out with a black marker on a printed document.
"Who is that?" Miller demanded, stepping closer to Clara. "Who marked out that face?"
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Parker took a sudden step backward toward the front door, his hand reaching behind his back, his fingers curling tightly around the doorknob.
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