Chapter 4: What Rachel Knew
I didn't sleep.
I sat in the kitchen until four in the morning with Marsh's card on the table in front of me and my phone face-down beside it.
Mark had gone to bed around midnight.
I heard him try the bedroom door twice before he stopped trying.
At 4:17 a.m.
I called Rachel.
She picked up on the second ring, which meant she hadn't been sleeping either.
"I was wondering when you'd call," she said.
"Tell me everything.
Right now.
No more versions."
A pause.
Then: "You should come here."
"I'm not coming to your apartment at four in the morning."
"Then we do this on the phone." She exhaled slowly.
"Mark came to me eight months ago.
He said he needed a short-term loan.
Fifty thousand.
He said it was a cash-flow problem at work and he'd pay it back in sixty days."
"And you gave it to him."
"He's your husband, Sarah.
I thought I was helping you."
"Don't." My voice came out sharp.
"Don't make this about helping me."
"I'm telling you what I believed at the time." Her voice tightened.
"Sixty days passed.
Then ninety.
Then he came back and said the situation had changed.
That he owed money to people who weren't going to wait.
He asked me to help him buy time."
"By doing what?"
Silence.
"Rachel."
"He said if Emma got sick — nothing serious, just sick enough to cause a distraction — it would give him forty-eight hours to move money without anyone watching."
I put my hand over my mouth.
"He said it would be a small dose," Rachel said quickly.
"He said he used it at work all the time, that it was controlled, that she'd sleep for a few hours and wake up fine.
He said he'd handle the dosage himself and I just had to put it in her drink."
"But you did it.
You put it in her drink."
"He handed me the vial at the party.
He told me exactly how much.
He said he'd be standing right there."
"And then he wasn't."
"No." Her voice dropped.
"He stepped outside to take a phone call.
And I panicked.
I thought I measured it right.
I thought—"
"She stopped breathing, Rachel." My voice cracked.
"In the ambulance.
Did you know that?
They had to use a bag to keep her breathing for four minutes."
The line went silent for a long time.
"No," Rachel said finally.
"I didn't know that."
"The police found the vial under Mark's seat.
Did he put it there himself?"
"I don't know.
I gave it back to him after.
I don't know what he did with it."
"Did he tell you to say he was standing beside you when you made the lemonade?"
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
"Yes."
I closed my eyes.
"He coached your alibi," I said.
"And you gave it."
"Sarah, I was scared.
He said if either of us talked, the people he owed money to would—"
"Would what?"
She didn't finish the sentence.
I looked at Marsh's card again.
*She already knows more than you think she does.*
"Rachel," I said carefully.
"Did Mark ever mention a man named Devin Marsh?"
The silence this time was different.
Longer.
Heavier.
"Where did you hear that name?" she whispered.
"He was in my house tonight.
Standing in my hallway."
"Sarah." Her voice changed completely.
The careful tone was gone.
What replaced it was something I hadn't heard from my sister in years.
Raw fear.
"Sarah, listen to me.
You need to take Emma and leave that house.
Tonight.
Right now."
"Why?"
"Because Marsh doesn't work for the people Mark owes money to."
"Then who does he work for?"
She said a name I didn't recognize.
May you like
Then she said four words that made me stand up from the table.
"He works for Mark."
