Chapter 1 - The Tracker Karen Was Never Supposed to Find
Karen Hale ripped Lily’s backpack off her shoulder before my nine-year-old daughter had even reached the curb.
“Little thieves like you always hide behind innocent faces.”
Lily stumbled one step, then immediately dropped to her knees as Karen flipped the backpack upside down. Pencils, folders, a library book, a pink water bottle and a half-finished art project scattered across the pavement.
My name is Claire Morgan, and I was standing less than thirty feet away when it happened. I had just crossed the school parking lot after finishing a meeting with Lily’s counselor when I saw Karen kicking one of my daughter’s notebooks away with the toe of her expensive shoe.
“Start explaining before I make sure every parent here knows what you are.”
There were other families farther down the pickup lane, but the confrontation itself happened in the narrow section between two parked cars. By the time I started toward them, something small rolled from Lily’s backpack and stopped beside Karen’s shoe.
A tracking tag.
Karen froze.
The device gave a sharp beep.
She picked it up.
Her expression changed the second she saw the registered initials on the back.
D.H.
David Hale.
Her husband.
“No,” she whispered. “That belongs to my husband.”
Lily slowly looked up.
Karen’s entire accusation seemed to disappear from her face.
Then David came running from the opposite pickup lane.
He was forty-four, dark-haired, dressed in the navy business jacket he usually wore when he came directly from his office.
He saw the tracker in Karen’s hand and stopped.
“Karen, wait. I can explain.”
Karen turned toward him.
“You put this in her bag?”
David looked at Lily first.
Then at me.
“Yes.”
Karen’s face tightened.
“Why are you tracking a nine-year-old girl?”
Lily stood and pulled her backpack against her chest.
“He put it in my bag this morning.”
Karen stared at David as if he had become a stranger in front of her.
I reached Lily and stepped beside her.
David said quietly, “Claire knew.”
Karen looked at me.
“What?”
“I knew about the tracker.”
“Why?”
Because someone had been following Lily’s route between school and her grandmother’s house for almost three weeks.
Because twice a woman matching Karen’s description had been seen near the pickup area when Karen had no legitimate reason to be there.
Because Lily’s backpack had disappeared from her cubby for fifteen minutes two days earlier and returned with the zipper open.
And because that morning, with Lily’s consent and mine, David had slipped one of his registered tags into an inner pocket while we waited for the school counselor.
Karen’s anger swung toward me.
“You let my husband put a tracker on your daughter?”
I answered carefully.
“We were trying to find out who kept following her.”
David stepped forward.
“Karen, stop.”
She ignored him.
“What exactly is she to you?”
That was the question David had been avoiding for three months.
He looked at Lily.
Then at his wife.
Finally he said, “She may be my daughter.”
Karen went completely still.
Lily looked at David.
I felt her hand close around mine.
Karen whispered, “You said that woman was from before we were married.”
“She was.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me there was a child?”
“Because until twelve weeks ago, I didn’t know.”
Karen looked at Lily differently after that.
Not softer.
More calculating.
Then she said something that told me she knew far more than David realized.
“You still haven’t gotten the second DNA result back.”
David’s face changed.
I had never told Karen there was going to be a second test.
Neither had David.
May you like
Which meant Karen had already found out about the paternity investigation before she ever dumped Lily’s backpack onto the pavement.
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