Chapter 1 - THIRTY SECONDS TOO LATE
The guard had already taken Elena by the shoulder when Mateo shoved himself halfway out of his chair.
“Please—just thirty more seconds!”
The guard tightened his grip.
Mateo stopped.
Any sudden movement in a prison visitation room could end a visit immediately, and he had waited six weeks to see his daughter.
Eight-year-old Elena looked impossibly small beneath the pearl-colored fluorescent lights. Her light-brown braids rested against a pale blue cardigan. For most of the visit she had barely spoken.
Then, as the guard turned her toward the exit, Elena twisted loose.
She rushed back.
“Daddy.”
Mateo leaned forward.
She pressed her mouth against his ear.
“I saw him that night.”
Mateo forgot the guard.
Forgot the cameras.
Forgot the three years he had spent telling lawyers that someone else had been inside his house when Daniela died.
“What did you say?”
Elena’s frightened eyes flicked toward the corridor.
Then her hand disappeared beneath the table.
Something cold dropped into Mateo’s palm.
A small burgundy locket.
He recognized it immediately.
Daniela had bought it for Elena’s fifth birthday.
After the murder, Mateo had been told it was missing.
“Where did you get this?”
Before Elena could answer, Warden Cole approached.
Cole was sixty-two, silver-haired, controlled, and unusually observant for an administrator who normally had little reason to enter family visits personally.
“I need to see what she passed you.”
Mateo opened his hand.
Elena immediately grabbed his sleeve.
“No.”
Cole looked at her.
“Sweetheart, I’m not taking it away forever.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
Mateo turned the locket over.
A crack ran through its enamel.
Cole carefully opened one side.
Inside was another seam.
A hidden compartment.
Elena whispered, “He told me never to show anyone.”
Mateo’s stomach tightened.
“Who told you?”
She stared toward the hallway again.
Cole worked a fingernail beneath the damaged edge.
The compartment clicked.
A folded photograph appeared.
Only one corner was visible.
Cole began pulling it free.
Then his expression changed.
“Who is that—?”
Mateo saw dark hair.
A familiar jaw.
The sleeve of a gray work shirt bearing the old Vargas Construction logo.
He knew the man before the photograph was fully open.
His older brother.
May you like
Gabriel.
The same brother who had sworn under oath that he had not seen Daniela for nearly a month before she was killed.
