MY HUSBAND SLAPPED ME AFTER HIS MOTHER ACCUSED ME OF THROWING OUR 5-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER INTO A POND—BUT OUR LITTLE GIRL CRIED, “DADDY! GRANDMA DID IT!” THEN HE LOOKED ABOVE THE POND AND DISCOVERED SOMETHING THAT MADE HIS MOTHER TURN DEATHLY PALE...

On the center of the children's table, resting on a sheet of drawing paper where Sophie had been coloring a picture of a pond, was an antique brass key.

The head of the key was cast in the shape of the Vance family crest: a coiled serpent over three waves.

"The boathouse," Daniel choked out, his chest heaving, his fingers digging into his hair in sheer madness. "The old boathouse on Black Lake. It’s the only lock on the estate that still uses the crest key."

"Call the police!" I screamed, sprinting toward the courthouse exit.

"There's no time!" Daniel yelled back, keeping pace with me as we burst out into the pouring rain. "A flash flood warning was issued an hour ago. Black Lake's sluice gates are stuck open—the whole lower basin is flooding right now!"

We threw ourselves into Daniel’s truck. The tires squealed as he backed out of the courthouse lot, slamming the gas pedal to the floor. The windshield wipers beat against the torrential downpour with violent, frantic slaps.

"Julian had an accomplice," Daniel muttered, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles cracked. "He had someone on the inside. The court security guard who opened the side gate... he was Beaumont’s cellmate five years ago!"

"If they hurt her, Daniel," I said, my voice dead, flat, stripped of all humanity, "if so much as a drop of water touches her hair, I will kill them with my bare hands. I don't care about the trust. I don't care about the law. I will end them."

Daniel looked at me through the dim cabin light, his jaw clenched, tears mixing with the rain running down his face. "You won't have to do it alone."

Ten miles down the flooded backroads, the trees grew denser, their black branches whipping against the truck's windshield like skeletal fingers. The smell of lake water grew stronger, thick with mud and dead reeds.

Ahead of us, through the deluge, the silhouette of the old Victorian boathouse loomed against the churning black waters of the lake.