The slap broke Rebecca's front tooth before she even realized she'd been hit.

Two days after the Provincial Court's ruling, the police obtained a warrant to search the Toledo estate tied to Malcolm Harlan's companies.

Inspector Morris allowed Maya to be present at the perimeter as the attorney of record in Marianne's missing persons inquiry. Rebecca insisted on coming along, waiting inside the judicial police car a few hundred yards from the entrance gate.

The property, known as "El Encinar," was a massive lot surrounded by stone walls and topped with barbed wire. A renovated Manchegan manor stood in the center of the estate.

The search lasted nearly four hours.

When Inspector Morris walked out the front door, her face showed that something had gone wrong. She walked over to the vehicle where Rebecca was waiting.

"Is she there?" Rebecca asked, rolling down the window.

"She was here," Morris answered, taking off her cap to wipe the sweat from her forehead. "We found clothes her size in one of the ground-floor bedrooms and blood pressure medication in her name. But they moved her last night."

"Where?"

"The groundskeeper says a private medical transport came to pick her up at three in the morning. He presented a document signed by a physician authorizing her transfer for an 'acute dementia crisis'."

"That's a lie," Maya interjected, stepping out of the car. "Marianne doesn't have any neurodegenerative disease. This is all a maneuver to strip her of her legal capacity before she can testify before the investigating judge about the safe deposit box."

"We're tracking the ambulance and the receiving clinic," the inspector said. "But the Harlans have the administrative advantage. They have friendly doctors who will sign whatever they ask in exchange for donations to their research foundations."

That same night, Rebecca received a call from an unknown number on her secondary cell phone—the one only the police and the shelter had.

She hesitated before picking up.

"Hello?"

"Rebecca."

It was Trevor's voice. It came through crystal clear, without background noise, as if he were calling from a quiet, enclosed space.

"Trevor. You're violating the restraining order. This call is being recorded."

"Let them record it," he said, with a terrifying calm. "I don't care. I just want you to know my mother is well taken care of. She's somewhere no one can ever use her to attack my family again."

"Your family was Emma and me," Rebecca replied, pressing the phone to her ear. "You destroyed it that afternoon."

"You brought your father into our house, Rebecca. You brought lawyers into our daughter's bedroom. If anything happens to my mother from the stress of this whole circus, it will be your fault. Just like the tooth. Just like everything else."

"I am not dropping the charges, Trevor."

There was silence on the other end of the line. An icy silence, identical to the one that preceded the blows in their living room.

"You don't know what you're doing," he whispered. "My father has files on your family going back thirty years. If you ruin my life, I'll make sure your son is born right in the middle of your father's ruin. Think about whether it's good for your second baby to come into the world with a zero balance in his grandfather's account."

Trevor hung up before she could reply.

Rebecca set the phone on the table. Her hand was shaking, but this time, the adrenaline rush didn't paralyze her. She stood up, walked over to Emma's crib, where she was sleeping peacefully, and tucked the blanket over her shoulders.