179 "Let her burn,” my sister said, and the bedroom door locked from the outside. Smoke clawed down my throat as I screamed barefoot against the wood, while my mother laughed in the hallway like my terror was entertainment. I had come home with her birthday gift. They left me there to die. But the old boot held my secret....

"We got it," Marcus said, slamming his hand on the steering wheel as I climbed back into the car. He plugged the green-lit USB drive into his laptop. Columns of data began to scroll down the screen, untangling themselves into readable text files and media folders.

"Search for July 8th," I said, my chest heaving as I rubbed my aching ankle. "Between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM."

Marcus typed rapidly. The screen flashed, narrowing down the results to a single iMessage thread between Mom and Jessie.

The timestamps were damning.

5:15 PM (Mom): She’s here. She bought the book. She’s upstairs in her room looking at her old sketches. Did you secure the secondary latch?

5:18 PM (Jessie): Yeah, the deadbolt is thrown from the hall side. Checked the window nails too. She’s not getting out. Are you sure about the kitchen line?

5:22 PM (Mom): The kerosene is already in the floorboards down here. It’ll look like an electrical failure from the old wiring in the walls. Leave the front door unlocked so we can claim we ran out in a panic. Meet me at the car in two minutes.

5:26 PM (Jessie): She’s screaming now. God, she’s so loud. It’s embarrassing.

5:28 PM (Mom): Ignore it, Jessica. Grace requires sacrifice. Let her burn. See you at the vehicle.

The car was silent. Even Marcus, a seasoned detective who had seen the worst of humanity, looked physically sick.

"They planned it like a grocery list," he whispered.

"They didn't think of me as a person," I said, my voice shockingly devoid of emotion. I had spent twenty-seven years weeping over their cruelty, wondering what was wrong with me, why I wasn't enough. Looking at these messages, the final shred of my desire for their love evaporated into nothingness. "I was just an inconvenience on their balance sheet."

"This is enough for a federal warrant for conspiracy to commit murder," Marcus said, his hand hovering over his radio. "I can have the state troopers arrest Deborah at her home and pick up Jessica from that club right now."

"No," I said, reaching over to close the laptop screen slightly. "If you arrest them now, they get lawyers. They get a bail hearing. They get to release a statement through a public relations firm saying the texts were hacked or taken out of context. They will turn it into a trial about my mental health. They will dig up my old thirteen-year-old psychiatric files and tell the jury I was a suicidal girl who set her own house on fire to frame her perfect family."

Marcus frowned. "Caitlyn, a jury won't believe that over this evidence."

"My mother is a master of the narrative, Marcus. You don't know her like I do," I said, turning to look at him. "Tomorrow morning is Sunday. It’s the first service at Grace Fellowship Church since the fire. My mother has already announced she will be attending to receive 'community prayers' for her loss. The local news media will be there. She invited them."