Chapter 15 - THE DAY THEY TRIED TO TAKE HER
Three weeks passed.
Lily began kindergarten again.
I arranged counseling.
I requested a stateside assignment while the legal proceedings continued.
For the first time since coming home, our mornings started feeling normal.
Cereal.
Missing shoes.
Buster waiting beneath the table for something to fall.
Then the school called.
"Captain Walker?"
The administrator sounded tense.
"Someone is here asking to pick up Lily."
My entire body went cold.
"Who?"
"Her maternal grandmother."
Rachel's mother, Diane.
She was listed on an old emergency contact form.
But the custody order prohibited anyone from removing Lily without my permission.
"Do not release her."
"We haven't."
"I'm coming."
I drove there while police were contacted.
Diane stood in the office crying.
She claimed Rachel had called her.
Rachel said Lily was sick.
Rachel said I was unavailable.
None of it was true.
Diane handed police her phone.
The call had come from a prepaid number.
Rachel denied making it.
For several hours, we didn't know whether she was lying.
Then investigators checked the phone records.
The prepaid phone belonged to Brad.
He had made the call from jail through an outside contact before his communication privileges were restricted.
He was still trying to create chaos.
Still trying to prove he could reach my family.
But there was something he didn't know.
Lily's school had been given photographs.
Passwords.
Written restrictions.
No one would take my daughter because a voice on the telephone invented an emergency.
Not again.
That evening Lily asked why police had been at school.
I didn't lie.
I told her someone had tried to change the plan without asking Daddy.
She thought about that.
Then said something that made me smile for the first time in days.
"They forgot the password."
"What password?"
She whispered it into my ear.
"Buster is the bestest soldier."
I laughed.
"That's a pretty strong password."
She nodded seriously.
"No bad guy knows that."
Later, after Lily fell asleep, I checked my email.
There was a message from Rachel.
No excuses.
No demands.
Only six words.
I will accept whatever the court decides.
Then another message arrived from Katherine.
Brad had agreed to cooperate with investigators in exchange for consideration on several charges.
May you like
And one thing he offered was evidence of a secret account.
An account Rachel hadn't mentioned.
