The chapel doors struck the walls hard enough to shake loose several white petals from the arrangements beside our twins’ coffins.
Every head turned.
Detective Ruiz entered first, his expression controlled and his eyes fixed on Daniel.
Two uniformed officers followed him down the aisle while another remained near the doors.
Daniel’s smile vanished.
Vanessa stepped away from him so quickly that her heel caught the edge of a pew.
For half a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Daniel laughed again, but the sound came out thin.
“This is a private funeral,” he said.
“You need to leave.”
Ruiz did not slow down.
“Daniel Mercer and Vanessa Cole, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and insurance fraud.”
The chapel erupted in whispers.
Daniel looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa looked toward the doors.
The officer stationed there shifted one step into her path.
Ruiz reached Daniel first.
“Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
Daniel stared at him as though the command had been spoken in another language.
“You have the wrong people.”
“We do not.”
When Ruiz took his wrist, Daniel jerked free and pointed at me.
“She did this.
She is unstable.
Her children died, and she needs someone to blame.”
Our children.
Even then, standing beside their coffins, he tried to separate himself from them.
One officer caught Daniel’s arm and turned him toward the pew.
The handcuffs closed with two sharp clicks.
Vanessa began backing away.
“I had nothing to do with any accident,” she said.
“Daniel told me it was mechanical.
I believed him.”
Ruiz faced her.
“Place your bag on the floor.”
She clutched it against her ribs.
“I want a lawyer.”
“You will have the opportunity to contact one after you are processed.”
The second officer removed the bag from her hands and cuffed her.
Vanessa’s face changed as the metal locked around her wrists.
The smugness disappeared first.
Then the color.
Daniel twisted toward me.
“What did you tell them?”
I calmly wiped the blood from my temple.
“I told them the truth.”
He pulled against the officer’s grip.
“What truth?”
“The one underneath every signature you forged.”
His eyes dropped to the black folder in my hand.
I opened it.
Inside were copies, not originals.
The originals had been secured days earlier in an evidence room.
The first page showed the insurance policy bearing my electronic signature.
The second contained the access record proving that signature had been submitted while I was unconscious in a hospital bed.
The third page tied the submission to a hotel internet connection.
