My daughter saw the tape first. Under my six-year-old niece's swimsuit strap were fresh stitches, and Lily whispered, "It wasn't an accident." Then Sarah texted, "Shut up and turn around, or I'll say you signed the consent." The ER consent paperwork named me responsible; Sarah went white.

Sarah turned around when the door closed. When she saw my face beneath the surgical mask, her glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the hardwood floor.

"Evie?" she breathed, backing away toward the desk. "How... how did you get in here? They told me you were in police custody!"

"They lied to you, Sarah. Just like they've been lying to you for three months."

I stepped toward her, pulling off my mask. "Lily is safe. The device is gone. It's destroyed."

Sarah gasped, dropping to her knees among the broken glass, covering her face as body-racking sobs tore through her frame. "Oh god... oh god, Evie... I didn't know... I swear to you I didn't know what it was! When Dad died, I had so many debts... men came to my house, Evie! They threatened to hurt Lily! Then these people appeared... they offered to make the debts go away if I let them include Lily in a biological registry program..."

"And when you realized what they were really doing?" I asked, kneeling beside her and pulling her hands away from her face. "Why didn't you come to me?"

"Because they showed me the paperwork!" Sarah cried. "They told me that if I went to the police, they would use the forged consent forms to prove you were the one who authorized the procedure! They said they'd send you to prison and take Emma! I couldn't lose both of you, Evie! I thought... I thought if I just played along until the transfer was finished, they would leave us alone!"

"They were never going to leave you alone, Sarah," I said gently, looking into her eyes. "They were going to take Lily to a facility in Switzerland tomorrow morning. You were never going to see her again."

Sarah’s face drained of color. "What?"

"Karen looked at the flight manifests," I said. "There was no 'follow-up care' scheduled in Chicago. There was a private jet chartered for Zurich at 6:00 AM."

Sarah looked at the mahogany desk, where a thick stack of original legal documents sat under a paperweight.

"They made me sign the final transfer papers twenty minutes ago," she whispered. "The original master contracts are right there."

"Then we take them," I said, reaching for the folder.

Before my hand could touch the paper, the office door clicked open.