The officer told Lauren to remain near the SUV.
Lauren started crying immediately.
Not loud.
Not theatrical.
Small, fast sobs, like she was trying to swallow them before they counted.
“I didn’t know Chloe would come in,” she said.
She said it was not a lot at first.
She said someone she had been seeing told her Daniel could help her if she just got access to his work laptop.
She said Daniel refused when she asked him for money two days earlier.
She said he told her he loved her but would not lie to me or open accounts in my name.
I had not known about that conversation.
Daniel had protected me from it, or tried to.
The plan, if it deserved that word, had been stupid and desperate.
She had used the spare fob to open the garage and leave Daniel’s car running long enough to fill the attached garage with fumes.
