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A growl rumbled through me, but Lyric spoke over the top of me.
“Not a chance in hell. I’m getting my daughter back.”
I completely agreed. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing. But Lleyton had a point. My mom wouldn’t just waltz out and hand over Lyric’s daughter. I scanned the long building, bypassing reception because there’d be too many people there, including security. My gaze came to rest on an emergency exit at the end of the building. It was no doubt locked, probably from both the inside and the outside to stop patients leaving, but Mom would have an access pass. It was our best bet of luring her out. I pointed at it. “Kel, ring Mom and tell her you’re at that exit. Once she comes out, we’ll be able to get in.”
She called Mom again, this time on speakerphone so we could all hear.
“Kelly? Are you here?” Mom snapped without so much as a greeting. She sounded irritated more than sympathetic to her daughter’s cry for help.
I made a mental note to tell Kelly to call me if she ever truly did feel like hurting herself again, because Mom was not the person to talk you off a ledge.
“I’m at the emergency exit to the left of the parking lot,” Kelly fake sobbed into the phone.
Mom sighed. “Come to reception.”
“No!” Kelly yelped. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Please, can you come out?”
A child cried in the background. I didn’t think it was Amelia, but it was young enough to be Toby. Lyric’s fingernails dug into my thigh. The cries grew fainter, like she was walking away from the little boy, and then came the sound of a door slamming. “Fine. I’m on my way. I’ll be one minute. Kelly, if this is another ridiculous bid for my attention, I will not be happy.”
Kelly hung up without replying. But I saw the way she swallowed thickly, hurt by our mother’s words.
“Apparently one suicide attempt is all you get with her. Any more than that and you’re just being an attention-seeker.”
We all got out of the car, closing doors behind us. I gave Kelly’s hand a squeeze of support, grateful for her help and hating that this was probably resurfacing bad memories for her. All four of us ran across the parking lot to the building, hightailing it for the emergency exit where we were supposed to meet my mother. Lleyton, Lyric, and I stood to the side, where the open door would conceal us.
Kelly waited in plain view, glancing at us nervously. “What if she doesn’t come out?”
I shook my head. “Then we’ll find another way in.”
I wished for darkness. It had always been my friend. I wanted its whispery fingers to cloak us, hide us from the security cameras and guards. It wouldn’t be long before we were spotted and guards sent to investigate what we were up to. Or worse, police called.
“Come on. Come on,” Lleyton muttered, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a track star ready to race.
Lyric put a steadying hand on his arm, but he shook it off, too wired to be comforted. I knew a little about how that felt.
The sound of locks disengaging had us all freezing. A moment later, the handle turned.
None of us wasted a moment.
I grabbed the solid wooden door, yanking it open wide. Kelly sprang forward, catching my mother by the arm, and hauled her out of the doorway.
“What on earth?” my mother squawked. She stumbled, caught unaware and unprepared. “Kelly!”
Her gaze landed on me and Lyric.
I expected guilt. Maybe a babbling apology now that she’d been caught. But she just narrowed her eyes, seething at the two of us.
“What are you doing here?” She lunged toward us, pulling out of Kelly’s grasp.
Lleyton caught her before I could. “Where’s our daughter?”
Mom didn’t answer, she just stared at me and Lyric with an almost feral snarl. I barely recognized the woman. She had never been particularly warm or caring, but the hate on her face now wasn’t her either.
“You have some nerve, coming here, pretending to be good parents when you abandoned your child.”
Lyric trembled with barely concealed rage. “Where’s my daughter?”
But Mom wasn’t done with her rant. “It should be illegal for people like you to walk the streets. Just look what you did with my boy! Corrupted him with your ungodly filth. I spent years cleansing his soul, wiping away the filth his mother left him with. But it was clearly too late for him. One glimpse of you, and all my hard work with him was like it never happened.” She threw her head back and screamed out her frustration.
