And in the same frame, a few feet away, an eight-year-old who had every reason to freeze — who had been trained her entire life to defer to exactly this woman — did the opposite.

She refused to wait.

She raised her wrist.

In the whole terrible sequence there was exactly one person behaving like Rhys’s life mattered, and it was the child.

Chapter 16 — The Messages

Prosecutors also recovered texts Sondra had deleted.