“Noah will know who his father is, but he will never be left alone with you or Eleanor.”

Julian stared at me for five seconds, then looked down at his shoes as Chloe opened her folder and slid the visitation rider across the table.

By ten o’clock the next morning, bright winter sunlight was streaming through the tall arched windows of the family division conference room on the third floor of the county courthouse.

Detective Frank Miller sat across the long oak table in his tweed jacket, adjusting the strap of his shoulder holster as he laid three blue-backed legal documents in front of me.

“Eleanor was denied bail at her preliminary hearing,” Miller said in his gravelly Midwestern drawl.