But she also knew that intentions mattered a great deal when you were deciding where to look next.

Chapter 7 — Twenty-Eight Minutes

Once Ella was stable enough to sleep, Natalie went back to the rental house. The porch light still glowed under the gray afternoon sky.

Inside, she looked at the grocery list again. The handwriting started neat and steady, then turned rushed near the bottom, where Andrew had written Ella’s medication and underlined it twice.

Beside the list sat a pharmacy reminder showing a pickup window that had opened the very day he disappeared.

Natalie asked for checks at every place Andrew would reasonably have gone. A pharmacy employee remembered him.

Andrew had come in soaked from the storm, apologized for rushing, and collected Ella’s medication — twenty-eight minutes after he’d left the house.