Ross smiled. “You should have called sooner. I phoned them twenty minutes ago.”

Red and blue lights swept across the front yard.

Two officers came in. Ross immediately handed them printouts of threatening text messages supposedly sent from Corinne’s number, along with cropped video clips in which she appeared to be screaming.

He did not mention that the argument in those clips had happened because he’d left Casey locked in a hot van in the sun.

When an officer asked the little girl who had hurt her wrist, Casey looked at Ross.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.