The trap Dexter thought was still waiting for me had been sprung and emptied while he sat in that courtroom believing himself a step ahead.

I was never in the danger he thought I was.

My mother had already closed that door.

Chapter 23 — Get Her Upstairs

Still, the shock of it — the words fatal complication, the sheer scale of what he had wished on me — did what shock does to a body eight months along.

A pain that was not an ache seized low in me, and my knees went.