Chapter 2 - The Hand Against the GlassFor one impossible second, nobody moved.
“Mommy!”
I turned so fast that the shopping bag hanging from my wrist slammed against my hip.
My five-year-old daughter, Sophie, stood three parking spaces away, frozen in the shimmering heat of the Westbrook Mall parking lot.
“Sophie, come back here!”
She didn’t move.
The temperature display above the mall entrance flashed 104°F in angry red numbers. Heat rolled off the asphalt hard enough to make the parked cars look like they were melting.
We had been outside less than thirty seconds.
Already sweat ran between my shoulder blades.
“Mommy!”
This time she screamed so loudly that two women loading groceries turned around.
Sophie pointed at a dark gray sedan parked crookedly near a cart return.
I rushed toward her.
“What is it?”
“The car.”
“What about the car?”
She grabbed my hand with both of hers.
“There’s somebody inside.”
I glanced at the sedan.
Tinted windows.
Engine off.
No movement.
“Sophie, honey, people sit in their cars all the time.”
“No!”
Her fingernails dug into my palm.
“She needs help.”
I looked again.
Nothing.
A man pushing a stroller passed us and gave me the sympathetic look adults give mothers whose children are having public meltdowns.
I felt embarrassment rising alongside the heat.
We had already had a difficult morning. Sophie had refused breakfast, cried because her favorite purple cup was in the dishwasher, then spent twenty minutes searching for a toy rabbit she had apparently left at preschool.
I crouched.
“Sweetheart, we need to go inside.”
“She’s going to die!”
My stomach tightened.
“Sophie.”
“She’s going to DIE!”
People were staring now.
I reached for her shoulders.
That was when Sophie twisted free and ran toward the sedan.
“Sophie!”
She reached the rear passenger window and began pounding against the glass.
“Wake up!”
I caught her around the waist.
She kicked and screamed.
“Mommy, LOOK!”
“I am looking!”
“No! LOOK DOWN!”
Something in her voice changed.
Not whining.
Not panic.
Certainty.
I turned toward the window.
The tint was so dark that my reflection stared back at me.
I cupped my hands around my eyes and leaned close.
At first I saw only shadows.
Then my eyes adjusted.
A woman was slumped across the driver’s seat.
My heart stopped.
Her head hung strangely toward her shoulder.
One arm rested against the center console.
She wasn’t moving.
“Oh my God.”
Sophie pointed toward the back seat.
“And the baby.”
I shifted my face against the glass.
A rear-facing infant carrier sat behind the passenger seat.
Inside it was a tiny child.
Motionless.
For half a second, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing.
Then I grabbed the door handle.
Locked.
I tried the other.
Locked.
“Call 911!” I screamed.
Several people stopped.
A man in a blue polo pulled out his phone.
I hammered my fist against the front window.
“Ma’am!”
Nothing.
Sophie started crying.
“Mommy, the baby’s red.”
I looked.
She was right.
Even through the tint, I could see the child’s skin looked frighteningly flushed.
I searched wildly for something—anything.
“What do we break it with?”
A security guard was running toward us from the mall entrance.
“Step away from the vehicle!”
“There’s a baby inside!”
“Ma’am, step back!”
“The baby is trapped!”
The guard reached us, breathing hard.
He looked through the window.
His expression changed instantly.
“Jesus.”
He grabbed his radio.
“We need EMS at west parking section C. Child locked in vehicle. Adult unconscious.”
The man on the phone shouted, “Dispatcher says they’re coming!”
I stared at the baby.
The tiny chest wasn’t moving.
Or maybe I simply couldn’t see it.
“We can’t wait.”
The security guard shook his head.
“Fire department is three minutes out.”
“Three minutes?”
I looked at the temperature sign.
104°F.
Inside the car could be far hotter.
I saw a landscaping truck across the lane.
A hammer lay on the open tailgate.
I ran.
“Ma’am!”
I didn’t stop.
I snatched the hammer.
The guard chased me.
“You could get hurt!”
“So could they!”
I reached the sedan.
“Cover your face, Sophie.”
She crouched behind a parked SUV.
I raised the hammer.
Then someone shouted from behind us.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT CAR!”
A man in an expensive charcoal suit came sprinting across the parking lot.
His face was pale with terror.
“That’s my wife!”
He shoved past the security guard.
“Rachel!”
He pulled frantically at the driver’s door.
Locked.
“Rachel!”
I stared at him.
“Is that your baby?”
His head snapped toward the back seat.
Then all the blood drained from his face.
“No.”
One word.
Barely audible.
He looked through the rear window.
“That’s not our baby.”
The hammer lowered in my hand.
“What?”
“My wife doesn’t have a baby.”
Sophie stepped out from behind the SUV.
The man stared through the glass again.
Then he whispered something that made the security guard stop reaching for his radio.
“My daughter died three years ago.”
He turned toward me.
“So who the hell put that baby in my wife’s car?”
I didn’t answer.
Because from inside the locked sedan—
the baby suddenly moved.
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And a second later, a small bloody hand appeared against the rear window.
There was another child inside.
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