Chapter 2 - The Interrogation Room
I followed the police cruiser to the downtown Atlanta precinct in my own car.
Olivia had disappeared into the night with her father, leaving her husband in the back of a squad car on his birthday.
I sat in the sterile, brightly lit waiting room for three agonizing hours.
Finally, a tired-looking detective named Ramirez called me into a small, windowless office.
“Mrs. Collins, your son is in serious trouble,” the detective stated bluntly, opening a thick manila file.
“We found over two hundred bottles of high-grade opioids prescribed under your name and filled at pharmacies across the state.”
My hands shook as I looked at the copies of the prescription pads.
The signature was a near-perfect forgery of Matthew’s handwriting.
“My son is a pediatric surgeon, Detective,” I explained, desperately trying to keep my voice steady.
“He doesn’t even have authorization to prescribe these types of adult pain management narcotics.”
Detective Ramirez tapped his pen against the desk, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“We know, which is why we pulled the surveillance footage from the pharmacies.”
He turned a laptop screen toward me and pressed play on a video file.
The security footage showed a woman wearing a heavy coat and a baseball cap picking up the bags of pills.
She looked up at the camera for a split second.
It was Sarah, Matthew’s biological mother.
“So Olivia wasn’t lying,” the detective noted softly.
“No,” I replied, a sudden, terrifying clarity washing over my mind.
“Olivia found Sarah, manipulated her into picking up the drugs, and used my son’s stolen credentials to forge the prescriptions.”
The detective leaned back in his chair, clearly processing the sheer audacity of my theory.
“That is a very heavy accusation to level against your daughter-in-law, ma'am.”
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“She stole his hospital badge last night to steal directly from the pharmacy because the forged prescriptions were finally flagged,” I insisted.
I knew I had to find Sarah before Olivia permanently silenced her.
