Chapter 11 - The Escape Attempt
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"How did you get out, Abigail?" the patient advocate asked softly, leaning in.
Abigail wiped her uninjured eye, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "This afternoon, the landscapers came to trim the hedges behind the guest house. The noise was loud. I knew Gregory and Nicholas wouldn't be able to hear me break the glass."
She had wrapped her hand in a thick towel from the bathroom and smashed the lower pane of the guest house window. She crawled through the jagged glass, cutting her knee, and bolted toward the service gate at the rear of the sprawling estate.
But she wasn't fast enough.
"Nicholas saw me on the security cameras," she sobbed, her body beginning to shake again as the trauma resurfaced. "He caught me right before I reached the gate. I tried to fight him off. I screamed for help, but the landscapers were wearing heavy ear protection. They didn't hear me."
That was when the physical brutality occurred.
She described, in graphic detail, how Nicholas had shoved her violently against the brick wall of the perimeter fence. When she tried to reach into her pocket for her backup phone, he grabbed her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh with enough force to leave the dark, agonizing bruises we all saw. He threw her to the ground, stomping on her backup phone until it shattered into pieces.
"Then how did you end up here?" the police officer asked, his pen flying across his notepad.
"Patricia came out," Abigail cried. "She saw that my face was bleeding from hitting the brick wall. She panicked because the landscapers were turning around. She told Nicholas they had to take me to their private doctor to cover it up. But when we got in the car, Nicholas got stuck in rush hour traffic. I unlocked the door and threw myself out of the moving car at a stoplight. A stranger called an ambulance for me."
The room fell into complete, horrifying silence when she finally finished. The sheer calculated evil of what she had endured was staggering.
The physician stepped forward and began meticulously photographing and documenting her injuries for the forensic file. The officers finalized her written statement. The social worker looked up from her clipboard, her eyes filled with profound sympathy.
"Mrs. Ferguson," the social worker asked gently. "Do you have somewhere incredibly safe to stay tonight?"
I answered before Abigail even had the chance to open her mouth.
May you like
"Yes," I said, my voice ringing with absolute certainty. I grabbed my daughter's hand and held it tightly. "She has a home. A real one."
Abigail looked up at me. For the very first time that night, through the tears and the bruising, I saw something other than pure terror in her eyes. I saw hope.
