He sat down at his desk and put his face in his hands. They couldn’t leave tonight. It was too soon. He hadn’t spoken to James, and all he had to go on was his own fear. He couldn’t leave without a plan. Amber would be ready with a story to get Samantha back. She seemed to have a reel of fictions ready to use at every turn. No, if he wanted to beat her at her own game, he had to wait it out, and come up with a plan that even she wouldn’t suspect. He couldn’t put James or Samantha at risk. Not now that he had learned that his wife was not only capable of murder, but of getting away with it. Whenever he thought of her now, he would think of what he had read. He clenched his eyes shut and shook his head. He didn’t want to remember any more. When he opened them again, his eyes fell on the file. He couldn’t escape the damning words inside.

Upon inspection of the interior of the property, smoke and burn patterns indicated that the origin of the fire was located in the hallway of the flat, outside the tenants’ bedroom door. The battery-operated fire alarms in the hallway of the property had been removed months prior to the fire after continuous false alarms, which interviews with neighbours confirmed. The ignition of the fire appears to be a fallen ashtray. Due to the location of the seat of the fire, arson cannot be ruled out. Whether purposeful or accidental, the cause of fire has been ruled as undetermined.

The carriage clock on the mantel sounded. It was five thirty. Thirty minutes until Amber would be face to face with his lover. The thought made his stomach clench like a fist. He got up from the desk and left the room.

Richard walked up the stairs and entered their bedroom. Amber was sitting at the dressing table picking out earrings from her jewellery box. Their eyes met in the mirror and the room instantly fell cold. He tried to imagine her as a child, about their daughter’s age.

The child located at the back of the property was identified as thirteen-year-old Amber Knight. Upon waking up to the smell of smoke, she attempted to leave her bedroom but could not pass the flames to wake her parents or leave the property, and suffered severe third-degree burns to the right side of her body. Miss Knight managed to dampen a blanket with water from her hot water bottle and place it against the bottom of the door. She yelled for help out of her bedroom window, before passing out from the pain of her injuries.