According to her, Reyes followed her to Hastings and stalked her. She said she told no one because she was scared. She swore she was in love with Roger Booth and that she planned to stay with him and marry him, but Reyes wouldn’t have it. He kidnapped her and kept her a prisoner in that house for ten years. She was finally able to escape and had been in hiding, terrified because Reyes was a cop. She came back that day to try to save Alice.

She killed Reyes in a moment of terror—rage and terror that was produced from years of abuse and captivity. They were comparing it to battered spouse syndrome. It may not have been self-defense in that moment, but justified by the culmination of years of terror.

Watkins thought carefully before giving an answer to the question. Did anyone believe her story?

“It’s complicated,” he said. “Of all the people who have been coming forward now, saying what Reyes did to them with his cons—not one of them identified Daisy. She was very careful to stay behind the scenes. They found his beat-up truck behind the house—no prints belonging to Daisy. And the things all of you saw in the woods that day—the things you heard her confess about being Reyes’s partner in crime, not his prisoner—she has experts willing to testify that she was saying those things to take back control, or manipulate him. Years of captivity had messed with her mind.”

Nic knew all about the experts and their case studies—women who had been abused and battered and held captive who didn’t do or say the things that would be expected under the circumstances. Daisy had suffered abuse in her home as a child. And then Reyes had imprisoned her. They had come close to pleading diminished capacity—insanity—as a result.

Still, it was more than just the words Daisy had spoken in those woods.

“What about the note?” Nic asked now. “To Booth—and the texts to her sister?”

“She claims Reyes made her write them. Look—it fits. He forged that note he left at the casino, in the room he charged to your mother’s credit card. He proved himself to be pretty adept at planning a kidnapping and covering his tracks.”

Nic was far from satisfied. It was just now that she was feeling the extent of her anger at how things had unfolded in the aftermath of finding her mother.

She started rattling off the loose ends.

“And what about her sister—Veronica? Forensics found Daisy’s prints and hair all over the house . . . and I saw that jacket at her house the very same day.”

Watkins had more excuses.

“But they don’t know how old they are, and Daisy explained the jacket—said she stopped to see her sister for the first time that morning . . . on her way to rescue her daughter.”

Nic continued.