Why couldn’t he have just got someone to break in and steal it? Perhaps he had. She recalled the feeling she’d had lately that someone had been in the house, and now she was convinced that they had. She hadn’t checked since they’d moved in to see if the case was still where she’d hidden it. So it was possible that Marcus, or his sister, already had it, and the horrific act of vandalism inflicted on the house was to punish her, to spite her and remind her who had all the power.

Or the case could have perished in the fire.

She didn’t know, because she hadn’t yet been told, the extent of the damage. She could hardly bear to think of it; it was like imagining a beloved friend injured and abandoned, helplessly waiting for her to return to begin the process of restoring it to glory all over again. At least it stood a chance, could even emerge from the tragedy more splendid than before, but that was never going to happen for her mother. The surgeon’s miracles could only work so far, and suddenly she felt so overwhelmed by the horror of it all that she had to push it from her mind or she simply wouldn’t be able to cope.

A WHILE LATER, unable to stand the hotel room or the waiting any longer, Claudia put on her coat to go back to the hospital. Her mother wasn’t expected to be out of surgery yet, but she couldn’t go on sitting around driving herself crazy with guilt and fear, and such murderous thoughts of revenge were making her nauseous. She needed some air, some space between herself and her conscience, although she knew she’d never find that. This was all her fault, her mother wouldn’t be where she was if it weren’t for their crazy attempt to start again—if it weren’t for the fact that she, Claudia, had taken the attaché case and held on to it.

After texting Jasmine to let her know where she was, she left the room, and a few minutes later she was being buzzed into the Burns Intensive Care Unit in time to see her mother being brought back from one of the theaters in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped specialist center.