I shook my head, but my thoughts were racing. The “nice man.” The library shortcut. The sidewalks.

“He’s been talking to her,” I said, certainty settling in. “This wasn’t the first time.”

Ms. Carter pressed her lips together. “Chloe mentioned last week that she’d misplaced her water bottle near the back lot. She said a man helped her look for it. I assumed he was a parent and told her to stay near the doors next time.”

My throat tightened—not exactly at Ms. Carter, but at how easily it had been dismissed. Assumed he was a parent. As if that automatically meant safe.

“Show me the email again,” I said.

Ramirez pulled it up. No subject line. A jumble of letters and numbers for a sender. Just one sharp sentence:

YOUR DAUGHTER TALKS TOO MUCH. FIX IT OR WE WILL.

“Talks too much about what?” I whispered.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Ramirez replied.

I inhaled slowly. “Chloe isn’t good at keeping secrets. She blurts things out. She tells me everything.”

But even as I said it, I remembered her pushing food around her plate days ago, asking, “Mom, can grown-ups get in trouble at work?”

I’d brushed it off.

Ramirez studied me. “Where do you work, Mrs. Bennett?”

“I’m an accounts manager at Ridgeway Construction,” I answered, then froze. Ridgeway had recently been mentioned in connection with a bid controversy. There had been quiet talk about investigators.

“Is there any reason your company might be under scrutiny?” he asked carefully.

“There were rumors,” I admitted. “Nothing confirmed.”

The administrator’s phone buzzed. She checked it quickly. “Officer, we have the

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