Daniel Foster let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a sob. It was something in between—the sound of a man whose last thread of hope had suddenly been pulled taut.
He shot to his feet so suddenly that his chair crashed backward to the concrete floor with a bang that echoed through the room. The guards tensed immediately, moving forward.
“I’m innocent!” Daniel shouted, tears streaming freely down his face. “I can prove it now! I can prove it!”
The guards rushed in, their training activating, hands moving to restraints and defensive positions. But Daniel wasn’t fighting them. He was crying—sobbing with a desperation that felt fundamentally different from the hopelessness they’d all come to expect from death row inmates in their final hours.
“Get the warden!” Torres shouted. “Get Warden Mitchell, now!”
Rachel scooped Emily up in her arms, the child’s body rigid with shock. Emily’s eyes remained fixed on her father as the guards led him away, no longer looking blank. For the first time in months, she looked alive.
