My Great Escape Led Me to You (Emily Blair) novel Chapter 1084

The officer paused, then nodded. “Alright, I’ll go check.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

Once the three officers stepped out, Emily sat next to Tate Vargas and lowered her voice. “The DNA results for Juliana Silva and Dennis Lane are in. They’re mother and son. Juliana Silva is really Isabella Austin.”

Tate nodded quietly, a soft sigh escaping him.

Emily went on, “Earlier, she wouldn’t agree to see you. I think she was waiting for proof to surface. She didn’t want to let anything slip. Now the evidence is clear. There’s nothing left for her to argue about. Maybe she’s willing to talk now.”

Tate’s tired eyes, clouded with age, flickered with a bit of hope. He nodded again, more firmly this time. “Alright. I’ll wait.”

A few minutes later, the officer came back. “Emily, she said she’ll see you now.”

Emily turned to Tate. “I’ll go talk to her. Just wait here for me.”

It had been days since Emily last saw Isabella Austin, but Isabella didn’t look nearly as rough as she’d pictured. She was as graceful as ever, her hair perfectly neat, her striped prison uniform looking almost stylish on her. There was no makeup, yet her skin was bright and healthy. If it weren’t for the bruising around her eyes, you’d never guess anything had changed for her.

When Emily walked up to the glass, Isabella met her with a calm, almost serene expression. She watched Emily approach, steady and unflinching.

They each picked up the phone on their side of the glass.

“Ms. Austin,” Emily said, meeting her eyes. “Long time no see.”

Isabella let out a quiet laugh. “Emily Blair. I knew it would be you. Who else could it possibly be?”

“It was just too perfect,” Emily said.

Isabella frowned. “What are you getting at?”

Emily looked right at her. “The day the police went to arrest you, you just happened to die saving Benjamin Gomez’s daughter in a car crash. If you look at it from the outside, don’t you think that’s a little too convenient? You were rushed to the hospital, declared dead, and I never even saw your body. None of it made sense.”

Isabella’s face went hard, lips pressed tight.

Emily kept going. “And like you said, we both know exactly what kind of people we are.”

She leaned in, voice low. “Isabella, I never believed it. Someone like you, risking everything to save a stranger? No way. That’s when I started to wonder if you’d really died. I thought maybe you just vanished, found a way to disappear for good.”