Chapter 2 - THE ROOM THEY DIDN’T SEARCHOfficer Reid asked me to come to the property.
I almost refused.
The house had never felt like mine, even when I lived there. Now someone had broken into it looking specifically for me.
But if I stayed away, my parents would control the explanation.
Harper drove.
Rain covered the suburban streets in a gray sheet. When we turned onto Willow Creek Drive, two patrol cars stood outside the house. Yellow tape crossed the walkway. The front door hung crooked from its frame.
Mrs. Caldwell waited beneath an umbrella with Cooper.
The golden retriever pulled toward me the moment I stepped from the car.
I dropped to my knees and wrapped both arms around him.
“You did the right thing taking him,” Officer Reid said.
He was in his forties, calm-eyed and careful with every word.
“What would have happened if he had been inside?”
“We found pieces of meat near the rear door.”
He lifted a blurred evidence bag.
“The substance is being tested.”
Cooper pressed against my side.
Someone had expected the dog.
Someone had prepared for him.
Officer Reid led Harper and me through the house.
The living room drawers were open. Cushions had been cut. Family photographs had been removed from frames and scattered across the floor.
Dad’s office looked untouched.
So did Jade’s bedroom.
My room had been destroyed.
The mattress was cut open.
Books lay torn beneath the desk.
Closet panels had been removed.
On my pillow sat a plastic evidence marker where the note had been found.
“Did they take anything?” I asked.
“We need you to check.”
My laptop was with me.
My documents were with me.
My emergency cash was gone because I had taken it.
Then I noticed the lowest drawer of my desk.
It was open.
Inside, beneath old notebooks, I had once kept a silver key attached to a tag from Grandmother Evelyn’s storage unit.
The key was missing.
My grandmother died two years earlier.
Mom claimed the storage unit contained only old furniture and donated everything without asking me.
But Evelyn had secretly given me the key during her last hospital stay.
“Do not let your mother know you have this,” she had whispered. “One day, you’ll understand why.”
I never visited the unit.
I was grieving, exhausted, and still living under my parents’ constant supervision.
Now someone had broken into my room to find that key.
Officer Reid studied my expression.
“What is missing?”
“A storage key.”
“Who knew you had it?”
“My grandmother.”
“Anyone else?”
I thought about the night before her funeral.
Mom had searched my handbag, claiming she needed Evelyn’s medication list.
Maybe she saw the key.
Maybe the entire vacation had been designed to leave me alone with it.
My phone began ringing.
Mom.
I answered on speaker.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
I stared at the destroyed bedroom.
“What did I do?”
“The police called us. They said the door was broken and Cooper was gone.”
“He’s safe.”
“You abandoned the house.”
“You abandoned me there first.”
Dad’s voice entered from the background.
“You were told to stay.”
Not asked.
Told.
Officer Reid’s eyes sharpened.
“Why?” I asked.
Silence.
“Why was it so important that I stay in this house?”
Mom recovered first.
“Because you are irresponsible, and we wanted to teach you commitment.”
“Someone broke into my bedroom and left a note saying I was supposed to be here.”
The line went silent.
Not confused.
Silent.
Harper saw it too.
They already knew.
“Mom?”
Then Jade whispered something near the phone.
I could not make out the full sentence.
Only three words:
“Did she leave?”
Mom abruptly ended the call.
Officer Reid looked at me.
“They did not sound surprised.”
“No.”
My phone vibrated with a new message from an unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
It showed my family at the airport the previous morning.
Mom, Dad, and Jade smiling beside their luggage.
Behind them, partly reflected in a glass wall, stood a man watching the camera.
I recognized him.
Marcus Vale.
My mother’s former employer.
The man she claimed had died eight years ago.
Below the photograph was one sentence:
May you like
They did not go on vacation. They went to make sure Marcus had an alibi.
Cliffhanger: The break-in may have been planned around my family’s trip—and the man connected to it was someone my mother had spent years pretending was dead.
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