Chapter 1 - THE FLOODED DRIVEWAY
The first zinc water container hit the mud before I did.
The second crashed beside my knee.
Rainwater splashed across my black coat as I fell onto both hands, eight months pregnant, exhausted, and already bruised from the argument inside the house.
Daniel did not wait for me to breathe.
He lunged forward and drove his fist into my stomach.
Pain exploded beneath my ribs.
I curled around my unborn child.
“Are you going to get up and pick them up,” he roared, “or do you want me to beat you to death?”
The rain came down so hard it blurred the porch behind him.
I heard the front door lock.
A clean metallic click.
Daniel had thrown me outside, made me carry the water containers through the flood, then locked the house so I could not escape back inside.
I pressed both hands over my belly.
The baby moved once.
Then stopped.
Daniel grabbed my hair and dragged me through the mud.
I screamed.
“You dare touch my child again!”
His grip tightened.
“He’s my child too.”
“No.”
The word came from behind the side gate.
Claire Evans burst into the driveway wearing a beige coat over her pajamas, phone pressed to one ear.
She hit Daniel with both hands.
He stumbled near the porch steps.
Claire dropped beside me and shielded my body with hers.
“Stay away from her, you bastard!”
Daniel straightened.
His face changed.
Not fear.
Humiliation.
He could hurt me in private.
He could not tolerate being challenged by a witness.
He pulled a handgun from beneath his sweater and pointed it inches from Claire’s face.
“Get out of here before I shoot you!”
Claire did not move.
The 911 dispatcher’s voice crackled from her phone.
Daniel heard it.
His eyes narrowed.
I forced myself upright.
Blood and rainwater ran down my face.
My knees shook.
But I looked straight at him.
“You just signed your own death warrant.”
I did not mean I would kill him.
I meant the evidence was already moving.
Claire’s phone.
The neighbor’s porch camera.
The cloud backup I activated before Daniel smashed my laptop.
The sealed envelope hidden under the nursery floor.
Daniel laughed.
Then three deafening knocks struck the locked front door.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Everyone froze.
The sound came from inside the house.
Not the porch.
Inside.
Daniel slowly turned.
An angry male voice roared from the other side of the locked door.
“Open the door!”
Daniel’s face turned pale.
Claire whispered:
“Who’s in there?”
I knew the voice.
My brother, Michael Carter.
Officially dead for four years.
Daniel had told me Michael died in a construction accident in Colorado.
I believed him because Daniel brought me the ashes.
Now Michael was inside my locked house.
Alive.
Daniel lowered the gun by one inch.
The knocking came again.
“Sarah! Get away from him!”
I stepped backward.
Daniel looked at me.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“That’s a lie.”
The front door shook in its frame.
Then another voice came through the house.
A child.
Crying.
“Mommy!”
My blood turned cold.
The voice sounded exactly like the unborn baby’s name Daniel had chosen.
Noah.
Claire stared at me.
“Sarah... do you have another child?”
“No.”
The front door opened half an inch against the deadbolt.
A small hand reached through the gap.
A hospital bracelet circled the wrist.
BABY COLLINS.
Date of birth: three years earlier.
Mother: SARAH COLLINS.
I had never given birth three years earlier.
Daniel stepped toward the door.
I grabbed Claire’s phone.
“Tell the police there’s a child inside.”
Daniel spun toward me.
“Don’t.”
The word was not a command.
It was panic.
The male voice inside the house shouted again:
“Daniel, I found the basement.”
The driveway fell silent except for the rain.
Daniel’s gun hand began to tremble.
Claire looked at him.
“What basement?”
I thought of the nursery.
The loose floorboard.
The strange humming beneath the back hallway at night.
Daniel always said it was the sump pump.
Michael’s voice came through the door one final time.
May you like
“Sarah, the baby in your stomach is not the first one.”
Read Chapter 2 to discover who the child behind the locked door really was.
