Chapter 2 - The Man Next Door
For several seconds I could only stare at her.
"Grant locked your mommy downstairs?" I repeated, needing to hear it a second time.
Sadie nodded.
"She told us to be really quiet."
Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to call the police that second, but I remembered exactly how Sadie had panicked the moment I reached for my phone. I held my hand out under the table instead.
"Listen to me, both of you. Police do not take good girls away for asking someone to help them. Grant lied to you about that."
Sadie studied my face hard. "Really?"
"Really."
I waited until she gave me the smallest nod. Then I stepped into the pantry, leaving the door cracked just enough to keep both girls in sight, and called 911.
I kept my voice low and explained that two three-year-olds from the house next door were sitting in my kitchen and had told me their mother was being held downstairs against her will. The dispatcher told me to stay inside, lock every door in the house, and under no circumstances confront the man myself.
I'd barely hung up when someone hit my front door again.
This time Grant didn't knock.
He slammed his fist against the wood.
"Carla!"
My blood went ice cold. I had never once told that man my name.
"Open the door."
The girls scrambled farther back under the table.
"How do you know my name?" I called through the door.
No answer. Then the doorknob started to turn.
"Those girls belong with me," he said, low and hard. "You have no idea what's actually going on here."
"They told me they're scared of you."
"They're three. They don't know what they're saying half the time."
"They knew enough to hide from you."
His voice sharpened into something uglier. "Open this door right now."
"No."
A few seconds later, his footsteps moved off the porch. I ran to the side window and watched him cutting across my lawn toward the backyard gate. I got to the kitchen door and locked it seconds before he reached it. He grabbed the handle and shook it hard.
Mia screamed.
His face went completely still on the other side of the glass. "So they are in there."
I said nothing.
"Open this door, Carla."
"Police are already on their way."
All the color drained out of his face at once. He let go of the handle and bolted back toward his own house.
Within minutes, sirens were echoing down the street. Officers came to my door first. I told them everything while a female officer named Dana sat on my kitchen floor with Sadie and Mia, talking to them low and calm. When Dana asked where their mother was, Sadie pointed straight at the shared wall between the two houses.
"Down," she said.
Officers went into Grant's house next. I stayed put with the twins, and every second felt like it stretched out forever.
About fifteen minutes later, two officers walked Grant out in handcuffs. Behind them, a third officer was supporting a woman who could barely stand on her own.
I recognized her instantly. The woman from the driveway.
Her hair was tangled and her face was gray-pale. The second she spotted Sadie and Mia through my open doorway, she pulled hard against the officer's grip.
"My babies!"
The twins bolted straight for her. "Mommy!"
She dropped to her knees on my front lawn and both girls crashed into her arms at once. Sadie buried her face in her mother's shoulder while Mia clung around her neck, sobbing so hard she could barely catch her breath.
Her name was Diane.
At the hospital, doctors treated her for dehydration, bruising, and a sprained wrist. The twins were hungry and exhausted but otherwise physically unharmed.
Later, one of the officers explained that Grant was Diane's ex-boyfriend. She'd ended things with him months earlier once his behavior turned controlling. When she'd tried to move away with the girls to stay with her sister, he'd intercepted them before they got out.
The house next door had never been a fresh start.
It was where he'd been keeping them hidden.
He'd made it all look normal from the outside — told anyone who happened to notice that Diane was his partner and they just wanted privacy while they settled in. That explained the closed curtains. That explained why I'd never once seen the kids.
But I still didn't understand the trash can.
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I'd assumed the girls had simply gotten loose, spotted it, and climbed in on instinct.
I was wrong about that too.
