Chapter 3 - THE NAME SHE WAS FORCED TO FORGETRachel survived surgery.
A birthday card returned unopened.
A Christmas package sent back without explanation.
An old phone number disconnected sometime in 2017.
A handful of photographs my mother kept in the bottom drawer of her dresser because looking at them hurt too much.
And now she was inside a house on Elm Street screaming my name.
The man standing in the doorway narrowed his eyes.
“You know her?”
I didn't answer.
I lowered Maisie behind my truck.
“Stay right here.”
“No!”
She clung to my jeans.
“Daniel!”
Rachel screamed again.
The man stepped onto the porch.
He was around forty, broad-shouldered, maybe six feet two. His dark hair was damp with sweat. There was a fresh scratch running from his cheekbone toward his jaw.
“Police are coming,” I said.
He smiled.
It wasn't the reaction I expected.
“Then you should leave.”
“Where's Rachel?”
His smile disappeared.
“She's my wife.”
Maisie whispered behind me.
“He hurts Mommy.”
The man heard her.
His face hardened.
“Maisie.”
She hid.
I moved between them.
“What’s your name?”
“Eric.”
“Eric what?”
“Doesn't concern you.”
“It concerns the police.”
He looked toward the street.
No sirens yet.
“Daniel,” the dispatcher said through my phone, “officers are approximately four minutes away. Do not enter the residence.”
Four minutes.
It didn't sound long until you heard someone being hurt behind a locked door.
Eric stepped farther onto the porch.
“Give me the child.”
“No.”
“You don't understand what you're getting involved in.”
“I understand enough.”
He suddenly lunged.
I had spent twenty years crawling through mechanical rooms, hauling compressors and air handlers through impossible spaces. I wasn't a fighter, but I was stronger than I looked.
I shoved him backward.
He stumbled into the porch column.
Maisie shrieked.
Eric came at me again.
This time he had something in his hand.
A kitchen knife.
The world changed.
There are moments when the human brain notices absurd details.
I remember a cicada buzzing somewhere in the maple tree.
I remember Maisie's pink sandal sitting upside down near the porch step.
I remember thinking the knife looked incredibly clean despite all the blood on Eric's shirt.
Then he raised it.
“Walk away.”
A siren sounded in the distance.
Eric's eyes flicked toward the street.
That was enough.
I grabbed Maisie and ran.
We reached my truck as the first police cruiser turned onto Elm Street.
Eric vanished into the house.
“Gun!” I shouted.
I hadn't seen one.
But I wasn't taking chances.
Two officers jumped from the cruiser.
“Get behind your vehicle!”
I crouched behind the engine block, shielding Maisie.
More sirens approached.
An officer shouted toward the house.
“Columbus Police! Come outside with your hands visible!”
Nothing.
“Eric!”
Maisie whispered.
“He has a hole.”
“What?”
“Under Mommy's bed.”
I looked down at her.
“A hole?”
She nodded.
“Bad room.”
Before I could ask more, a gunshot exploded from inside.
The officers ducked.
Maisie screamed against my chest.
A second shot followed.
Then silence.
The next several minutes became chaos.
Neighbors emerged from houses.
Three additional cruisers arrived.
Paramedics waited at the corner.
An officer pulled me away from the truck and rushed Maisie toward an ambulance.
I tried to follow.
“Sir, stay here.”
“That's my niece!”
The officer stopped.
“What?”
“My sister is inside.”
That changed things.
I was questioned rapidly.
Rachel's full name.
My name.
Relationship.
How long since I had seen her.
Did Eric own firearms?
Did Rachel have medical conditions?
I didn't know.
That answer hurt more every time I said it.
Twenty-three minutes after the first cruiser arrived, officers entered the house behind ballistic shields.
I stood beside the ambulance.
Maisie had an oxygen cannula beneath her nose and a wet towel around her shoulders.
“Uncle Danny?”
I looked at her.
Nobody had told her my name beyond Daniel.
“What did you call me?”
“Mommy's picture.”
“What picture?”
“Kitchen.”
The front door opened.
Two officers emerged.
Then paramedics.
A stretcher followed.
I recognized Rachel despite the blood.
Her hair, once nearly black, was streaked with gray near her temples. Her face was swollen. One eye had almost completely closed.
But she was alive.
“Rachel!”
Her head turned.
“Danny?”
I ran alongside the stretcher.
“What happened?”
Her hand reached toward me.
I took it.
Her grip was weak.
“Maisie?”
“She's safe.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
A tear slid toward her ear.
“Thank God.”
“Where's Eric?”
Her eyes opened again.
“He's not Eric.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
The paramedics lifted her into the ambulance.
Rachel seized my wrist.
“His name isn't Eric.”
Her voice dropped.
“And Maisie isn't his daughter.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Seconds later, officers came rushing back out of the house.
Their suspect was gone.
No back door had opened.
No upstairs window was broken.
No one had crossed the backyard.
A lieutenant approached me.
“You said the child mentioned something under a bed?”
“Yes.”
His expression changed.
“What exactly did she say?”
“A hole.”
Within ten minutes, officers found it.
Hidden beneath Rachel's bedroom rug was a trapdoor.
Under the trapdoor was a narrow concrete tunnel leading beneath the house.
But that wasn't what made the detectives stop talking.
The tunnel ended in a room no one knew existed.
Inside that room were chains bolted to the wall.
A mattress.
A collection of children's clothing.
And eleven framed photographs.
Ten showed girls between the ages of two and seven.
The eleventh photograph showed Rachel.
May you like
Taken eleven years earlier.
On the exact day she disappeared.
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