Now, let’s begin.
Keith Harrison pulled his Ford pickup into the driveway of the modest split-level house on Riverside Drive. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the overgrown lawn. His mother-in-law had never been great at maintenance, but lately the place looked worse than usual: paint peeling in loose curls, shutters hanging crooked, and a stack of newspapers slumped on the porch like someone had dropped them there and forgotten to come back.
He’d been meaning to talk to Sophia about it, but his wife always defended her mother with the same line—she’s doing her best since Dad died.
Keith checked his watch.
4:30, right on time to pick up Emma and Tyler from their weekly overnight with Grandma Marsha. The twins loved these visits, though Keith had started noticing things that bothered him. Tyler had come home with a bruise on his arm last month.
Emma had been unusually quiet after the visit before that.
When he’d mentioned it to Sophia, she’d waved it off. Kids get bruises. And Emma’s four.
She has moods.
Keith climbed out of the truck, his boots crunching on the gravel. He was thirty-eight, broad-shouldered with close-cropped dark hair, and the kind of presence that made people instinctively straighten up when he entered a room. Twelve years in military intelligence had given him that effect.
He wasn’t imposing through intimidation so much as an intensity in his gray eyes—an unshakable sense that he saw more than most people wanted to reveal.
The front door was ajar.
That was the first wrong thing.
Keith’s hand moved on instinct toward his hip, where he used to carry his service weapon, though he’d been civilian for three years now. Old habits didn’t die; they just waited.
He pushed the door open slowly. “Emma?
Tyler?”
His daughter appeared in the hallway. Her small face was streaked with tears. The princess dress she’d worn yesterday was torn at the shoulder, and she clutched her stuffed rabbit so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
Keith was on his knees in an instant.
“Emma, sweetheart—what’s wrong? Where’s your brother?”
Emma’s bottom lip trembled. She opened her mouth, but only a sob came out.
“Emma.” Keith kept his voice gentle but firm, the way he’d learned you had to speak when panic was starting to take over.
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