Chapter 10
The next forty-eight hours were the longest of my life.
Sarah was everywhere and nowhere.
The police found her car abandoned at the airport.
No sign of her or Marcus.
Her credit cards hadn’t been used.
Her phone was off.
She’d vanished again.
But the texts kept coming.
At all hours.
From different numbers.
*I can see you.*
*You can’t hide forever.*
*They’re my kids too.*
The police traced them to burner phones.
Purchased at different gas stations around the city.
No way to track her.
Daniel hired a private security team.
Two men outside Megan’s house twenty-four hours a day.
He installed cameras.
Changed all the locks on our house.
We didn’t go anywhere.
Didn’t let the kids outside.
It was a prison.
A safe prison, but a prison all the same.
On the third day, I’d had enough.
I found Daniel in the living room, staring at his phone.
Waiting for the next text.
“This has to stop,” I said.
He looked up.
“What do you want me to do, Emily? She’s out there. She wants to hurt us. I can’t just pretend everything is fine.”
“I’m not saying that,” I said. “But we can’t live like this. Jake is walking around with a baseball bat. Lila won’t go to the bathroom alone. They’re reliving the warehouse all over again. All because Sarah wants us to be scared. That’s the point of the texts. She wants us to be prisoners in our own lives. And we’re letting her win.”
Daniel stood up.
“So what do you suggest we do? Walk around like nothing’s wrong? Wait for her to show up with a gun?”
“I suggest we take control,” I said. “She knows where Megan lives. She knows where our house is. She’s counting on us to stay here, to be easy targets. What if we’re not? What if we stop hiding?”
“Emily—”
“Daniel, listen to me,” I said. “Sarah is a coward. She always has been. She ran when her gambling debts caught up with her. She paid Vanessa to do her dirty work. She hid in Atlanta for three months. She sends texts from burner phones instead of showing her face. Cowards don’t attack when people are looking for them. They attack when people are alone. When they’re vulnerable.”
I stepped closer.
“So let’s make sure we’re never alone,” I said. “And let’s make sure everyone is looking for her.”
I pulled out my phone.
Opened Facebook.
“What are you doing?” Daniel said.
“Mia was right,” I said. “Three days ago, I was just a nurse who witnessed something terrible. But now? Now we have a story. And stories go viral. Especially stories about brave daddies and evil mommies and two little kids who survived hell.”
I started typing.
*“Three days ago, my fiancé Daniel Carter finally found his two children—Jake, 7, and Lila, 5—after three months of searching every corner of Tennessee. They’d been kidnapped by their own mother, Sarah Carter, and left alone in an abandoned warehouse to starve. Lila almost died of pneumonia. Jake protected his sister like a soldier. Yesterday, Sarah was released on bail. And last night, she started sending us these texts.”*
I attached screenshots of the messages.
The photo of our house.
A picture of Jake and Lila from before all this—happy, smiling, safe.
*“Sarah Carter is currently at large. She’s with her boyfriend, Marcus Reed. They are dangerous. They have threatened to harm these children. If you have seen them—if you know where they are—call the Nashville Police Department immediately. Share this post. Get their faces out there. Make it impossible for them to hide. Because nobody should get away with hurting children. Not ever.”*
I hit POST.
Daniel watched over my shoulder.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said quietly.
“Yes I did,” I said. “Because Sarah’s greatest weapon was that nobody was looking. Now the whole world will be looking.”
Within an hour, the post had ten thousand shares.
Within two, fifty thousand.
By that night, it was everywhere.
Local news picked it up.
Then national.
People were posting sightings from all over the state.
Gas stations.
Motels.
Fast food restaurants.
Sarah and Marcus were no longer invisible.
They were the most hated people in America.
At eleven that night, the police called.
They’d found them.
A motel thirty miles outside of town.
Someone had seen the post.
Recognized Sarah from the news.
Called it in.
The SWAT team had moved in.
Taken them both without a shot fired.
They’d found rope.
Duct tape.
A gun.
And a handwritten plan.
Step by step.
How they were going to get into Megan’s house.
Take the kids.
Cross the border into Canada.
Daniel dropped the phone when he heard.
He sat down hard on the couch.
Put his head in his hands.
And cried.
I sat beside him.
Held him while he shook.
It was over.
Really over.
This time, Sarah wasn’t getting out.
The kidnapping charges.
The threats.
The weapons.
The plan.
She was going away for a very long time.
Life, probably.
Marcus too.
The next morning was quiet.
Peaceful.
The security team left.
The police went back to their regular jobs.
We packed up the kids.
Went home.
Jake left his baseball bat in the trunk of the car.
He didn’t need it anymore.
That Saturday, we went to the park.
Just like Daniel had planned.
We had a picnic.
The kids ran around chasing butterflies.
Daniel got down on one knee in front of them.
“Jake. Lila. I have something very important to ask you.”
They stopped running.
Stared at him.
“Emily has been with us through everything,” Daniel said. “She helped your sister get better. She helped me find your mommy and make sure she can’t hurt you ever again. She loves you both more than anything in the whole world. And I love her more than anything too.”
He looked up at me.
Smiling.
“So I want you to ask her something for me. Will you?”
Both kids nodded so hard their hair bounced.
They turned to me.
In unison, they shouted:
“WILL YOU BE OUR MOMMY?”
I dropped to my knees.
Crying.
I pulled them both into my arms.
“Yes,” I said. “A thousand times yes. I will be your mommy. Forever.”
Daniel slipped the ring on my finger again—for the kids this time.
They cheered.
Jake did a cartwheel.
Lila clapped her hands.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang.
The sun was warm on our faces.
The grass was soft under our knees.
And for the first time in a very long time—
Everything was exactly as it should be.
We’d been through hell.
We’d fought monsters.
We’d lost things we could never get back.
But we’d found each other.
We’d built a family out of broken pieces.
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And that was more than enough.
That was everything.
