Chapter 1 - The Trip That Ended EarlyThirty-six hours earlier, Sawyer Bennett had been sitting in a hotel conference room in Chicago, pretending to listen to a presentation about international expansion.
His company, Bennett Urban Development, had spent nearly a year negotiating the purchase of several abandoned industrial properties. The deal was important enough to require Sawyer’s personal attendance, yet his mind kept drifting toward home.
Three unanswered calls to Gracie had appeared on his phone that morning.
He had tried again during lunch.
Carolina answered instead.
“She’s at school,” she said.
“It’s Saturday.”
There was a brief pause.
“I mean her art program.”
“Her art program ended last month.”
Carolina sighed. “Sawyer, I’m managing a hundred things here. She’s playing outside. I’ll have her call you.”
Gracie never called.
By late afternoon, Sawyer had developed the uneasy feeling that something was wrong. It was not based on one clear event. It came from a collection of details he had ignored for months.
Gracie becoming quiet whenever Carolina entered a room.
Her sudden refusal to swim in the family pool.
The way she had begun asking Sawyer exactly when he would leave for work and when he would return.
Two weeks earlier, she had slipped a folded drawing into his briefcase. It showed their mansion beneath a dark sky. Three people stood outside: Sawyer, Gracie, and a tall figure colored entirely in black.
Carolina was nowhere in the picture.
When Sawyer asked who the black figure was, Gracie had quickly taken the drawing back.
“No one,” she said. “I made a mistake.”
At the time, Sawyer had believed she was embarrassed about her artwork.
Now he was no longer certain.
He left the conference table and called the housekeeper, Maria Alvarez.
Maria had worked for the family since Gracie was a baby. She answered on the second ring, sounding surprised.
“Mr. Bennett?”
“Is Gracie with you?”
“No, sir. Mrs. Bennett gave me the weekend off.”
“She did?”
“She said the family would be out of town.”
Sawyer looked through the glass wall of the conference room.
Carolina had told him they were staying home.
“Did Gracie seem all right yesterday?”
Maria hesitated.
“Tell me the truth.”
“She asked whether she could come home with me.”
Sawyer gripped the phone.
“Why?”
“She said she did not like being alone when you traveled.”
“She wasn’t alone. Carolina was there.”
Maria said nothing.
That silence frightened him more than any answer could have.
“What else happened?”
“Mrs. Bennett heard us talking,” Maria said quietly. “She became angry. She told Gracie to stop behaving like a baby.”
Sawyer ended the call and returned to the conference room.
His business partner, Daniel Cross, looked up from the documents.
“Everything okay?”
“No.”
Sawyer closed his laptop.
“I’m going home.”
“The final negotiation is tomorrow morning.”
“Handle it without me.”
Daniel studied Sawyer’s face and did not argue.
Sawyer booked the first available flight to Virginia. A storm delayed the departure, forcing passengers to remain on the plane for nearly two hours before takeoff.
During that time, Sawyer called Carolina twelve times.
She answered once.
Music played loudly in the background.
“Why do you keep calling?” she demanded.
“Where is Gracie?”
“Asleep.”
“It’s six in the evening.”
“She wasn’t feeling well.”
“Put her on the phone.”
“She’s sleeping.”
Sawyer heard a man’s voice somewhere near Carolina.
The sound lasted only a second, but it was unmistakable.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“The television.”
“That wasn’t the television.”
“You’re imagining things.”
The call ended.
Sawyer immediately opened the home-security application on his phone. Every camera connected to the mansion showed the same message.
SYSTEM OFFLINE.
He contacted the security company.
The technician checked the account remotely.
“Someone disabled the internal cameras from the control panel at approximately two fifteen this afternoon,” the technician explained.
“Which access code was used?”
“The primary household code.”
Only Sawyer and Carolina knew it.
“Can you reactivate the system?”
“Not remotely. Someone disconnected the main control unit.”
Sawyer stared at the storm clouds outside the airplane window.
Gracie’s unanswered calls.
Maria being sent away.
The unknown male voice.
The disabled cameras.
He could no longer explain those things separately.
May you like
They were pieces of the same picture.
And his daughter was trapped somewhere inside it.
Related Stories
