Chapter 1 - The Man in the Shadows
The flashing red and blue lights of the cruisers painted the immaculate white facade of 804 Willow Creek Road in aggressive, strobing colors. Deputy Sarah Jenkins stood on the pristine front lawn, the cold night air biting at her cheeks, watching Arthur Vance being forced into the back of the squad car. Arthur didn’t look angry; he looked inconvenienced, like a man whose dinner reservation had been slightly delayed.
“Watch your head,” Deputy David Cho muttered, placing a firm hand on Arthur’s shoulder and pushing him down into the backseat. The door slammed shut, echoing through the affluent, silent neighborhood.
Inside the house, paramedics were checking on seven-year-old Lucas. The boy hadn't spoken another word since handing over the phone. He just sat on the bumper of the ambulance, wrapped in a foil shock blanket, his large, terrified eyes fixed on the house.
Jenkins walked back inside, crossing the threshold of a home that felt completely devoid of warmth. “What did evidence recovery find?” she asked the lead technician, a weary-looking man named Hodges.
Hodges wiped sweat from his brow and pointed to the kitchen island. Lined up perfectly were three heavy-duty encrypted hard drives, a stack of leather-bound journals, and a yellowed manila folder. “We found a false panel in the basement floorboards. The journals belonged to Eleanor Vance, Arthur’s mother. But this folder…” Hodges tapped the yellowed paper. “It’s a CPS report from 1996. Another boy. Same exact terminology. He called it a ‘monster.’”
Jenkins felt a chill that had nothing to less to do with the weather. “Who was the boy in ’96?”
“Name’s redacted. But someone went through a lot of trouble to bury this.”
Outside, parked a block away under the heavy canopy of an ancient oak tree, a black sedan sat with its engine idling. The driver, a man with cold, hollow eyes and a jagged scar running along his jawline, watched the police activity through military-grade binoculars. He saw Arthur loaded into the car. He saw the boy in the ambulance.
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He picked up a burner phone and dialed a single digit.
“It’s done,” a voice on the other end answered. “No,” the scarred man replied, his voice rough like crushed glass. “Arthur got sloppy. They found the floorboards. The police have the ledger.” “Then burn it all down,” the voice commanded. The line went dead. The man put the car in gear and slowly faded into the night. The cover-up wasn't ending; it was just beginning.
