CHAPTER 4 — BENEATH THE RED BARN
Detective Morales wanted me to remain in the hospital.
Wyatt agreed with her.
I didn’t.
“My uncle has been imprisoned for nearly thirty years,” I said. “My mother threatened me from that farm. I’m going.”
“You can barely stand without getting dizzy,” Wyatt said.
“Then help me stand.”
“Sadie.”
“If they leave before the police arrive, Elias disappears again.”
Morales folded her arms.
“The property may be dangerous.”
“So send officers.”
“We are.”
“Then I’ll stay in the car.”
Wyatt stared at me for a long moment. I could see the battle inside him. He wanted to protect me, but he also knew I had spent my entire life being ordered to remain silent and obedient.
Finally, he exhaled.
“You stay in an armored vehicle with security.”
“Fine.”
“You do exactly what Detective Morales says.”
“Fine.”
“And if I tell you to get down—”
“I get down.”
He looked toward Morales.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“It is,” she replied.
By noon, a medical transport team had cleared me to leave temporarily. My head was wrapped in bandages, my left eye covered by a protective shield, and pain medication made the edges of the world feel soft and unreal.
Wyatt’s security team drove us south in a black SUV.
Police vehicles remained out of sight behind us to avoid alerting anyone on the farm.
The address led to a narrow gravel road surrounded by winter-bare fields. At the end stood a faded farmhouse, two silos, and a large barn painted dark red.
No vehicles were visible.
No smoke rose from the chimney.
The whole property looked abandoned.
Detective Morales spoke into her radio.
“Teams move.”
Officers in tactical gear approached the farmhouse and barn from opposite directions.
Wyatt and I watched through the windshield.
The farmhouse was cleared first.
Empty.
Then the barn doors were forced open.
A flock of pigeons exploded from the roof.
Minutes passed.
My heart pounded harder with each one.
Finally, Morales returned to the SUV.
“No one’s inside.”
“They were here,” I said.
“We found fresh tire tracks and medical supplies.”
“Then they moved him.”
“Possibly.”
“What about the key?”
She held up the brass key from the envelope.
“There’s a locked hatch beneath the barn floor.”
Wyatt opened the door.
“I’m going with you.”
Morales nodded, then pointed at me.
“You stay here.”
I hated it, but I agreed.
Wyatt followed her into the barn.
Through the windshield, I could see officers moving around inside. Then they disappeared below the floor.
Five minutes later, one of Wyatt’s security guards suddenly reached for his weapon.
A pickup truck had appeared at the top of the gravel road.
It raced toward the farm.
“Ma’am, get down.”
I slid lower in the seat.
The truck didn’t slow.
Police vehicles moved to block the road, but the driver veered into the field, throwing mud behind the tires.
The passenger window opened.
I saw Melanie.
She pointed something toward our SUV.
The guard shoved me flat across the back seat just as a gunshot cracked through the air.
The rear window shattered.
Glass rained over my coat.
Officers returned fire at the truck’s tires. The vehicle swerved, struck a drainage ditch, and flipped onto its side.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Then the driver’s door opened.
My mother crawled out.
She held a handgun in one hand and blood covered her forehead.
“Brenda!” an officer shouted. “Drop the weapon!”
She raised it.
Three officers fired.
My mother collapsed beside the truck.
I screamed her name before I could stop myself.
No matter what she had done, some part of me was still the daughter who had waited for her approval.
Melanie climbed through the passenger window with both hands raised.
“Don’t shoot! Please!”
Officers forced her to the ground.
“Where is Elias Davis?” Morales demanded.
“I don’t know!”
“You were recorded taking him from the house.”
“My mother made me!”
“You fired at the vehicle.”
“I was trying to scare them!”
The guard helped me sit up. Through the broken window, I watched paramedics rush toward my mother.
She was alive.
One bullet had struck her shoulder.
Another had hit her leg.
As they lifted her onto a stretcher, she turned her head toward our SUV.
Even from a distance, I could see the hatred in her face.
She hadn’t come to rescue Elias.
She had come to stop us from discovering what was buried beneath the barn.
Wyatt emerged from the building at a run.
When he saw the shattered window, terror crossed his face.
He yanked open the door.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He checked my face, neck, and hands anyway.
“I’m okay.”
He pulled me against him.
“You could have been killed.”
“What did you find?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Wyatt.”
His eyes moved toward the barn.
“You need to see it.”
Detective Morales objected, but I refused to leave. With Wyatt supporting me, I entered the barn.
The hatch was hidden beneath a rusted tractor part. The brass key opened a thick steel lock.
Below it was a narrow staircase leading into darkness.
The air smelled of mold, dust, and something chemical.
At the bottom, officers had discovered a concrete room.
There were no windows.
A narrow bed stood against one wall. Restraint straps hung from the frame. A camera pointed toward the mattress.
Shelves held medicine bottles, canned food, and stacks of old newspapers.
On the opposite wall, hundreds of photographs had been taped in rows.
Photographs of me.
Me at school.
Me leaving work.
Me standing outside my first apartment.
Me meeting Wyatt at a restaurant.
Some had been taken from so far away I never would have known someone was watching.
Others were close enough that the photographer could have touched me.
At the center of the wall was a photograph from my eighteenth birthday.
A red circle had been drawn around my face.
Beneath it, someone had written:
THE ONE WHO LOOKS LIKE HIM.
“Looks like who?” I asked.
Morales pointed toward a second photograph.
It showed Elias as a young man standing beside a woman I didn’t recognize.
The woman looked exactly like me.
Same eyes.
Same chin.
Same slight curve in the eyebrows.
“Who is she?”
“We don’t know yet,” Morales said.
Wyatt removed another document from a plastic sleeve.
It was a birth certificate.
The paper listed the child’s name as Sadie Eleanor Davis.
My name.
The birth date was correct.
But under “mother,” it did not say Brenda Davis.
It said Rebecca Hale.
Under “father,” the space was blank.
I stared at the page until the letters blurred.
“That’s fake.”
Morales didn’t answer.
“It has to be fake.”
Wyatt held my shoulders.
“Sadie.”
“My mother is Brenda.”
The detective carefully lifted another paper from the shelf.
A hospital discharge form.
Rebecca Hale had delivered a baby girl on my birthday.
Three days later, she died from complications.
My knees weakened.
Wyatt caught me.
“No,” I whispered.
Morales examined the documents.
“There’s more.”
Inside a metal cabinet, officers found letters written by Rebecca to Elias.
The first began with the words:
My dearest Elias, Gregory knows the baby is yours.
The room seemed to tilt.
My father wasn’t my father.
Brenda wasn’t my mother.
Elias—the man imprisoned in their basement—was my biological father.
And Gregory had known all along.
One final item lay inside the cabinet.
A recent photograph.
Elias sat in the basement of my parents’ house holding a newspaper dated only two weeks earlier.
Behind him stood Melanie.
She was smiling.
On the back, in her handwriting, she had written:
He signs everything when we increase the dosage.
I turned toward the barn entrance.
Melanie was no innocent daughter forced to obey our parents.
She had been helping them control Elias.
She had known who I really was.
And she had watched my father throw the brick.
The officers brought her into the barn in handcuffs.
When she saw the papers spread across the table, her face drained of color.
I held up my birth certificate.
“You knew.”
Melanie looked toward Detective Morales, then toward the floor.
“You knew Elias was my father.”
Her silence was enough.
“How long?”
She smiled faintly.
“Longer than you.”
Wyatt stepped forward, but an officer blocked him.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did all of you hate me?”
May you like
Melanie finally met my eye.
“Because you were never supposed to survive.”
