Chapter 2 - The Garage and the Burner Phone
The kitchen felt suddenly airless. I gripped the edge of the granite countertop, waiting for a Braxton Hicks contraction to subside while my mind raced in a frantic, terrifying loop. A nine-year-old child doesn't dismantle a nursery, steal a hospital bag, and erase a birth date from a calendar simply because he feels neglected. There was method to his madness. There was a desperate, calculated panic behind his actions.
Heavy footsteps echoed down the staircase as Drew walked back into the kitchen, looking exhausted and stressed.
“I tried talking to him,” Drew sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “He barricaded his bedroom door. He refuses to open it or say another word about the hospital bag. Megan, I am so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately. I’m going to call his mother—she’s been spending a lot of time with him over the weekends, maybe she said something—”
“No,” I interrupted, my voice sharp and resolute.
Drew blinked, surprised by my tone. “No? Megan, we need to find your hospital bag. You’re thirty-nine weeks pregnant. You could go into labor at any second!”
“Drew, look at the calendar,” I said, pointing a trembling finger at the jagged, missing week on the refrigerator.
Drew stepped forward, furrowing his brow as he examined the torn paper. “What... what is this? Did Eli do this?”
“Yes. And he didn’t just hide baby clothes, Drew. He hid the car seat. He hid the stroller in the back of the garage. He took my bag, and he cut out our due date.” I grabbed his forearm, my fingers digging into his sleeve. “A jealous kid throws a tantrum. A terrified kid tries to hide the evidence that an event is ever going to take place.”
Drew’s face paled. The color drained from his cheeks as the implications finally registered in his mind. “You think... you think he’s scared of something happening to you?”
“I think he knows something we don’t,” I whispered.
Without waiting for Drew to process my words, I pushed past him and headed straight for the interior garage door. The evening air inside the concrete garage was cool and smelled faintly of motor oil and cut grass. I flipped the overhead light switch, casting a harsh yellow glow over our stacked storage bins, gardening tools, and bicycles.
Parked in the corner was our SUV. I immediately checked the backseat. The infant car seat base was still clicked firmly into the leather seat, but the removable carrier seat—the one we had meticulously installed just last week—was completely missing.
“He moved it,” I muttered, walking toward the cluttered workbench at the back of the garage.
Piled beneath a tarp of old camping gear was the baby stroller, and sitting right beside it was my heavy blue canvas hospital bag, zipped tightly shut and tucked away inside a plastic storage tote.
“He actually hid it,” Drew said, walking up behind me in disbelief as he pulled the bag out of the bin. He unzipped the main compartment quickly, checking inside. “Everything’s here. Your clothes, the chargers, the paperwork... nothing was stolen. He just... he wanted it to disappear.”
I reached down into the bag, feeling around the side pockets to make sure my insurance cards and prenatal file were intact. My fingers brushed against something hard and metallic tucked into the inner mesh lining—something that definitely hadn't been packed by me.
I pulled it out into the light.
It was a small, inexpensive prepaid burner phone, its screen dark and battery indicator blinking red.
Drew stared at the black plastic device in my hand, his breath catching. “Whose phone is that? I’ve never seen that before.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, pressing the power button.
The screen flickered to life, glowing brightly in the dim garage. There was no password lock. The home screen displayed a single unread text message notification, glowing in bold white letters against a dark background.
My hands shook as I tapped the screen to open the message.
Sender: Unknown Private Number.
Text: “Did you get the keys yet? If she goes to St. Jude’s on Tuesday, the plan fails. Make sure the bag is gone before she wakes up.”
The garage seemed to tilt on its axis. My stomach violently revolted, a wave of cold nausea washing over me as I read the words a second and third time.
St. Jude’s Hospital. Tuesday. The exact date of my scheduled induction.
Someone was communicating with a nine-year-old boy, using him as an unwitting pawn to sabotage my hospital preparations, delay my birth, and keep me away from my scheduled delivery at St. Jude Memorial.
“Drew,” I breathed, my voice barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator inside the house. “Look at this.”
Drew read the screen, and in a fraction of a second, the confusion on his face transformed into a dark, terrifying fury. The veins in his neck bulged, and his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned ghost-white.
“Who sent this?” Drew growled, his voice dropping into a register I had never heard from him before. “Who the hell has been texting my son?”
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“I don’t know,” I said, my mind racing through every possible scenario, every person who had access to our home, every enemy we didn’t even know we had. “But whoever it is... they knew exactly when I was scheduled to give birth. And they’re trying to stop us from going to the hospital.”
Before Drew could answer, a loud, urgent pounding echoed from the front of the house, followed by the sharp wail of a police siren pulling up directly in front of our driveway.
