Chapter 1 - THE HOOK IN THE CEILING
He bound my wrists high to a ceiling hook with nylon rope and used a long metal fireplace poker as a club, striking my swollen belly in slow, measured swings while ordering me to “wake the boy with pain.”
By the time Grant said it again, I had stopped begging.
My toes barely touched the rug. Every time my legs weakened, he pulled down on the loose end of the rope and forced my arms higher.
“Say the next number.”
I stared at my husband across our living room in Westerville, Ohio, trying not to look at the fireplace poker in his hand.
The baby hadn’t moved in almost an hour.
That was how the night had started.
I had told Grant I wanted to go to labor and delivery.
He had told me I was panicking again.
Then I reached for my phone.
Now my phone lay facedown beneath the coffee table, and I was hanging from a steel hook Grant had installed three weeks earlier because, according to him, he wanted to surprise me with a hanging chair for the nursery.
He had never bought the chair.
Grant pulled the rope.
Pain tore through my shoulders.
“Wake that boy with pain,” he said. “Or I’ll keep counting for you.”
I twisted one wrist against the knot and tried to get my right foot flat.
“Grant, please. If something’s wrong with the baby—”
“There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”
The contempt in his voice hurt differently.
“You get scared,” he continued. “You call Daniel. Daniel tells you I’m dangerous. Then everybody gets to pretend I’m the problem.”
My brother was twenty minutes away.
At least, that was what Grant believed.
I lifted my right knee as though my leg had cramped.
My dusty sock slid down half an inch.
The edge of my smartwatch appeared.
Grant didn’t notice.
He had taken my phone.
He had unplugged the Wi-Fi router.
He had even checked the kitchen drawer where I kept the old spare phone.
He had forgotten my ankle.
I had moved the watch there two nights earlier because Grant had started checking my wrists whenever I came out of the bathroom.
Its emergency transmission had been active for nearly four minutes.
Grant raised the poker.
I turned my body instinctively.
Instead of hitting me again, he smashed it into the wooden arm of the chair beside me.
The crack made me flinch so hard the rope burned my wrists.
“Next number.”
I looked directly at him.
“You should’ve checked my ankle.”
His expression changed.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Grant dropped the poker and lunged for my leg.
I kicked backward.
He caught my ankle with both hands.
The watch screen glowed under the sock.
For the first time that night, Grant looked frightened.
“My brother has every second,” I whispered.
Grant stared at the watch.
Then at the ceiling.
Then back at me.
He grabbed my face, trying to cover my mouth.
Above us came a dull thud.
The rope jerked.
Grant stopped moving.
Another thud came from inside the ceiling.
The tension vanished from my arms.
My feet hit the floor.
Grant looked upward.
“What the hell—”
A section of the attic access panel crashed open behind him.
And my brother’s voice came through the darkness.
“Step away from her, Grant.”
But Daniel wasn’t looking at Grant.
He was staring at the ceiling hook.
And when he finally looked at me, his expression frightened me more than Grant’s had.
“Rachel,” he said quietly. “That hook wasn’t installed tonight.”
It took me a second to understand.
May you like
Then Daniel pointed toward the attic.
“The beam was reinforced for it.”
