Chapter 1 - The Red Light
Caleb dumped the bowl of wet dog food over his mother’s hands and watched it slide between her fingers.
Margaret stayed on her knees inside the blue plastic drum he had shoved into the kennel.
The steel gate was padlocked behind her.
“Tell me the password.”
“I don’t remember.”
Caleb lifted the rubber mallet.
Margaret curled her hands against the bottom of the drum.
He brought the mallet down against the plastic wall beside her arm.
BOOM.
She flinched.
Caleb leaned closer.
“Try harder.”
The humiliation hurt almost more than the fear.
This was the same backyard where Margaret had hosted Fourth of July cookouts for twenty-three years. The same cedar fence her late husband, Tom, had stained every other summer. The same kennel that once belonged to their old Labrador.
Now her son had locked her inside it.
Margaret looked past him toward the fence.
Caleb followed her eyes.
A small security camera hung beneath the pergola.
Its cable dangled loose.
Unplugged.
Caleb smiled.
“Good. Nobody saw anything.”
Margaret said nothing.
A tiny red light blinked.
Once.
Caleb’s smile vanished.
The light blinked again.
He crossed the yard, ripped the camera from its mount, and turned it over.
No power cable.
No Wi-Fi indicator.
“What did you change?”
Margaret slowly opened her fist.
Resting in her palm was a deep-burgundy memory-card case.
Caleb stared at it.
“You should’ve checked where it saves.”
He moved toward the kennel.
Margaret closed her fist again.
For the first time that afternoon, Caleb looked frightened.
May you like
Not because someone might see what he had just done.
Because he suddenly understood that this might not be the first thing Margaret had saved.
