Chapter 3 - DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR YET
Frank did not search the house.
That decision probably saved them.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him to stand, open the closet, scoop up Mason, carry Lily, and confront whatever coward had come into his daughter’s home.
But Frank had been a volunteer firefighter for twenty-six years.
He knew emergencies punished pride.
So he stayed low in the hallway with the phone pressed to his ear.
“My grandson says someone is still inside,” he told the dispatcher.
“Sir, stay where you are if you can do so safely. Do not investigate. Help is on the way.”
Frank looked at the hallway around him.
The front door was thirty feet away.
The kitchen opened to the left.
The basement stairs were beyond the refrigerator.
The guest bedroom was behind him.
The closet door was directly in front of him.
Lily whispered, “Don’t let him take Mason.”
“He won’t.”
Frank did not know if that was true.
He said it anyway.
“Mason,” he said softly, “can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Can you stay quiet?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Good boy.”
Another floorboard creaked.
Not from the closet.
From the kitchen.
Frank slowly turned his head.
The warm light above the sink shone across the hardwood, stopping just before the hallway corner.
Something moved behind the wall.
A shadow.
Maybe a person.
Maybe fear making shapes.
Frank looked down at Lily.
Her eyes were fixed on the same corner.
She had seen it too.
The dispatcher asked, “Can you move to a room and lock the door?”
Frank looked at Lily.
He could not safely drag her.
He would not leave Mason.
“No,” he whispered. “We’re in the hallway.”
He slid his body between Lily and the kitchen entrance.
Not heroic.
Not dramatic.
Just an old man placing himself where danger would have to pass through him first.
Then came a sound Frank would never forget.
A phone vibrating.
Not his.
Somewhere in the kitchen.
It buzzed once.
Stopped.
Buzzed again.
The shadow shifted.
Inside the closet, Mason began crying harder, trying to muffle it with his hands.
Frank kept his voice calm.
“Mason, listen to me. Count with Lily. Quietly. One to ten.”
Lily’s lips moved.
Mason whispered through the door.
“One.”
“Two,” Lily breathed.
Frank kept counting with them until flashing lights washed faintly across the front window.
Only then did the shadow move fast.
A door opened somewhere near the basement stairs.
Then slammed.
The sirens did not scream.
They approached silent.
Professional.
May you like
Close.
Frank had never loved police lights so much in his life.
