Chapter 2 - The House on Maple Drive
The rain began as a light drizzle across Columbus, smearing the windshield of the unmarked police sedan Officer Cole had requested to transport us. He hadn't let me drive my own car. My station wagon remained parked in the Lincoln Middle School lot, guarded by a junior patrolman, while Cole drove Emily and me toward the precinct station downtown.
Or at least, that was the plan until my phone rang again.
It was an unknown number, but the area code was local. Cole gestured for me to answer it on speakerphone while he kept one hand on the steering wheel and his eyes locked on the rearview mirror.
"Hello?" I said, my voice tight.
"You always were terrible at following simple instructions, Clara," Daniel’s voice drifted through the speaker. It was calm, rhythmic, almost conversational—the exact tone he used when he was setting a trap during our divorce depositions.
"Daniel, where are you?" I demanded. "The police are already at the house. It's over."
A soft, low laugh answered me. "The police are standing on your porch looking at a kicked-in side door, Clara. They think I'm inside. They're setting up a perimeter like they learned in the academy. But I haven't been in that house for fifteen minutes."
I looked at Officer Cole. He immediately tapped his dash monitor, signaling the county tracker to pinpoint the incoming call signal.
"What do you want, Daniel?" I asked, forcing my tone to remain flat, refusing to give him the emotional reaction he craved.
"I want what belongs to me," Daniel said smoothly. "You took my daughter, you took my reputation in this town, and you thought a piece of paper signed by a family court judge meant you could erase me. But you forgot one thing, Clara."
"What's that?"
"I built that life with you. I know every wire, every hinge, every secret you have."
There was a sudden, sharp sound over the line—a heavy metallic clank, followed by the distinct sound of a power tool whirring.
"Check your email, Clara," Daniel whispered. "Before the police cut the neighborhood power grid."
The line went dead.
My phone buzzed with an incoming email notification. Attached was a live streaming link hosted on a private cloud server. I tapped the link with a trembling thumb.
The video feed opened to a wide angle of my basement.
In the center of the concrete room sat my primary circuit breaker box, its metal door hanging open. Wires had been spliced into the main feed, leading down to a commercial digital timer strapped to a heavy steel storage locker—the same locker where I kept our seasonal clothes and family tax records.
Sitting on top of the locker was the navy blue sweater.
And tucked into the folds of the sweater was a small, military-grade GPS jammer, its blue light blinking in steady, silent rhythm.
"Cole," I breathed, shoving the screen in front of his face. "Look at the basement."
Cole glanced down at the screen for two seconds, his eyes widening. "He didn't break in to steal anything. He turned your basement into a hardwired relay station."
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"Why?"
"Because," Cole said, slamming his foot on the accelerator and spinning the steering wheel into a sharp U-turn, "as long as that jammer is running on your house power, every police band radio within four blocks of your residence is completely dead."
