The moment my daughter’s teacher read those three words over the phone, I didn't waste a second calling her father—I called 911.

The street outside my house on Maple Drive was eerily quiet.

Two standard police cruisers were parked diagonally across the pavement, their red and blue lights flashing silently against the damp gray brick of the neighboring homes. Four uniformed officers had their sidearms drawn, taking cover behind their door panels, shouting orders toward my open front door.

They didn't know their radios were dead.

Officer Cole slammed his sedan to a stop fifty yards back, grabbing his radio mic. "Dispatch, this is Unit Twelve, I am on scene at Maple Drive—"

Static. Pure, white, deafening static roared through his speakers.

"Dammit!" Cole cursed, slamming the mic back onto its cradle. "The jammer is active. The perimeter team can't hear dispatch, and dispatch can't hear them."

Emily shrank into the backseat, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. "Mom... don't go out there. Please."

"Stay in the car with Officer Cole, Emily," I said, reaching back to squeeze her ankles.

"No one is leaving this car!" Cole barked, pulling his Glock from its holster and checking the chamber. "Mrs. Mercer, your ex-husband is a trained asset. He created a communication black hole on this street on purpose. He wants confusion. He wants the officers focused on the front door while he operates from the blind spots."

"The garage," I whispered suddenly, the memory returning like a flash of lightning. "Emily said he told her to check the garage this morning."

"What about the garage?" Cole asked.

"My garage doesn't open to the front street," I explained frantically. "It faces the back alley behind the Miller family's property. If he entered through the alley, the officers on the front street would never see him!"

Cole looked out the rain-slicked window toward the narrow gravel alleyway running behind the row of houses. He drew a long breath, pulled his cell phone out, and saw the screen reading NO SERVICE.

"He built a fifty-yard dead zone," Cole muttered. "Alright. Listen to me. I am going to move down the alley on foot. I need to manually alert the officers on the front porch to pull back and re-establish a hard perimeter."

"I'm coming with you," I said, unbuckling my seatbelt.

"Absolutely not," Cole snapped. "You stay here with Emily. Lock the doors from the inside."

"Cole, he knows the layout of my yard better than you do," I argued, my voice sharp and uncompromising. "He knows which fence boards are loose. He knows where the cellar hatch is. If you go back there blind, he'll see you coming before you clear the corner."

Cole stared at me for three long seconds. He reached into his tactical vest, pulled out a spare pocket canister of pepper spray, and shoved it into my hand.

"You stay five steps behind me," Cole ordered. "If I tell you to drop, you drop flat on the concrete. Do you understand me?"

I nodded. I looked back at Emily through the dark interior of the car.

"Lock the doors, honey," I told her, my heart breaking at the fear in her eyes. "Keep your head down below the window line."