Chapter 28
Sadie
I should have known that when my car had a flat tire, something was wrong.
I shouldn’t have ignored the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that told me to call the guys.
I shouldn’t have been so stubborn, so proud, that I decided to walk the few blocks to collect Owen from school.
I was in a rush, more concerned about being late than about being on my guard.
The route is familiar, and I convinced myself that I’d be perfectly safe; my stalker was hardly going to try anything in broad daylight.
Looking back, it was astonishing how quickly I managed to talk myself out of my own instincts.
Every warning bell that had been screaming inside my head was answered with another excuse.
It was only a flat tire. It was only a ten-minute walk.
It was the middle of the afternoon. There were people everywhere.
Nothing about the street felt threatening, and perhaps that was exactly the point.
Whoever had been watching me had known that I would be less guarded, surrounded by ordinary life, than I ever would have been on a dark, deserted road.
More than anything, though, I was thinking about Owen.
I pictured him sitting on the little wooden bench outside his classroom, backpack at his feet, scanning every passing face for mine.
The thought alone had filled me with panic.
Owen has had enough upheaval over the past year.
Between the divorce, Ethan’s increasingly erratic behavior, and the terrifying weeks we’d spent surrounded by stalkers, security cameras, and overprotective bikers, his little world has been shaken more than any four-year-old deserves.
The last thing I wanted was for him to wonder why Mommy hadn’t come.
That fear had drowned out every other instinct.
Red-faced and sweating, my calves screaming as I power walked, I rushed to get there.
But still, I knew I’d never make it on time on foot.
The one thing I didn’t need was to be late picking Owen up.
I did not doubt that it would only fuel Ethan’s argument that I’m an unfit mother and increase the risk of him being taken away from me.
That’s probably why I accepted the ride.
I remember glancing down at my watch and feeling my heart sink as the minutes slipped away far faster than my feet could carry me.
My breathing had become ragged, each breath scraping at my throat as sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades beneath my blouse.
I had been so focused on picking him up from school, mentally calculating whether I could somehow make up another minute if I crossed at the lights instead of waiting, that I barely noticed the slow-moving car until it was already beside me.
Even now, replaying it over and over in my mind, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when common sense deserted me. Maybe it disappeared the moment I’d convinced myself I didn’t need to call the guys.
“Hey, need a ride?” he’d said, winding down the window and slowing to a crawl. “You look like you’re running late for something important.”
His voice had been friendly. Calm. Almost amused.
Nothing about it had sounded threatening.
If anything, it had sounded reassuringly ordinary, like the sort of good Samaritan who stopped to help somebody whose shopping had spilled across a supermarket parking lot or whose battery had gone flat in winter.
“Oh my God, are you sure? You’d be a total lifesaver. My car has a flat, and I’m late to pick Owen up from school,” I panted, hunched over with hands on my knees.
“Of course, get in. He’s at Oak Grange Primary, right?”
The words hadn’t registered. Not properly.
My brain was so consumed with getting to Owen that I had accepted the information without examining it.
Looking back, I realize there had been the tiniest flicker of surprise somewhere in the back of my mind, but it had disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.
People knew Owen went to Oak Grange. Friends knew.
The guys knew. Ethan knew. Teachers, neighbors, his friends’ parents…
Not to mention, it was the closest school, so it made sense to assume I was heading there.
There were countless innocent explanations.
I had chosen to believe the latter without giving myself time to think.
I climbed in without thinking, without asking how he knew what school my son was at. “Thanks,” I’d told my kidnapper, blissfully unaware I’d just sealed my own fate.
I’d never been in his car before. The interior was tidy, almost meticulously so, and sunlight filtered through the windshield in warm bands, making everything feel strangely normal.
I remember pulling the door closed behind me and feeling an almost embarrassing wave of relief.
I’d make it. Owen wouldn’t be waiting. Everything was going to be okay.
I was wrong.
I struggled with the jammed seatbelt, and he leaned over. “Here, let me help, Sadie. It gets stuck sometimes.”
There had been nothing unusual about the movement. Nothing alarming. People leaned across to help with stubborn seatbelts all the time. I hadn’t flinched, hadn’t questioned it. I hadn’t even considered climbing back out of the car.
At first, I thought I’d been stung by a bee.
But then the world spun, and I felt as if I was sinking in quicksand.
I tried to stay awake, desperately tried to move, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
Limbs sluggish, my mind foggy, I blinked up at him, my mouth opening and closing like a fish as I tried to speak. Tried to say something, anything.
Panic arrived in slow motion. My fingers stopped responding first, refusing to grip the seatbelt that moments earlier had been my biggest frustration.
Then my legs grew impossibly heavy, as though somebody had poured wet concrete through my veins.
The edges of my vision softened, colors bleeding together, while sounds grew strangely distant, muffled beneath the frantic pounding of my own heartbeat.
Somewhere inside my head I was screaming at myself to open the door, to run, to fight, to do anything at all, but my body had become something separate from me, refusing every desperate command I gave it.
“Shh, sleep now, it’s okay.” The words drifted toward me as though spoken from the far end of a tunnel.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell Owen I was sorry. I wanted somebody—anybody—to see me. Instead, all I could manage was another sluggish blink as the darkness rushed up to meet me.
Blackness swallowed me.
When I woke in the unfamiliar basement, the full horror of my situation finally settled over me.
I knew then that my stalker was the last person I would ever have suspected.
Looking back, though, perhaps I should have.
The clues had been there all along. I just hadn’t been looking in the right direction.
The first thing I force myself to do is breathe.
Panic is already clawing at the edges of my mind, threatening to overwhelm every coherent thought.
Still, I know enough from years of reading crime novels—and from the countless true crime documentaries Dani always insisted on making me watch—that panic gets people killed.
Panic makes people miss opportunities. Panic makes people stop thinking.
I can’t afford that. Not now. Not when Owen is waiting for me.
Another thought hits. Owen. Did he take Owen, too?
The panic starts again and I try to breathe my way through it.
The thought of him hits like a physical blow.
He’ll have been sitting outside his classroom looking for me, his legs swinging beneath the bench, probably telling his teacher that Mommy is coming because Mommy is always there.
My chest tightens until it almost hurts.
By now, Dani will have collected him, or Ethan, but that won’t stop him from worrying.
Owen notices everything. He’ll know something is wrong long before anyone tells him.
“I’m coming,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. “I promise.” The words disappear into the silence.
Slowly, I force myself to look around. The basement is large, though calling it a basement somehow doesn’t quite do it justice.
It feels more like an old cellar that has been converted for storage years ago and then largely forgotten.
The concrete floor beneath me is cold enough that I can feel it through my jeans, and the air carries the faint smell of damp stone, dust, and old timber.
Somewhere nearby, water drips at slow, irregular intervals, each splash echoing just enough to remind me how quiet everything else is.
No music. No television. No voices. Only silence.
The kind of silence that feels ominous. If I can’t hear outside these walls, it stands to reason no one can hear me.
I push myself carefully into a sitting position, wincing as my head protests. The room spins for a moment before gradually settling, and I wait until the nausea eases before trying to stand.
My legs are still unsteady as I rise. Whatever he gave me hasn’t completely left my system. Keeping one hand against the cold wall for balance, I slowly make my way around the perimeter of the room, forcing myself to notice everything instead of allowing fear to dictate what I see.
There are no windows. At least, none that haven’t been securely boarded up.
The walls are solid brick, painted white at some point in the distant past, although years of damp have left patches of peeling paint and gray stains creeping up from the floor.
Exposed pipes run across the ceiling overhead, disappearing through rough holes in the masonry, and a single fluorescent strip light buzzes faintly above me, bathing everything in a cold, unforgiving glow.
The door catches my attention almost immediately. Heavy. Solid. Steel. I press my ear against it. Nothing. No sound penetrates the steel at all. Slowly, I wrap my fingers around the handle and test it. Locked. I hadn’t expected anything else. Still, disappointment settles heavily in my stomach.
I crouch beside the hinges instead, studying them carefully.
Whoever built this place installed the hinges on the outside, which means even if I somehow found a screwdriver—or a spoon, or a coin, or anything capable of removing the pins—it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
The entire thing has been designed to keep someone inside.
Me.
The realization sends another wave of fear through me. I force it back down and take a deep breath.
Think.
Just think.
I begin searching properly, this time with purpose. Every corner. Every shelf. Every crack in the walls. If there is anything useful in here—a loose nail, a broken piece of wood, an exposed screw, anything at all—I need to find it before he comes back.
An old metal shelving unit stands against one wall.
Most of the shelves are empty apart from a few dusty cardboard boxes and a broken flowerpot.
I lift each box one by one, ignoring the dust coating my hands, but they contain nothing except brittle newspapers and rusted gardening tools too blunt to be of any use.
The flowerpot is more promising. I deliberately let it slip from my fingers.
It shatters against the concrete floor with a satisfying crack.
For one hopeful second, I stare at the jagged shards scattered around my feet.
Could it be used as a weapon? Something?
Then reality catches up with me. The pieces are ceramic, not glass.
Sharp enough to cut skin, perhaps, but far too brittle to do anything else.
Still… I crouch and quietly slide the largest shard beneath the bottom shelf, hiding it from immediate view.
It isn’t much, but it’s something, and right now, something feels infinitely better than nothing.