The house was still and silent. Walking through it, he noticed signs of someone who had left in a hurry: empty makeup bags, hangers dropped on the floor. In the master bedroom, he went to find Tyler’s pajamas, and a soft blue glow caught his eye in the shadows.
Shoved carelessly beneath the bed was an old iPad with a cracked screen.
It buzzed, lighting up the dusty floorboards with a new notification. Brent stared at the glowing rectangle. He had no idea that whatever was stored on that unprotected device was about to turn a rescue into a hunt.
PART 3 (FINAL)
Brent knelt and picked up the iPad. The screen was cracked in one corner, and the notification on it read: Are you still coming? He’s waiting.
The sender was saved only as “D.”
The device wasn’t locked. Whitney had always been careless about that, a habit that used to drive him crazy during the marriage. Now he stood in the half-light of her bedroom and scrolled upward through weeks of messages.
They told a story he never saw coming.
“D” was a man named Dale Pruitt. Whitney had met him in the waiting room of a pain clinic eight months earlier. Brent had known about the back injury from the car accident two years back, and about the prescription that had ended in the spring. He had not known it ended because the clinic closed its doors, or that Whitney had been buying pills from Dale ever since.
The last message from Whitney was five days old.
I just need one more night away. The kids will be fine. Mom’s friend is checking in on them. I’ll be back Sunday.
It was Thursday now.
Brent sat down hard on the edge of the bed. The anger came first, hot and clean. Then something worse underneath it: he had accepted a vague story about a lake cabin because it was easier than asking questions. For months they had been getting along, and he had enjoyed not fighting.
