Chapter 2 - The VanishingPanic, colder than the rain, flooded my veins. I dropped to my knees in the dirt, examining the blood trail. It wasn't just a few drops; it was a smear, as if something heavyāor someone woundedāhad been dragged into a vehicle.
Sara rushed to the porch, holding her swollen belly, her eyes wide with terror as she saw me covered in mud and tears.
"Leo? What is it? What did you find in the closet?!" she yelled over the wind.
"Snakes, Sara! A whole nest of venomous snakes!" I shouted back, my voice trembling with raw guilt. "Rex saved you! He saved our baby, and I... I threw him out!"
Sara gasped, her face draining of all color as the brutal truth hit her. She fell back against the doorframe, sobbing. "No... no, Rex... Leo, where is he?!"
"Heās gone," I whispered, staring at the tire marks. "Someone took him."
I called the police, but they treated it like a minor issue. āSir, itās a dog. People pick up stray animals all the time,ā the officer on the line snapped indifferently. But I knew Rex wasn't a stray. He had a collar, a tag, and a microchip. Furthermore, the blood on the road was fresh.
I couldn't just sit there. I pulled up our neighborhood's Security App on my phone, desperately scrolling through recent posts from local residents. Thatās when I saw a post uploaded just twenty minutes prior by an anonymous account:
"Be careful around Oak Ridge Avenue. Saw a dark grey van idling outside houses. Two men threw a large, injured German Shepherd into the back and drove off fast."
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Attached was a blurry photo of the van's license plate. My pulse spiked. I recognized that van. It belonged to Marcusāthe shady local contractor who had renovated our nursery just three months ago.
The same contractor who had insistence on working on the closet walls alone.
