Chapter 2 - THE EVIDENCE VANISHESHOOK: When the police arrived at the estate, the crime scene was pristine—and Jenna was nowhere to be found.
We arrived at my father-in-law Arthur’s suburban estate forty minutes later, trailing two police cruisers. Snow had begun to fall, heavy and wet, coating the windshield in thick white streaks.
My hands shook against the steering wheel. Mark sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead in terrified silence. He knew his world was fracturing, but he was still desperately clinging to the delusion that his father was just a misunderstood patriarch.
As we pulled into the long asphalt driveway, my heart dropped.
Arthur’s garage door was wide open. The living room lights were blaring. But Jenna’s car—the blue sedan that should have been parked near the porch—was completely gone.
"Where is she?" I muttered, slamming my car into park and springing out into the freezing air.
Detective Miller and his partner drew their sidearms, moving cautiously up the porch steps. I followed closely behind, ignoring Mark’s hushed pleas for me to wait in the car.
"Arthur Vance! Police! Open the door!" Miller knocked heavily.
Silence answered.
Miller tested the doorknob. Unlocked. He pushed the door open, his gun pointed toward the entryway.
The house was immaculate. The green wrapping paper I had left on the kitchen counter was gone. The coffee mug on the table had been washed and placed neatly in the drying rack. The tablet Jenna had photographed was missing from the counter, and Arthur’s phone was nowhere in sight.
"Jenna!" I called out, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. "Jenna!"
No answer.
"Mrs. Vance, stay back," Miller ordered as he led his partner through the ground floor.
I rushed toward the kitchen where Jenna had been just forty-five minutes ago. On the center island sat a single sticky note written in neat, elegant cursive—Arthur’s handwriting.
Gone to clear up misunderstandings. See you at the hearing.
"He took her," I breathed, turning to Mark who had just walked into the room. "Mark, your father took Jenna! He realized she found the files!"
Mark shook his head frantically, grabbing his phone. "No, no way. Dad wouldn't hurt Jenna. Let me call her."
He dialed her number. It rang once, twice, three times, before going straight to voicemail. He tried again. Same result.
"Detective!" I yelled. "My sister-in-law was in this house with evidence of an attempted child endangerment and extortion plot! She stopped responding to her phone fifteen minutes ago!"
Detective Miller surveyed the squeaky-clean kitchen. "There's no sign of a struggle here, ma'am. But given the lab results on the slippers, we are opening a missing persons report for Jenna Vance and issuing a BOLO for Arthur Vance."
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A text message from an unknown number appeared on the screen.
My fingers trembled as I opened it.
It was a short video file. I pressed play.
The video was low-resolution, taken from a hidden angle. It showed me standing in the kitchen hours earlier, hysterically screaming as I carried Lucy toward the sink. But the audio had been heavily edited—cut and spliced. In the video, my voice sounded warped, screaming violent insults at Lucy while she sobbed.
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Below the video was a single line of text:
Drop the police report by midnight, Elena, or this video goes to child protective services and the press. Let's see who the judge believes.
