Chapter 3 - The Debt That Cost a Child
The officers stepped inside, their hands resting on their guns. “Rachel Carter?” the taller one said, his voice hard. “We have a report of a parental abduction. You need to hand over the child.”
I stood up, shielding Lily behind me. “She’s my daughter. My mother is lying. She and my father and my sister gave her to my uncle—Derek Walsh. He’s a predator. He hurt her.” I held up Lily’s wrists, the bruises dark and stark against her pale skin. “Look at this. Does this look like I hurt her?”
The officer’s eyes flicked to the bruises, then back to my mom. She let out a wail, clutching her chest. “She did that! She’s always been rough with her, ever since the father left. She blames Lily for ruining her life. I’ve been trying to get custody for months, but she keeps running.”
The shorter officer stepped forward, reaching for Lily. “Ma’am, we have to follow protocol. We’ll take the girl to the station, sort this out—”
“Wait.” Lila stepped between us, holding up her phone. “I have security cameras. They record everything that happens on the porch and in the front yard. Let’s pull up the footage from 10 minutes ago, when your ‘distraught grandmother’ showed up. Let’s see if she was crying before she saw the officers, or if she turned on the waterworks the second they pulled up.”
The officers hesitated. My mom’s face went tight, the fake tears drying up instantly. “This is ridiculous,” she snapped. “I don’t have time for this. That child is my blood—”
“Blood doesn’t give you the right to sell her to a monster,” I said, my voice steady now. I pulled out the photo from the beach bag, holding it up to the officers. “This is Derek Walsh. 20 years ago, he assaulted Sarah Miller. My parents paid her family $50,000 to drop the charges. He’s been back in town for three weeks, and they gave my daughter to him to ‘pay back’ the favor. Lily can tell you exactly what he did. She can tell you about the cabin in the woods, the other girls he’s keeping there.”
The taller officer took the photo, his face darkening. “Walsh,” he said, slow. “I remember that name. My old partner worked that case. He said it was closed ‘due to lack of evidence,’ but he always thought someone paid off the Millers.” He looked at my mom, his eyes hard. “You got a lot of explaining to do, ma’am.”
My mom’s mask cracked. For a second, I saw the fear again—the same fear I’d seen in the parking lot. Then she turned and ran, sprinting to her car and peeling out of the driveway before anyone could stop her.
The officers let out a sigh. “We’ll put out an APB for Walsh,” the taller one said. “But we’re state troopers, not local. Myrtle Beach PD’s got a lot of folks who owe your parents favors. We’ll need proof—hard proof—before we can lock anyone up.”
That night, Lila called her cousin, Jake, an ex-cop turned private investigator who specialized in missing kids. He showed up at 5 a.m., coffee in hand, his face lined with years of seeing the worst of people. He listened to the whole story, looked at Lily’s drawing, then nodded.
“Cabin in the woods,” he said, pulling out a map of Horry County. “There’s a dozen old hunting cabins off the logging roads west of Myrtle Beach. Walsh’s family owned a parcel out there back in the 90s. Let’s start there.”
He was just marking the map when my phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number, a video attached.
I pressed play.
Derek Walsh was sitting in a wooden chair, the same scar on his eyebrow, the same tattoo on his neck. Next to him, tied to a chair, was Lila’s 8-year-old daughter, Mia, her mouth taped shut, tears streaming down her face.
Derek smiled at the camera, holding up a knife. “You didn’t play nice, Rachel,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “You called the cops. You made your mommy mad. So now we’re gonna trade. You bring me Lily, alone, at the old lumber yard at midnight tonight. Or I start cutting pieces off this little girl, and I send them to you one by one.”
The video cut off.
Lila let out a scream, grabbing her phone. “Mia,” she sobbed. “Oh my god, Mia.”
Jake stood up, slamming his fist on the table. “We don’t trade,” he said, hard. “We outsmart him. That lumber yard’s surrounded by old warehouses. I’ve got friends on the state SWAT team. We’ll wire you up, hide a decoy in the car, and take him down before he knows what hit him.”
May you like
I looked at Lily, sleeping on the couch, her little hand curled around Mia’s old doll. I thought of the bruises on her wrists, the other girls in the cabin, Mia tied to that chair.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
