Chapter 5 - The Town That Looked Away
“GET DOWN!” Jake yelled, shoving me behind the ambulance. The rifle cracked, a bullet zinging over our heads and embedding itself in a pine tree. The SWAT officers returned fire, hitting the SUV’s tires, and it spun out, crashing into a ditch.
They pulled my parents out, cuffed them, my mom screaming the whole way. “You’ll pay for this, Rachel! He was family! You ruined everything!” My father was silent, his head hanging, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead.
The next few days were chaos. The story blew up on local news, then national: Predator Uncle Kept Two Girls in Bunker for Years—Family Helped Him. The Myrtle Beach Police Department was raided, three officers arrested for covering up Derek’s crimes, including the old detective who’d buried Sarah Miller’s case. Sarah Miller herself came forward, now 34, a nurse in Atlanta, telling her story to every news outlet that would listen.
But the worst part was the town. Half the people called my parents monsters. The other half called me a traitor, saying I’d “destroyed my own family for attention.” I got death threats on Facebook, people leaving nasty comments on the news articles, saying I’d made the whole thing up to get custody of Lily.
One night, I was sitting in the safe house Jake had arranged for us—an apartment in Columbia, with bars on the windows and a 24/7 security guard—when there was a soft knock on the door. I grabbed the baseball bat Jake had left me, peering through the peephole.
It was Megan.
Her face was bruised, her left eye swollen shut, her lip split. She held her 7-year-old son, Tyler, tight to her chest, his face buried in her neck. “Rachel,” she said, her voice cracking. “Please. Let me in. He got out.”
My blood ran cold. “Who? Derek? He’s in jail—”
“Not Derek,” she sobbed. “Mom’s cousin. The cop who helped bury the case. He found out I told Lily about the cabin. He beat me. He said he was gonna take Tyler next, just like Derek took the other girls. Please, Rachel. I have nowhere else to go.”
I hesitated. This was the sister who’d watched Derek take Lily, who’d lied to the police, who’d helped our parents frame me for kidnapping. But then I looked at Tyler, his little shoulders shaking, and I thought of Lily, huddled behind that kiosk in the dark.
I opened the door.
We sat at the kitchen table, Megan sipping hot tea, her hands still shaking. She told me everything: how Derek had come back to town six months ago, dying of pancreatic cancer, with only a few months left to live. How he’d told our parents he wanted “one last gift” to make up for the life they’d “ruined” by making him leave town. How he’d picked Lily—because she looked just like me when I was 6, because I’d been the one girl he’d “never gotten to have.” How our parents had agreed, because Derek had taken the fall for our dad’s embezzlement from the hardware store 20 years ago, a crime that would’ve sent him to prison for 10 years. How Megan had tried to stop them, but Derek had threatened to kill Tyler if she said a word.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, crying so hard she could barely breathe. “I was scared. I’m a coward. I let them hurt Lily. I let him hurt all those girls.”
Lily, who’d been watching from the doorway, walked over and climbed into Megan’s lap. She reached out, touching the bruise on Megan’s face, soft. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice small. “I was scared too. The bad man is gone now.”
Megan broke down, holding Lily tight, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t hate my sister. She’d made the worst choice a person could make—but she’d been trapped, just like all of us.
The next day, Megan turned over everything she had: Derek’s phone records, text messages between our parents and the corrupt cops, a list of every girl Derek had ever approached, including three more who’d never come forward. Jake took it all to the state attorney general, and the case grew bigger by the day.
A week later, we were all sitting in the living room, watching the news, when the anchor said: “Breaking: Derek Walsh has been found dead in his jail cell, an apparent suicide. He left a note, claiming responsibility for the abductions of Chloe Bennett and Zoe Carter, and the 2004 assault of Sarah Miller. Investigators say the note does not implicate any other family members.”
I stared at the screen, my blood cold. Derek was dead. But he’d taken the fall for everyone. My parents, the corrupt cops, all the people who’d helped him—they were gonna walk.
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Megan grabbed my hand, her face white. “He didn’t kill himself,” she said, quiet. “My mom’s cousin—he has friends in the jail. They silenced him. To protect everyone else.”
Just then, the security guard called up from the lobby. “Rachel? There’s a woman here to see you. Says her name is Sarah Miller. She says she’s got proof your parents didn’t just help Derek—they gave him his first victim.”
