Her smug smile slipped, but only for a fraction of a second. “It was a joke, calm down.”
I stood up so quickly my heavy dining chair struck the hardwood floor with a deafening crack. My father immediately stepped out of his seat, blocking the back door. “Peyton, sit down.”
I looked at his hand resting tightly on the deadbolt. Then I looked at the fresh mud caked onto Wyatt’s designer boots. Then at the brand-new security camera positioned above the kitchen window—deliberately angled toward the backyard instead of the front driveway.
“You moved him outside,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a
physical blow.
Mother rolled her eyes, sighing heavily. “He wanders. We had to protect him from himself.”
I violently shoved past my father, threw the lock open, and ran across the rain-soaked lawn. The heavy wooden shed door was secured with a massive, industrial steel padlock. Behind the wood, something scraped weakly against the panel.
“Grandpa?”
A ragged, broken cough answered from the dark.
I reached into my tactical handbag, pulled out a heavy-duty compact entry tool, and snapped the padlock shackle in one clean motion. The door swung open.
Franklin Caldwell sat on a stained, damp mattress beneath a heavily leaking roof. His thin wrists were deeply bruised. His cheeks had completely collapsed into his skull. A plastic bowl of gray, stagnant water rested beside his knee. When he saw my silhouette in the frame, his cracked, bleeding lips began to tremble.
