Chapter 3 - The Threat at the Front Door**
The atmosphere in the bedroom shifted from tense to suffocating when Maya’s phone buzzed loudly against the nightstand.
*BZZZ.*
Tyler flinched violently, dropping a plastic wrapper. The little girl buried her face in her brother’s jacket and let out a frightened whimper.
“Shh! Quiet!” Maya hissed, diving across the bed to snatch the phone before it could ring a second time.
She looked at the screen, and the color drained completely from her face. Her breathing hitched.
“Who is it?” Tyler asked, his voice trembling. “Is it my dad?”
“Worse,” Maya whispered, her fingers flying across the keypad. “It’s Mrs. Gable across the street. She texted: ‘Maya, I saw you and your friends sneak in again. If your mother doesn't find out by noon, I’m calling the police and child services myself.’”
Panic erupted in the room. The little girl started crying softly, while Tyler began pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor, his heavy sneakers thumping directly above my head.
“We’re done,” Tyler muttered, pulling frantically at his hair. “If the cops get involved, my old man will find out where we ran away from. He’ll drag us back, and this time... he won't stop hitting us.”
Maya grabbed Tyler by the shoulders, shaking him gently to force him to look at her.
“Listen to me, Tyler! We are not done! I told you, I have a plan,” Maya insisted, though her voice lacked conviction. “We just need to pack up the food and move them to the abandoned boathouse by the river before noon. My mom has a half-day meeting at the office today; she won’t be back until one.”
Lying under the bed, every maternal instinct I possessed screamed at me.
*Move them to an abandoned boathouse? With an abused six-year-old and a battered boy? In the middle of Savannah’s industrial district?*
They wouldn't survive twenty-four hours out there. And Maya was carrying the weight of the world on her thirteen-year-old shoulders, terrified that if she told me—her own mother—I would turn them away or call the authorities out of fear.
That realization stung deeper than any physical wound. My own daughter didn't trust me enough to tell me children were being abused right down our street. She thought I was too weak, too self-absorbed, or too cowardly to help.
Suddenly, a loud, aggressive knock echoed from the front of the house.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
Freezing terror paralyzed the room.
“Maya!” a booming, gravelly voice roared from the front porch. It was a voice that made my blood run instantly cold. Marcus Vance. “Open up! I saw my son’s bike parked down the side alley! Open this door right now or I’ll kick it off its hinges!”
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Inside the bedroom, Tyler stumbled backward, knocking over a stack of books.
“He found us,” Tyler whispered, his eyes wide with absolute horror. “He tracked my phone. We’re dead.”
