Chapter 4 - The Wiped Drive
I sat frozen in the driver's seat as the two CPS workers approached my car.
Daniel walked down the driveway to greet them, shaking their hands with a concerned, pitiful look on his face.
Margaret hurried out of the house behind him, wiping fake tears from her eyes with a handkerchief.
I took a deep breath, unlocked the doors, and stepped out to face them.
"Mrs. Sarah Jenkins?" the taller caseworker asked, holding a clipboard.
"Yes, that's me," I replied, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
"We received an anonymous tip regarding the safety of your daughter, Lily," the woman explained coldly.
"The tipster claimed you have been behaving erratically and physically harming the child," the second woman added.
Margaret let out a dramatic sob, burying her face in Daniel's shoulder.
"She pushed me just a moment ago when I tried to protect my granddaughter," Margaret cried softly.
I gritted my teeth and pulled out my phone.
"They are lying to you," I told the caseworkers confidently.
"My mother-in-law is the one abusing Lily, and I have audio proof stored on my cloud drive," I declared.
I opened my cloud storage app to retrieve the file I had uploaded in the kitchen.
I tapped the folder marked Evidence.
The folder was completely empty.
I refreshed the page frantically, my heart pounding in my ears.
"Where is it?" I muttered, swiping through every digital file I owned.
Daniel gave the caseworkers a tragic, knowing look.
"She hallucinates things, officers, she's been very sick lately," he lied smoothly.
I stared at Daniel, suddenly noticing a small blinking device plugged into the side of his laptop near the window.
He hadn't just deleted the local file; he had run a script to wipe my entire network drive while I was upstairs.
The taller caseworker placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
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"Mrs. Jenkins, we are going to have to ask you to step away from the child," she said sternly.
"We are placing Lily in the temporary emergency custody of her father and grandmother," she announced.
