Chapter 1 - The Flash Drive
The hospital room felt completely suffocating as I waited for the woman from the motel to walk through the door.
Detective Ethan Cole stood near the window with his arms crossed over his chest.
When the door finally opened, I expected to see a confident and arrogant home-wrecker.
Instead, the woman who walked in looked absolutely terrified and physically exhausted.
Her name was Rebecca, and she immediately handed a small silver flash drive to the detective.
She explained that she had hidden a security camera inside my parents' garage weeks ago because she knew my father was a dangerous man.
Detective Cole plugged the drive into his laptop and motioned for a police officer to bring my mother back into the room.
My mother marched in with a scowl on her face, completely unprepared for what was about to happen.
The detective clicked play, and the grainy black-and-white footage of our garage filled the screen.
I watched myself confront my father, holding up my phone just before he struck me with a heavy steel wrench.
The sickening sound of the impact made my stomach churn, but it was his words that froze the room.
"I hit her because she wouldn't stop telling the truth," my father's voice echoed from the laptop speakers.
My mother instantly went pale, her knees trembling as she stared at the undeniable proof of his crime.
But the video did not stop playing after I collapsed onto the concrete floor.
The footage clearly showed my mother walking into the frame and casually stepping over my bleeding body.
She bent down, picked up the steel wrench, and carefully wiped my father's fingerprints off the handle with her sleeve.
"The police are going to ask questions, so we need to make this look like a home invasion," my mother said on the recording.
Detective Cole immediately pulled out his handcuffs and stepped toward her.
My mother did not even try to fight him as he locked the steel cuffs around her wrists.
She just stared at me with completely dead, emotionless eyes.
"You have the right to remain silent," Detective Cole recited while leading her out into the hallway.
I looked at Rebecca, realizing she had just saved my life by bringing this footage to the police.
Before I could thank her, the detective's radio crackled with a frantic voice.
The dispatch officer announced that they had just raided my father's house, but he was already gone.
They found his ankle monitor cut and left on the kitchen counter next to a printed flight itinerary.
May you like
He was fleeing the country, but that was not the worst part.
The officer on the radio confirmed that my father had left a massive, ticking explosive device wired to the front door.
