I turned the key in the ignition. They thought they were dealing with David, the quiet husband who bakes cookies for the school fundraiser and pays his taxes on time. They forgot that monsters don’t just live in the woods—sometimes, they retire to the suburbs to keep the real nightmares away from their children.
I dialed the single number on the burner phone as I pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

It rang twice before a gravelly, familiar voice answered. “I told you never to call this line unless someone was dead, kid.”
“Someone is about to be,” I said, staring into the rearview mirror at a reflection I barely recognized. “I need a tracking sweep on a black SUV leaving the Bellevue area, heading north. And I need it five minutes ago.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, followed by the heavy sound of a keyboard clicking. “Welcome back,” the voice murmured. “I was wondering when you’d remember who you are.”
As I tore down the interstate toward Clarksville, the rain began to pelt against the windshield. They wanted a fight, and they thought they had won the first round by putting an innocent child in a hospital bed. But they made a fatal mistake: they left the father alive. And by the time the sun comes up, Arthur, his thugs, and my wife will realize that the man they tried to bury was the worst mistake of their lives.