Chapter 1 - Keep Him Talking
My husband’s face changed the instant the dispatcher’s voice came through the plastic.
For one second, he simply stared at the glowing phone beneath the mud.
Then he lunged.
I twisted my buried wrist as far as I could and screamed for the first time in two days.
“Don’t touch it.”
He ripped the freezer bag from the dirt.
The dispatcher was still speaking.
“Ma’am, deputies are approaching the residence now.”
My husband slammed his thumb against the screen.
The call disappeared.
His mother stepped onto the porch.
“What did she do?”
Mara stood so quickly that her lawn chair tipped backward.
My husband looked toward the side gate.
Then toward the driveway.
Then back at me.
The calm husband disappeared.
“You called the police.”
I kept breathing through the straw.
He grabbed it.
For a terrifying second, I thought he was going to pull it away.
Instead, a siren sounded somewhere beyond the houses.
His hand froze.
His mother hissed, “Get her out.”
My husband stared at her.
“She can’t look like this when they arrive.”
That sentence saved me.
The phone was still recording inside his hand.
He had forgotten to stop it.
Mara rushed toward the shed.
“Get the shovel.”
My husband dropped to his knees beside me and began clawing at the dirt around my shoulders.
Not to rescue me.
To erase what he had done.
His mother joined him.
“Say she did this herself.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Then say she had some kind of breakdown.”
The sirens grew louder.
My husband leaned close enough that I could smell coffee on his breath.
“You tell them this was voluntary.”
I looked straight at him.
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“You don’t understand what happens if you destroy this family.”
The side gate exploded inward.
A deputy entered with his weapon lowered but ready.
Another followed.
Both men stopped.
Neither spoke for half a second.
Then the older deputy shouted.
“Everybody step away from her.”
My husband stood.
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
The deputy looked at my head protruding from the earth.
He looked at my swollen stomach hidden somewhere beneath the packed soil.
Then he looked at the pitcher, the tipped lawn chair, the shovel, and the insects crawling over the wet ground.
“What exactly,” he asked, “does it look like to you?”
My husband started talking fast.
I stopped listening.
The younger deputy crouched in front of me.
“My name is Deputy Cole.”
“Can you breathe?”
I nodded toward the straw.
“Through that.”
His face tightened.
“Okay.”
“We’re getting you out.”
I whispered the one thing that mattered more than anything else.
“My baby hasn’t moved enough.”
Every expression around me changed.
Deputy Cole touched his radio.
“Dispatch, upgrade medical.”
“Pregnant victim.”
“Prolonged confinement.”
“Possible fetal distress.”
My husband tried to step forward.
The older deputy blocked him.
“She’s my wife.”
“Not right now.”
An ambulance siren rose over the neighborhood.
For the first time since they lowered me into that hole, my husband looked afraid.
Then Deputy Cole glanced at the muddy phone lying beside his boot.
May you like
Its screen was cracked.
But the recording timer was still moving.
