CHAP 4 — The Whisper
The elevator ride down felt endless.
I watched the live feed with one hand while stabbing the emergency button for the parking garage with the other.
On screen, Megan was still on the floor.
She had managed to pull herself upright against the bed frame, but her body shook with effort. One hand pressed low against her abdomen.
Noah cried from the bassinet near the doorway.
Too far from her.
Linda stood between them.
A queen guarding a prison.
The 911 dispatcher kept asking questions.
“My wife is postpartum,” I said, breathless. “Two weeks. Severe hemorrhage history. She’s on bed rest. My mother is refusing to let her reach our newborn. I’m watching it live on camera.”
“Is there any visible injury?”
“Yes. She collapsed. She may be bleeding.”
“Are you at the residence?”
“I’m twenty minutes away.”
I hated those words.
Twenty minutes was a lifetime when your wife was on the floor.
The dispatcher told me officers and paramedics were being sent.
Then the audio from the feed crackled louder.
Linda leaned close to Megan’s ear.
This time, I heard enough.
“If you tell Ethan, I’ll tell the hospital you shook the baby. They’ll believe me before they believe a hysterical mother.”
Megan went still.
Not calmer.
Frozen.
That was the terror I had seen from the boardroom doorway.
My hand tightened on the phone.
The dispatcher asked, “Sir, are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said. “She just threatened to frame my wife.”
In the parking garage, my assistant Jordan caught up to me, still wearing his conference badge.
“Ethan, I’ll drive.”
“I can drive.”
“No, you can watch the feed. Give me the keys.”
He did not ask questions.
That was the first kindness of the day.
In the car, I called the locksmith again.
“Police are on the way,” I said. “My mother is inside. My wife and newborn are in danger. Change the locks the second officers clear the house.”
Then I called our neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez, a retired nurse who lived across the street.
She answered on the first ring.
“Ethan?”
“Can you go outside? Don’t enter. Just watch for emergency vehicles. My wife needs help.”
Her voice changed.
“I’m already at my window. I heard the baby crying through the open upstairs window.”
My chest tightened.
“How long?”
“Too long.”
I looked at the phone.
Linda had bent down and was trying to take Megan’s phone from the nightstand.
May you like
She still did not know I was watching.
That ignorance was the only advantage we had left.
