Chapter 4 - THE BURIED WITNESSThe sound of Thomas’s fingernails scraping against the plastic casing of my waterproof phone pouch was a sound I will hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life.
Swish. Scratch. Grab.
“What are you doing?” Mara called out, walking down the patio steps, her wine glass sloshing over the rim. “Thomas, what’s in the dirt?”
“She hid something,” Thomas growled, his face twisted in sudden, blind panic. His fingers plunged deep into the loose earth, brushing against my ribs before wrapping tightly around the rectangular shape of the waterproof pouch.
With a violent yank, he ripped the phone out of the soil, tearing the pouch open and holding the glowing electronic device up into the moonlight like it was a venomous snake.
My stomach plummeted. The phone was out. The concealment was gone.
“You treacherous little bitch,” Thomas hissed, his face flushing a dark, mottled crimson. He stared down at the illuminated screen, his thumb hovering over the interface to see what app was open. “You had a phone the whole time? Who were you calling? Who did you text?!”
Before I could answer—before I could even draw a full breath through the straw—the screen of the phone suddenly lit up with an incoming carrier override call, bypassing the lock screen entirely.
The speakerphone activated automatically through a preset automation shortcut I had programmed during my final frantic seconds in the kitchen.
A crisp, calm, metallic female voice echoed out into the quiet suburban night, bouncing off the brick walls of the house and carrying across the lawn:
“Sheriff’s dispatch. We have your location. Keep him talking.”
Silence descended upon the backyard so absolute and profound that you could hear the distant hum of traffic half a mile away.
Mara stopped dead in her tracks halfway across the grass, her wine glass slipping from her fingers and shattering into a hundred glittering shards on the flagstone.
Thomas stared at the glowing phone in his hand as if it had suddenly transformed into a live grenade. The color drained entirely from his face, leaving him looking chalky, ghostly, and profoundly, irredeemably terrified.
“What... what is this?” Thomas stammered, his voice cracking into a high-pitched squeak. He tapped frantically at the screen, but the dispatcher’s voice came back, steady and cold as steel:
“Caller ID confirmed. Active recording stream established. GPS coordinates locked at 424 Elmwood Drive. Units are currently five minutes out. Step away from the victim immediately.”
For the first time since they had lowered me into that dark, suffocating grave, the power dynamic shifted.
Thomas looked down at me—at my head sticking out of the dirt, at my bloodshot eyes, at the quiet, terrible smile forming on my cracked lips.
May you like
“You... you set this up,” Thomas whispered, his voice trembling so violently he could barely hold the device. “You recorded everything.”
“Every word, Thomas,” I whispered back through the straw, my voice carrying a quiet, lethal finality. “Every threat. Every laugh. Every shovel of dirt.”
