Mother rolled her eyes, sighing heavily. “He wanders. We had to protect him from himself.”
I violently shoved past my father, threw the lock open, and ran across the rain-soaked lawn. The heavy wooden shed door was secured with a massive, industrial steel padlock. Behind the wood, something scraped weakly against the panel.
“Grandpa?”
A ragged, broken cough answered from the dark.
I reached into my tactical handbag, pulled out a heavy-duty compact entry tool, and snapped the padlock shackle in one clean motion. The door swung open.
Franklin Caldwell sat on a stained, damp mattress beneath a heavily leaking roof. His thin wrists were deeply bruised. His cheeks had completely collapsed into his skull. A plastic bowl of gray, stagnant water rested beside his knee. When he saw my silhouette in the frame, his cracked, bleeding lips began to tremble.
“Peyton,” he breathed, his voice a frail thread. “They told me… they told me you abandoned me.”
I dropped to my knees in the dirt, tore off my heavy winter coat, and wrapped it securely around his frail frame. A cold, lethal rage burned through my veins so violently that my trembling hands instantly became perfectly steady.
Behind us, my father stepped into the yard, his hands raised defensively. “Peyton, look… this looks bad, but you don’t understand the financial stress we’ve been under.”
I reached into my pocket, pressed the hidden emergency speed-dial on my department phone, and brought the device to my ear.
“Captain Caldwell,” dispatch answered instantly.
My parents and brother froze on the grass.
“Activate Major Crimes and an emergency medical response team to my GPS coordinates,” I said, my voice dropping into a freezing, clinical register. “We have an active case of unlawful imprisonment, aggravated elder abuse, document fraud, and attempted homicide. Three suspects on site. Treat them as dangerous.”
Wyatt let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh. “Captain? What the hell are you talking about?”
I rose to my full height, stepping out of the shed to face them. For years, they had mistaken my quiet nature for absolute weakness.
I smiled, the expression entirely devoid of warmth. “You really should have asked what kind of government job I actually do.”
