The Rescue Dog's Hidden Warning

Mark had insisted Emily died on Tuesday. According to him, she fell in the garage, struck her head, and he disposed of her body at the quarry.

But Toby had said he saw the Mastiff inside the garage on Wednesday.

The fact landed with terrible force. If Emily had been dead since Tuesday, who had put her dog there the next day?

Mark had claimed he never knew the dog was around until Toby brought it up. He could not have fed it, walked it, or shut it inside that metal kennel.

Emily had done that herself on Wednesday.

My thoughts began crashing into one another, each answer more horrifying than the last.

If she had been alive yesterday, she had not died in that garage on Tuesday. Mark had fed me a confession that was not a confession at all.

He wanted me looking toward a quarry miles away. He wanted me to quit searching the house, the yard, and every place on his property where Emily might still be hidden.

My hand went to my jacket pocket and closed around the small rigid plastic tag.

I brought out the fluorescent pink luggage tag and kept it low, out of the deputy's sight. Emily's uneven writing stared back at me.

Mark's personal number.

Tuesday's date.

RUN.

Why would my sister attach her abuser's phone number to her rescue dog's collar? If anyone found the Mastiff, that information would send the dog straight back to Mark.

Emily had been trying to escape him. She would never create a trail that led rescuers to the man she feared.

Unless those digits were never intended for a call.

I studied the handwritten string again, following the first numbers with my eyes. Zero. Four. Five.

Not a number to dial.

A lock code.

Two months earlier, Mark had come home with thick iron chain and a costly combination lock. He said he needed them for the old root cellar, the reinforced concrete shelter sunk into the hillside behind the house.

That cellar was beneath the enormous oak, directly below the treehouse built between its divided trunks.

I looked toward the garage and remembered the harsh metallic odor. It had not been blood. It was the smell of those chains, no longer sitting where they had been stored.

And the bleach had not been used to erase evidence of a murder from three days earlier. Mark had flooded the garage with it today because he needed to wipe away Emily's scent.

The Mastiff had been searching for her. Mark knew that.

Then there was the python. A twelve-foot exotic snake appearing in an Ohio oak was no bizarre accident, especially with Gary involved in the exotic-pet trade.

Mark had said he would deal with the snake alongside Gary. They had put it in those branches to frighten Toby, the other children, and anyone else away from the treehouse.

Away from what lay beneath the tree.

Emily was not dead at the bottom of a quarry. My pregnant sister was alive, locked underground in that root cellar while the police prepared to remove me from the property.

I tore the blood-pressure cuff from my arm before the paramedic could finish with it and shoved past her. Her startled protest followed me as I ran.

"Gary!" I shouted across the wet lawn. "The treehouse! Check under the treehouse!"

Officer Miller barked, "Sarah, stop!" and broke into a sprint after me.

I did not head for Gary's truck. I drove straight toward the old oak, where the Mastiff was already tearing at the mulch between the sprawling roots.

Mark rose from the cruiser bumper so fast his performance as the grieving husband vanished. "Keep her away from there!" he yelled. "She's lost it! She's going to get somebody hurt!"

He surged forward, forgetting all about the arm he had pretended was injured, but another deputy grabbed his shoulder and held him back.

I dropped hard beside the dog and scraped away packed leaves and soil. Underneath was a heavy wooden door set into the sloping ground, concealed beneath years of debris.

My fingers struck cold metal. Heavy chains wrapped the trapdoor handles, and an industrial combination padlock secured them tight.

"Move away from that door, Sarah," Officer Miller ordered as he reached us, one hand near his radio. "Calm down. Now."

"He never took her to a quarry!" I yelled, turning on him. "He's got her locked in the root cellar. She's down there!"

Miller looked from the door to the tag I held out. I read Emily's jagged digits aloud: "Zero-four-five-eight-two-one. That's the combination. Try it."

Officer Miller crouched beside the chained trapdoor, lifted the padlock in his hand, and prepared to test the numbers.