I reached for the lock, but stopped.
Something was wrong.
Dad had told me to lock the door from the inside.
Why would he suddenly ask me to open it?
“Dad?”
“Emily, it’s okay. Open the door.”
Then I heard another voice behind him.
A man.
“Tell her we’re not going to hurt her.”
My hand flew away from the lock.
“Who is that?”
There was a long silence.
Then Dad said, “His name is Detective Harris.”
Detective?
I opened the door only after Dad told me to look through the narrow gap first.
He was standing in the hallway with a tall man in a dark jacket. Behind them was a woman wearing a police badge on a chain around her neck.
Dad looked terrified.
But strangely, he also looked relieved.
We went downstairs together.
The woman introduced herself as Detective Laura Harris. The man with her was another investigator.
Then Dad finally told me everything.
Three weeks earlier, while working late at the accounting firm where he was employed, Dad had noticed irregular payments moving through several client accounts.
At first, he thought they were bookkeeping errors.
They weren’t.
Someone inside the company had been creating fake vendor invoices and moving money into accounts that didn’t belong to legitimate businesses.
Dad reported what he found to his supervisor.
That was his mistake.
His supervisor was involved.
Within days, Dad began receiving anonymous calls.
At first, they warned him to forget what he had seen.
Then someone mentioned me.
“They knew your school,” Dad said quietly. “They knew what time you got out.”
I felt sick.
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I did eventually.”
Detective Harris looked at him.
“After trying to handle it himself for several days.”
Dad lowered his eyes.
He had copied records from the company computer before anyone could erase them. He believed the files would protect us because the people involved wouldn’t risk hurting him if evidence existed elsewhere.
Instead, the threats became worse.
That afternoon—the afternoon of my birthday—someone had left a photograph inside Dad’s car.
It was a picture of me leaving school.
Written across the back were four words:
Tonight is your last warning.
My stomach twisted.
“That’s why you wanted me upstairs?”
Dad nodded.
“And why Grandma couldn’t stay?”
Detective Harris answered.
“We needed as few people in the house as possible.”
The police had been watching our street throughout my birthday party.
The strange vehicle outside wasn’t the person threatening us.
It belonged to detectives.
“And the kitchen door?” I asked.
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