Chapter 2 - The Forty-Seven-Minute ProofClaire was faster.
Before Derek’s fingers could wrap around the ceramic rim, Claire sprinted across the lawn, grabbed my phone from beneath the pot, and scrambled backward through the wooden gate, pulling it shut and sliding the heavy brass bolt.
She kept the phone raised high, keeping the emergency dispatcher on speakerphone. The small red recording timer in the corner of the screen was still ticking upward.
00:47:12. Forty-seven minutes. Every single word, every threat, every sound of the shovel hitting the earth was captured in pristine digital high-definition.
Derek stopped at the edge of the mud, his chest heaving under his ruined shirt. He glared at Claire through the slats of the fence, his voice dripping with venom.
“She set me up!” Derek shouted, pointing a finger at me. “Play the beginning of the file! Let everyone hear what she was planning behind my back! She’s been unhinged for months!”
Claire looked down at the screen, her thumb hovering over the play button, then looked back at me lying shivering in the mud.
“I played the first thirty seconds for the dispatcher,” Claire called out over the fence, her voice ringing clear. “They’re dispatching units code-three right now.”
I nodded slowly, letting my head sink back against the wet ground. The adrenaline was beginning to drain out of my veins, leaving behind a cold, hollow numbness.
Then, a sudden, sharp, agonizing cramp folded inward through my lower abdomen, stealing every drop of air from my lungs. I let out a sharp gasp and pressed both palms frantically over my stomach, waiting for the familiar, reassuring flutter of movement.
Nothing came.
The silence inside my own body was louder than the sirens beginning to wail in the distance.
“Please,” I whispered, tears mixing with the mud on my cheeks as I pressed my trembling fingers deeper into my skin. “Baby... just move for me. Please.”
Claire dropped her phone into her pocket, vaulted over the low section of the garden fence, and fell to her knees beside the trench. She didn't care about the mud ruining her clothes; she reached down, slid her hands beneath my shoulders, and pulled me upward out of the freezing water.
“An ambulance is two minutes away,” Claire whispered, her voice cracking as she cradled my head in her lap. “Hold on, honey. Just hold on.”
Derek stood perfectly still ten feet away, watching us with cold, detached fascination. As the distant wail of police sirens grew louder and brighter against the evening sky, he didn't run. He didn't look guilty.
Instead, he said something that made my blood run entirely cold.
“Maybe now she'll finally understand what happens when she tries to take my child.”
Claire’s face twisted with absolute, unfiltered disgust. She looked up at him, her voice shaking with rage. “You could have killed them both, you sick monster!”
Derek shrugged casually, brushing a speck of dirt off his sleeve. “She's always been dramatic. The baby will be fine. I made sure of that.”
Before Claire could lunge at him, the heavy thud of running boots echoed from the front driveway. Two police officers and three paramedics burst through the side gate, weapons holstered, medical bags flying open as they swarmed the backyard.
“He had a stick! He tried to bury me!” I cried out, my voice breaking as another contraction tore through my lower back.
Officer Miller, a tall, broad-shouldered sergeant, immediately grabbed Derek by both arms, spinning him around and slamming him against the brick wall of the house before snapping steel handcuffs onto his wrists with a sharp click.
“Derek Carter, you are under arrest for attempted murder and domestic assault,” Officer Miller barked.
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Derek didn't resist. He offered no struggle at all. He simply stared at me with dead, shark-like eyes as the paramedics lifted my shivering, mud-soaked body onto a hard spine board and loaded me into the back of the waiting ambulance.
As the rear doors slammed shut, cutting off the outside world, I screamed out in agony as another wave of pain ripped through my body. The nightmare in the garden was over, but the nightmare in the delivery room was just beginning.
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