Chapter 3 - The Missing Parents
I leaped out of the moving car before Arthur had even put it completely in park.
I ran inside the dark house, screaming for my parents at the top of my burning lungs.
The cozy living room I had grown up in was completely and utterly destroyed.
Books were torn aggressively from the wooden shelves, and the antique furniture was violently overturned.
It looked like someone had been frantically searching for something very specific and incredibly valuable.
Arthur ran in behind me, holding a heavy metal flashlight he had grabbed from his trunk.
The bright beam of light swept across the ruined kitchen, revealing shattered plates and spilled food everywhere.
I dropped to my knees on the living room floor, sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of my ruined childhood.
Arthur knelt beside me, wrapping his warm jacket tightly around my shivering, bare shoulders.
He promised me that we would find them and bring them back safely, no matter what it took.
Suddenly, a strange electronic buzzing sound began to vibrate from beneath the overturned sofa.
Arthur reached under the heavy cushions and pulled out a cheap, unfamiliar disposable burner phone.
The glowing screen indicated an incoming call from a completely blocked number.
I pressed the accept button and slowly brought the phone up to my trembling ear.
Aunt Margaret's cold, calculating voice echoed clearly through the small digital speaker.
She cheerfully informed me that my parents were currently her very reluctant, tied-up guests.
I screamed into the phone, demanding that she let them go immediately before the police found her.
Margaret laughed cruelly, completely unbothered by my desperate, furious threats.
She told me that Eleanor had always been the violent sister, but Margaret was the smart one.
She demanded that I bring the original, hand-drawn blueprints of the heating patent to her tonight.
I told her honestly that I had absolutely no idea where my father kept his original documents.
Margaret sighed with fake sympathy and said I had exactly two hours to figure it out.
If I failed to deliver the physical blueprints, my parents would be dropped into the freezing harbor in a locked trunk.
She hung up the phone abruptly, leaving me listening to the terrifying sound of a dead dial tone.
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Arthur looked at me with intense determination and asked if my father had ever mentioned a safe place.
I closed my eyes, desperately remembering a story my father told me when I was just a little girl.
