Chapter 3: The Surveillance Blind Spot
The next morning, leaving Mark to watch over a slowly awakening Lily, Sarah drove back to the neighborhood. The two green dumpsters sat like silent monoliths at the edge of the driveway, completely undisturbed.
She bypassed her own home and walked straight to their garage, where the master unit for their home security cameras was kept. For three hours, she scrubbed through the footage from the night before Lily went missing. The cameras covered the front yard, the porch, and the driveway perfectly.
But when she got to the 3:00 AM timestamp, she noticed something chilling.
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Every time a figure moved near the edge of the property, the camera feed skipped a fraction of a second. It wasn't a glitch. Someone had used a localized signal jammer—a device easily bought online—to create a blind spot exactly where the dumpsters sat.
However, the perpetrator had made one fatal mistake. They hadn't accounted for the reflective glass of Mark's SUV parked in the driveway. In the distorted reflection of the driver-side window, Sarah watched a shadow emerge from the Vance house, carrying a heavy, slumped form in a black bag. The silhouette was tall, slender, and distinctly feminine.
