No answer.
She hesitated a moment. Then she stepped inside.
The smell told its own story—stale food, damp fabric, the faint sourness of neglect. Toys littered the floor, some broken, some so worn they barely resembled what they’d once been. Dirty dishes rose in uneven stacks in the sink. A chair lay tipped near the hallway.
And there, on the sagging couch beneath the flicker of a bare bulb, sat something heartbreakingly familiar.
Her small Christmas tree.
The one that had vanished from her living room table.
Its tiny white lights still glowed faintly, several of the wooden ornaments crooked, one dangling by a fraying string. The base had been wrapped clumsily in an old towel, as if someone had tried—in their own imperfect way—to make it feel proper. Festive. Safe.
So that was it.
Her missing things.
The food.
The tree.
Someone hadn’t been threatening her.
Everything had been stolen as a plea for help these kids hadn’t known how to voice.
Suddenly, the fear Amayah had been carrying shifted. It was no longer sharp and biting, but aching and heavy with a kind of sorrow that pressed against her ribs.
Her things hadn’t been stolen for malice.
Some things—like the food—had been taken for survival. And the Christmas tree . . . it had been taken out of desperation for hope.
How the kids had gotten into her house, she didn’t know. Except . . . she had lost her spare key about a month ago. She’d assumed it had fallen from her pocket while she was filming somewhere. And since there were no markings on it to indicate what address the key belonged to, she’d decided not to worry about it.
But what if she dropped it outside her house and these kids had found it?
The pieces fit.
Amayah swallowed hard and glanced around again, her eyes searching for any sign of the children’s mother. A purse. A coat. Anything.
There was nothing.
No sounds of footsteps. No scent of perfume. No trace of an adult having passed through recently.
Had Mrs. Crump gotten a job? Left early? Disappeared?
Then a realization struck with chilling clarity.
I haven’t seen her in at least two weeks.
Amayah pressed a hand to her chest. Was Ms. Crump . . . gone?
She glanced at the ceiling before whispering, “How am I supposed to handle this, Lord?”
Whatever had happened . . . this was far bigger than missing food and a stolen Christmas tree.
At the office Luke ignored the half-written article he was supposed to turn in. Instead, he opened his computer and did some research on the Crumps.
Public records came up in fragments:
