Chapter 13 - Eyes on the Street
Daniel rose silently, slipping his socks across the floorboards without a whisper of sound. He walked to the living room window, pulling back the heavy linen drape by a fraction of an inch.
Parked beneath the shadow of a weeping willow across the asphalt was an unmarked white Ford Econoline. No commercial decals. No license plate frame. The windshield was tinted so darkly that the interior was entirely obscured, but through the glass, Daniel could catch the faint, intermittent crimson glow of a dashboard transponder.
They were watching the house.
Vanessa was supposed to be under house arrest with an ankle monitor at her sister’s townhouse forty miles north in Trenton, awaiting formal sentencing on child endangerment and criminal harassment. Her bail had been set at an exorbitant two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—which Daniel had assumed she couldn't easily post without liquidating assets. But the paperwork he had just read proved she wasn't acting alone. Behind her stood an entire apparatus: shell corporations, dirty trustees, and someone who possessed enough capital to pay cash for empty residential lots.
Daniel took his phone and dialed Mara directly. She answered on the first ring.
"Mara," Daniel whispered. "Where are you?"
"Upstairs in my sewing room," Mara’s voice was crisp, tight with anger. "I’ve got my hunting binoculars on them. The side door opened ten minutes ago. A man got out, dressed like an electric company lineman, walked down the drainage ditch behind your garden wall, and came back with a digital recorder."
"They're surveying the property line," Daniel realized, his blood running cold. "They know about the garden footage. They know the contractor gave you the hard drive."
"Daniel, who posted her bail?" Mara asked, the tremor in her voice breaking through her steel facade. "I called my cousin in the county clerk’s office an hour ago. Vanessa didn’t post bond through a bail bondsman. A private equity firm out of Wilmington wire-transferred the full cash amount at 4:30 PM today. She was discharged before dinner."
"She’s out?" Daniel felt the floor drop from under his feet. "She's out of jail?"
"She walked out the front doors of the correctional facility three hours ago," Mara said. "The judge imposed a temporary restraining order, but you know as well as I do that paper won't stop a bullet or a fire. You need to take Lily and leave."
"I am not running from my home," Daniel snarled, the terror mutating into an old, volcanic fury. "We spent an entire year clawing Lily’s dignity back from the mud. She just planted the new roses. She smiled for the first time in twelve months today. I won't turn her into a refugee."
"Then you’re going to be a target," Mara warned. "Listen to me, Daniel. Thomas Merritt’s daughter didn’t just survive that pool. Do you know where she is now?"
Daniel swallowed hard. "No."
"She’s in an inpatient psychiatric facility in Maryland," Mara said quietly. "Vanessa’s lawyers proved the father was unfit, cited the pool video as proof of parental neglect by arguing the father left the pool gate unlocked, and the trust took everything. If they prove you’re unstable, they won’t just hurt Lily. They’ll legally take her."
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Daniel stared across the dark lawn toward the garden where Lily’s painted stones gleamed under the moonlight. The white van's headlights suddenly flickered on, cutting two blinding swathes of white light across Daniel’s living room window, framing him perfectly against the glass.
***
