Sirens

Derek's scream tore through the yard. His grip loosened just enough, and I surged up out of the water, gasping, and drove my elbow into his jaw hard enough to fold him backward into the pool with a heavy splash.

I dragged myself onto the concrete, coughing up green water, and Ellie threw herself against my chest, both of us shaking. "You were so brave," I managed. "So brave, baby."

Derek surfaced behind us, thrashing, his ruined ankle useless beneath him, tangled in algae like it was trying to hold him under on its own.

That's when boots came pounding around the side of the house. "SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!" Mrs. Callahan had gone next door and called it in the moment I went over the fence — four deputies swept into the yard, weapons up, and two of them fished Derek out of the pool and cuffed him before he'd finished coughing.

Deputy Novak knelt beside us, taking in my bleeding shoulder, the sheared padlock, the dark shapes under the water. "Sir, are you both alright?"

"My daughter's safe," I said. "Get your dive team in that pool. Now."

It took them less than twenty minutes to confirm the first bag. Novak's face, when he came back across the yard to tell me, had the particular stillness of someone about to make things worse before they got better.

"Mr. Reid," he said quietly. "There's a second container down there. It's not a body. It's something else, and given what we're hearing about your ex-wife's husband, I think you're going to want to know what it is before we open it."