CHAPTER 8 BURIED BENEATH THE GARDEN
The search warrant was signed before dawn.
At 6:15 a.m., Detective Hannah Brooks stood outside our house with a team of forensic investigators.
Yellow tape stretched across the front yard.
Neighbors peeked through curtains, whispering as police vehicles lined the quiet street.
Brooks wasn't there because of the garage.
She wasn't interested in the nursery.
She wanted the backyard.
Specifically...
The flower garden.
Three officers walked slowly across the damp grass.
One carried a ground-penetrating radar scanner.
Another photographed every inch of the property.
The third compared GPS coordinates recovered from Lorraine's phone.
"Right here," the technician said.
He pointed toward the center of the rose garden.
"The coordinates match exactly."
Brooks looked down.
The soil appeared freshly turned.
Yet Owen had told investigators neither he nor Maren had planted anything there in months.
"Start digging."
The first shovel struck soft earth.
Nothing.
The second.
Still nothing.
Three feet down...
The metal blade hit something solid.
Clang.
Everyone froze.
The officers knelt carefully, switching from shovels to small brushes.
Within minutes...
A weatherproof plastic storage container emerged from the dirt.
It was sealed with industrial tape.
Brooks crouched beside it.
"Photograph everything."
The evidence team documented every angle before cutting the seal.
The lid creaked open.
Inside...
Not money.
Not drugs.
Not weapons.
Rows of external hard drives.
Memory cards.
USB flash drives.
Labeled neatly in black marker.
CASE 12
CASE 18
CASE 23
Then one label made Brooks stop breathing.
MAREN
Back at the hospital...
I had finally slept for nearly four uninterrupted hours.
It was the deepest sleep I'd had in weeks.
When I woke, Owen was smiling.
"What?"
"You snored."
I stared at him.
"I do not."
"You absolutely do."
"I've never snored."
"You sounded like a tiny chainsaw."
I laughed for the first time since everything had begun.
The sound felt unfamiliar.
But wonderful.
Then...
Tap.
A firm kick landed against my ribs.
"There she goes again."
Owen gently rested his hand on my belly.
Almost immediately...
Another kick answered him.
His eyes lit up.
"I think she likes my voice."
I grinned.
"Or she's telling you to stop teasing her mother."
Dr. Carter entered carrying another ultrasound report.
"I have more good news."
She pointed to a chart.
"The blood flow through the placenta has improved again."
"Really?"
She nodded.
"Not perfect."
"But significantly better than when you arrived."
"What changed?"
"The iron infusions."
"The nutritional support."
"And..."
She smiled.
"Your body is finally receiving what it desperately needed."
For the first time...
She allowed herself to use a word she had carefully avoided.
"Stable."
Meanwhile...
At the forensic laboratory...
The hard drives from the garden were opened one by one.
Each contained folders.
Videos.
Documents.
Financial records.
Spreadsheets.
Brooks realized she wasn't looking at random files.
She was looking at an archive.
Every folder belonged to a different family.
Different names.
Different cities.
Different tragedies.
A child disappearing.
A husband caught cheating.
A woman accused of theft.
Each event had gone viral online.
Each had generated millions of views.
And every folder contained something disturbing.
Evidence that the "viral moments" hadn't simply been recorded.
They had been engineered.
One investigator looked horrified.
"These aren't documentaries."
Brooks nodded.
"They're productions."
Another officer opened Folder 23.
Inside were contracts.
Anonymous payments.
Instructions sent to collaborators.
One document read:
Capture emotional reactions only.
Never intervene.
The longer the suffering, the better the engagement.
The room fell silent.
Brooks had spent nearly twenty years investigating fraud, assault, and organized crime.
She had never seen anything quite like this.
Someone had built an entire business around manufacturing human misery.
Then the technician opened the folder marked:
MAREN
Hundreds of files appeared.
Photographs.
Hospital schedules.
Social media screenshots.
Medical appointment dates.
Copies of public records.
Brooks frowned.
"They researched her."
A timeline stretched across the screen.
Marriage.
Pregnancy announcement.
Ultrasound photos.
Baby shower.
Every major event had been documented.
Then came a file named:
OBJECTIVE.txt
Brooks opened it.
The document contained only five lines.
Subject: Maren Hayes
Pregnancy offers high emotional engagement.
Monitor unusual behavior.
Obtain undeniable public footage.
Final outcome pending.
No author.
No signature.
But Brooks already knew who had written it.
Richard Kane.
She kept reading.
Near the bottom of the folder...
Another document appeared.
Its filename chilled everyone in the room.
Phase_2
Brooks opened it immediately.
The screen displayed a checklist.
☑ Counterfeit vitamins delivered.
☑ Surveillance established.
☑ Behavioral changes recorded.
☑ Husband witnesses incident.
The final item remained unchecked.
☐ Hospital outcome.
Brooks's blood ran cold.
"They weren't finished."
She grabbed her phone and dialed the hospital.
"Security."
"This is Detective Brooks."
"I need immediate protection for Maren Hayes."
"Is there a threat?"
"Yes."
"We believe someone is waiting for the next stage."
She didn't wait for another question.
"Double the officers on her floor."
"Nobody enters that room without identification."
Upstairs in the maternity ward...
A man wearing blue hospital scrubs pushed a cleaning cart toward my room.
He wore a surgical mask.
An identification badge.
Blue gloves.
He looked exactly like every other hospital employee.
A nurse smiled as he passed.
"Morning."
He nodded politely.
No one questioned him.
He stopped outside Room 417.
Looked both ways.
Then quietly reached into the cleaning cart.
Instead of disinfectant...
His hand closed around a small black camera.
He raised it toward the window in the door.
But before he could press Record...
A voice sounded behind him.
"Can I help you?"
The man turned.
Two uniformed officers stood at the end of the hallway.
One rested a hand near his radio.
The other stared directly at the fake identification badge clipped to the man's pocket.
For a heartbeat...
Nobody moved.
Then the man dropped the camera.
Turned.
May you like
And ran.
End of Chapter 8
