Story code: ST-001340
Part 2: The Watch Band
The brass doorknob turned.
Sarah shoved herself away from the massive steel door, her sneakers squealing against the slick, oil-stained concrete. The heavy wooden side door swung inward, hitting the rubber wall bumper with a dull, hollow thud. Late afternoon sunlight spilled into the dim, dusty garage, framing Greg’s broad shoulders in silhouette. He was holding their four-year-old son, Leo, on his left hip.
“Hey,” Greg called out, his voice a casual, rumbling baritone that sent a violent, freezing shiver down Sarah’s spine. “Why are you hanging out in the dark?”
He reached out blindly and flicked the wall switch. The long fluorescent tubes overhead flickered, buzzing like an agitated hornet’s nest before finally catching and bathing the garage in a harsh, sterile white light.
“Park was completely packed,” Greg continued, oblivious to the way Sarah’s chest heaved or how her hands shook at her sides. “Some older kid was throwing sand near the swings, so we bailed early. What are you doing out here? It’s sweltering.”
“Just… cleaning,” Sarah managed, the lie scraping against her dry throat. She swallowed hard, forcing a smile that felt grotesque and rigid on her face. “Looking for the, um, the spare weed wacker string. I thought I saw it earlier.”
Leo squirmed in Greg’s grip, kicking his small sneakers against his father’s thigh. “Mommy! I went down the big tube slide all by myself!”
“That’s great, baby,” Sarah said. She dropped to her knees, holding her arms open. Leo ran to her, crashing into her chest with innocent force. She wrapped her arms around his small, warm body, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He smelled of coconut sunscreen, juice boxes, and sweat. A profound, desperate protective instinct flared in her chest, so fierce it physically ached. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the residual image of the thirty-second video clip that remained paused on her phone.
She hadn’t seen a face in the footage. Just a dark room, a heavy plastic tarp on the floor, and someone bound to a metal chair. But she had seen the silver, heavy-link watch band moving in the corner of the frame. The exact same customized watch band currently strapped to Greg’s left wrist.
Greg stepped further into the garage, his heavy leather work boots crunching loudly on stray pieces of driveway gravel. “You didn’t need to come out here digging for that string right now. I can edge the lawn tomorrow morning when it’s cooler.”
He stopped. His casual stride broke. His gaze fell on the massive, imposing grey bulk of the Liberty safe.
Sarah held her breath, clutching Leo tighter than necessary. Leo let out a soft whine of protest and wiggled free from her grip, dropping to the floor to push a yellow plastic dump truck along a seam in the concrete.
“Huh,” Greg grunted, stepping toward the safe. “Could have sworn I left this cracked open.”
“I bumped it,” Sarah blurted out, the words tumbling over each other too fast, too sharp. “When I was looking under the bench for the string. It swung shut. I’m sorry.”
Greg didn’t look at her. He stared at the five-point chrome handle. “It shouldn’t lock unless you turn the spokes to engage the bolts.”
“I tripped,” she lied again, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage. “I grabbed the handle to steady myself as I fell.”
“Right.” Greg reached out, his thick fingers resting lightly on the rubberized electronic keypad. “No big deal. I just wanted to leave it open so the dehumidifier rod could dry out the interior. It gets incredibly damp out here by the walls.”
He punched in his standard six-digit code. The rhythmic sequence of beeps sounded impossibly loud in the quiet, dusty air of the garage.
Sarah watched his back, every muscle in her body pulled taut, ready to snap. She calculated the distance to the side door. If she scooped Leo up right now, could she make it outside before Greg reached them? The truck keys were in Greg’s pocket. They would have to run down the street, on foot, in broad daylight.
The keypad flashed a harsh, bright red. The error tone chirped. Invalid.
Greg paused. He tilted his head, letting out a short, confused breath. “Fat-fingered it.”
He tried again, pressing the rubber keys with slow, deliberate force. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Red flash.
Greg’s hand dropped to his side. The relaxed, casual posture of the weekend father vanished in an instant, replaced by a rigid, unnatural stillness. The shift was subtle, something she would never have noticed yesterday. Now, filtered through the terrifying lens of that hidden video, his stillness looked exactly like a predator calculating a missed strike.
“That’s weird,” Greg muttered, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave, losing all its previous warmth.
“Maybe the battery is dying?” Sarah offered, hating the pathetic tremor in her own voice. She backed up slowly, putting her body squarely between Greg and the workbench where her phone sat in the shadows. The phone with the synced cloud folder she was never supposed to find.
“The battery is brand new,” Greg said. He didn’t turn around. He reached out and typed the factory default. One-two-three-four-five-six.
Red flash.
He tried his secondary backup code.
Red flash.
The garage grew suffocatingly silent, the heavy air pressing in on Sarah’s lungs. The only sound was the plastic scraping of Leo’s truck wheels against the hard floor. Greg stared at the powder-coated steel door. He slowly reached up and traced the edge of the electronic keypad housing with his thumb.
“You know,” Greg said softly, “the only way the backup master code doesn’t work is if someone physically presses the internal reset button on the inside panel.”
He finally turned to look at her. His eyes, usually warm and crinkling at the corners when he smiled, were entirely flat. They swept over her pale face, her defensive posture, her trembling hands, and then drifted slowly to the dark workbench directly behind her.
Right at that moment, the screen of Sarah’s phone lit up with a brilliant white glow, vibrating violently against the wood as an incoming call came through.
Greg’s dead eyes locked onto the glowing rectangle. He took a single, deliberate step toward her, entirely blocking her path to the door.
“Did you reset my safe, Sarah?”