“Grandma puts me in the freezer when I spill my juice,” my 7-year-old daughter sobbed in my arms. As I carried her to my heated truck, she gestured to a second, padlocked freezer hidden under my old boxes. “Don’t touch that one,” she whispered. “That’s where Grandpa went eight years ago…”

the doors,” I told her firmly, looking into her wide, terrified eyes. “Don’t open them for anyone except me or a police officer.”

She nodded, her teeth still rattling.

I closed the truck door, grabbed a heavy, two-foot steel crowbar from my workbench, dialed 911 on my cell phone, and marched toward the house.

***

### Chapter 2: What Lies Beneath

“911, what’s continue reading …