Chapter 1 - The Lure of Larkspur Ridge
At 2:13 in the morning, a pregnant woman called 911 and whispered that her husband was going to kill her.
“My name is Wren,” she said through broken breaths. “I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant. There’s blood everywhere.”
The dispatcher heard something strike a wall.
Then a man’s voice in the distance.
The caller immediately lowered her voice.
“He locked the doors. Please don’t send police. If he sees police, he’ll know I called.”
“Wren, I need your address.”
The woman recited a number on Larkspur Ridge Road, a narrow route that cut through eleven miles of forest outside the city limits.
“Is your husband armed?”
A long silence followed.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you get outside?”
“No.”
The caller began to cry.
“I think something’s wrong with the baby.”
The line went dead.
At Station 43, Rowan Hale was halfway through a cup of coffee when the dispatch tones sounded.
She had been a paramedic for seventeen years and had learned that some calls carried their own gravity. You could hear it before the dispatcher finished reading the address.
Pregnant woman. Possible hemorrhage. Domestic threat. Law enforcement staging nearby.
Rowan set down her coffee.
“Let’s move.”
Dax Monroe was already grabbing the obstetric bag. At thirty-four, he was broad-shouldered and usually quick with a joke, but pregnancy calls had changed for him since his daughter had been born eight weeks early.
Kira Salazar followed with the monitor and trauma pack. She had been on Rowan’s crew for four months and still checked every latch twice before the ambulance left the bay.
Rain struck the windshield as they headed north.
The dispatcher updated them over the radio.
“Caller disconnected. No answer on callback. Sheriff’s units are twenty-two minutes out due to distance.”
Rowan frowned.
“You’re sending us ahead of law enforcement?”
“Caller reported active bleeding and requested no police approach. Units will stage one mile south until you assess.”
Dax glanced toward Rowan from the driver’s seat.
“That doesn’t feel right.”
“No,” Rowan said. “It doesn’t.”
Larkspur Ridge Road narrowed until the trees pressed close on both sides. There were no streetlights and no neighboring homes. Their headlights swept over wet branches, abandoned mailboxes and stretches of dark land.
The house appeared at the end of a gravel drive.
It was a two-story farmhouse with peeling white paint and black windows. A single porch light flickered above the open front door.
Dax stopped the ambulance thirty feet away.
“No vehicle,” he said.
Kira studied the house.
“No footprints in the mud, either.”
Rowan called dispatch.
“Medic 43 on scene. Structure appears dark. Front door open. No visible patient.”
“Copy, Medic 43. Law enforcement still fourteen minutes out.”
Dax killed the siren but left the emergency lights flashing.
Rowan took the radio from its mount.
“We go in, we stay together, and we leave the second anything feels wrong.”
They approached the porch.
“Fire department!” Rowan called. “Wren, can you hear me?”
A woman moaned somewhere inside.
Then came the rapid thumping of what sounded like a fetal heart monitor.
Kira stopped at the threshold.
“Why would she have a fetal monitor at home?”
“Could be an app or a home Doppler,” Dax said.
The moaning came again, louder this time.
“Upstairs,” Rowan said.
The front room contained almost no furniture. A lamp lay overturned beside a stained couch. A dark red smear marked the wall near the staircase.
Dax touched it with a gloved finger.
“Still wet.”
Kira leaned closer.
“It doesn’t smell like blood.”
Rowan looked at her.
“What does it smell like?”
“Corn syrup.”
Another cry came from above.
“Please!”
They climbed the stairs.
The fetal heartbeat grew louder, repeating at exactly the same rhythm.
Too exact.
Rowan reached the bedroom first.
A shape lay beneath the blankets, knees raised, abdomen swollen beneath a white nightgown.
“Wren?”
No response.
Rowan crossed the room and pulled back the blanket.
A plastic mannequin stared up at her.
A rubber pregnancy belly had been strapped around its waist. Red syrup stained the sheets. Beside its head, a phone played a recording of a woman crying for help.
The fetal heartbeat came from a speaker beneath the bed.
Dax swore under his breath.
“Everybody out.”
A metal door slammed somewhere behind them.
The lights went out.
Kira reached for her radio.
Static exploded from the speaker.
“No signal.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
A man entered carrying a shotgun.
He was in his late fifties, with gray hair, a thin face and the exhausted eyes of someone who had not slept in days.
“Put everything on the floor,” he said.
Rowan kept her hands visible.
“We’re medical personnel.”
“I know exactly who you are.”
“The sheriff knows where we are.”
“No, they know where your ambulance is.”
Dax stepped slightly in front of Kira.
The man lifted the shotgun.
“I said put it down.”
One by one, they lowered their radios and phones onto the floor.
The man collected them, removed the batteries and placed the pieces inside a metal box.
Rowan watched him carefully.
“You made the call.”
“No.”
“Then where is the woman who did?”
The man’s expression tightened.
“Downstairs.”
He motioned toward the hallway.
“Bring the obstetric bag.”
They were forced down two flights of stairs, past the kitchen and into a basement corridor. A heavy steel door stood at the end.
The man unlocked it.
The room beyond had no windows.
A young woman lay curled on a mattress beneath a thin blanket. Her dark hair clung to her face. One ankle was secured to a long cable attached to the wall.
Her abdomen was unmistakably pregnant.
This woman was real.
Rowan dropped beside her.
“What’s your name?”
The young woman opened her eyes.
“Wren.”
“How far along are you?”
“Thirty-six weeks. Maybe thirty-seven.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“A little.”
Rowan lifted the blanket. There was blood, not enough to explain the staged scene upstairs, but enough to concern her.
Wren’s skin was hot. Her pulse raced beneath Rowan’s fingers.
Dax opened the medical bag.
Kira checked the blood pressure.
“One seventy-two over one ten.”
Rowan looked toward the armed man.
“She needs a hospital.”
“You’re the hospital now.”
“No. We’re not surgeons. We don’t have blood products, imaging or an operating room.”
“You have what you need to deliver a baby.”
“That may not be what she needs.”
The man’s jaw tightened.
“You will keep her alive until the child is born.”
“And after that?”
He looked at the young woman on the mattress.
“After that, we leave.”
Wren reached for Rowan’s wrist.
Her grip was weak but desperate.
When the man turned toward the door, she whispered so quietly Rowan almost missed it.
“Don’t believe him.”
Rowan bent closer.
Wren’s eyes filled with fear.
“He isn’t my father.”
The man turned back.
“What did she say?”
Rowan did not look away from the patient.
“She said the pain is getting worse.”
The man lowered the shotgun slightly.
“Then do your job.”
He stepped into the hallway.
Before closing the steel door, he pointed toward three long black bags stacked against the wall.
“If any of you try to leave, I’ll find another ambulance.”
The door locked behind him.
Dax stared at the bags.
Kira’s voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Those are body bags.”
Rowan placed both hands on Wren’s shoulders.
“Listen to me. We’re going to get you out.”
Wren shook her head.
“You don’t understand.”
A contraction tightened across her abdomen. She gasped, curling around the pain.
When it passed, she forced out the words.
“He didn’t bring you here just to deliver my baby.”
“Why did he bring us?”
May you like
Wren looked toward the locked door.
“Because nineteen years ago, he stole me from a hospital.”
