Chapter 4 - The Phone Call
The sudden ringing made me jump, nearly dropping the baby. I scrambled to grab the receiver off the wall mount, my hand slick with cold sweat.
"Hello?" I gasped, keeping my eyes fixed on the hallway leading back to the kitchen.
"Mom?"
It was David. His voice sounded rushed, breathless, and laced with a strange, frantic tension that I had never heard before.
"David! Thank God," I cried out, my words tumbling over one another. "Listen to me, someone is outside the house. Someone tried to poison the baby—the bottle, David, the bottle has something crushed inside it! Where are you?"
Silence hung on the line for a terrifying moment. When David finally spoke, his voice was chillingly flat, devoid of the panic I expected.
"Mom... you shouldn't have looked at the counter."
The words hit me like a physical blow. The room seemed to spin on its axis. I stared at the phone in my hand, the distance between us suddenly feeling like an insurmountable chasm.
"What... what did you say?" I whispered, the blood draining entirely from my face.
"I told you to just watch him," David said, his tone shifting from cold to deeply distressed. "Mom, you don't understand. We're being watched. If we didn't leave that bottle out... if we didn't make it look like an accident... they would have taken him. They’re here, aren't they?"
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"Who is here, David?" I demanded, my voice rising as fury eclipsed my terror. "Who is trying to hurt my grandson?"
Before he could answer, the front window of the living room shattered with an explosive crash.
