He Found His 6-Year-Old Son Scrubbing a Glass Roof—Then Realized His Wife Had Been Torturing Him All Along / Chapter 3 / 20

Chapter 3 - The Ghost from the PastThe next morning, the rain had stopped, leaving a thick, suffocating humidity over the city.

David left Ethan sleeping in the motel bed, barricading the door with the heavy wooden dresser. He walked two blocks to a pawn shop and slapped his gold wedding band onto the glass counter.

"Two hundred," the gruff owner said, not even looking up.

"It's worth two thousand," David growled.

"Then go sell it to a jeweler. Oh wait, you can't. Because you look like a guy who's running from something." The owner smirked. "Two fifty. Final offer."

David snatched the cash. He bought a cheap burner phone, a first-aid kit, and some food at a nearby convenience store. When he returned to the room, he carefully dressed Ethan's raw hands and applied ointment to his bruises.

He needed help. He couldn't fight Claire and the police at the same time.

He dialed a number from memory. A number he hadn't called in five years.

"Sarah Vance," a sharp female voice answered.

"Sarah. It's David. David Miller."

There was a long silence on the line. Sarah was an investigative journalist—and David's ex-fiancée. They had ended things amicably before he met Ethan's biological mother, who had tragically passed away when Ethan was a baby.

"David? It's been a long time. Are you okay? You sound..."

"I need your help, Sarah. Desperately." David cut her off. "I'm on the run with my son. The police think I kidnapped him. My wife... she's been abusing him, Sarah. And she framed me."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Motel 9 on Highway 41."

"I'll be there in thirty minutes. Do not open the door for anyone else."

When Sarah arrived, she took one look at Ethan’s bruises and her journalistic skepticism vanished. Her face went pale.

"My God, David," she whispered, taking pictures of the injuries with a professional camera. "This is... this is systematic abuse."

"She set me up, Sarah. She called the cops, told them I was having a mental breakdown. She froze my accounts. I have nothing."

Sarah pulled out her laptop and connected it to a portable hotspot.

"Let's look into the lovely Claire," Sarah muttered, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "You said her maiden name was Montgomery?"

"Yes. From Seattle."

Sarah typed furiously for ten minutes. Then, she stopped. She slowly took off her glasses.

"David," Sarah said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Claire Montgomery doesn't exist."

David stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"The social security number associated with her marriage license belongs to a woman who died in 1998. The college degree from UW? Forged. I just ran her face through a proprietary facial recognition database I use for missing persons."

Sarah turned the laptop around.

On the screen was a news article from a small town in Oregon, dated eight years ago.

MOTHER DISAPPEARS AFTER TRAGIC DEATH OF STEPCHILD.