A new PI’s first case leads her back to her own backyard—and a secret her father would kill to keep.
Writer’s Prompt:
The neon sign for “Larten Investigations” flickered, casting a bruised purple light over the sidewalk. Martha gripped her keys, the adrenaline finally hitting. Her first client.
The woman, Sarah, had eyes like shattered glass—bright, sharp, and full of jagged edges. She handed Martha a weathered polaroid of a girl with a lopsided grin. “Her name is Elena,” Sarah whispered. “She disappeared ten years ago. My father said she ran away, but he’s a liar.”
Martha spent the next forty-eight hours submerged in the city’s grime. The trail didn’t lead to bus stations or morgues; it led to the affluent suburb of Oakcrest. Specifically, it led to the Victorian house with the peeling white shutters where Martha had grown up.
Standing in her childhood backyard under a bleeding sunset, Martha checked the GPS coordinates Sarah had provided in a cryptic follow-up text. The “X” blinked directly over the old rose garden. Martha grabbed a rusted spade from the shed.
Two feet down, the metal struck something that didn’t sound like a rock. It sounded like hollow plastic. She cleared the dirt to reveal a locked briefcase—one she recognized. It belonged to her father, the “hero” police captain.
Inside wasn’t just evidence of a runaway; there was a second polaroid. It showed Sarah and Martha as toddlers, held by the same woman. On the back, a scrawled note: They can never know they are sisters. One stays, one goes.
A floorboard creaked on the back porch. Martha looked up. The silhouette standing there wasn’t Sarah. It was her father, holding a service weapon he’d supposedly retired years ago.
“You should have stayed on the Internet, Martha,” he rasped.
How does this shadow-drenched confrontation end? Does Martha find the strength to outmaneuver the man who taught her everything, or does the rose garden claim another secret? The ink is still wet—you tell me.
