Chapter 6 - The Place Reena Thought No One KnewReena had not disappeared randomly.
Police found a map inside Victor’s suitcase marked with a property near Hocking Hills.
The cabin belonged to Reena’s late aunt. It had been vacant for years and did not appear under Reena’s current financial records.
Detective Cole assembled a search team.
Peter wanted to go.
Cole refused.
“You stay with the children.”
“I can identify her.”
“So can her driver’s license.”
“If she has evidence about Aaron—”
“If she is desperate enough to lock children in a basement, we do not know what she will do when cornered.”
Peter hated the logic because it was correct.
He remained at the hospital while officers approached the cabin before dawn.
Drew woke from a nightmare during the search.
He tried to climb out of bed before remembering his cast.
Peter caught his shoulders gently.
“It’s okay.”
“She’s coming back.”
“No.”
“She always comes back after she leaves.”
Peter sat beside him until the boy’s breathing slowed.
“She cannot take you,” Peter said. “Not now. Not ever.”
Drew studied his face as though trying to decide whether adults could make promises that remained true.
“What about Lily?”
“Both of you stay with me.”
The answer changed something in Drew’s expression.
His entire body relaxed by a fraction.
At 6:17 a.m., Peter’s phone rang.
Reena had been found inside the Hocking Hills cabin.
She was not alone.
A private investigator worked beside her, shredding documents and burning files inside the fireplace. Officers recovered computers, insurance records, school reports, forged welfare forms, and photographs of Peter’s house.
They also found the red locking mechanism from Aaron’s safety line inside a sealed evidence bag.
Reena had kept it.
Perhaps as leverage against Victor.
Perhaps because criminals often preserve the objects that prove they are smarter than everyone else.
She was arrested without resistance.
When Detective Cole asked about the children, Reena reportedly answered, “They are manipulative. Drew exaggerates everything.”
Peter stared at the phone.
A six-year-old had crossed miles with a fractured leg while carrying his starving sister.
And Reena still described herself as the victim.
Later that morning, Cole arrived with a photograph recovered from the cabin.
It showed Peter standing on his porch six weeks earlier.
The angle came from across the street.
Someone had been watching his house.
Additional photographs documented his work schedule, his usual grocery trips, and the weekends he left Columbus.
Reena had not only isolated the children.
She had monitored the one person authorized to take them away.
Cole placed another photograph on the table.
Drew and Lily stood near Reena’s back door while Victor loaded something into a van.
A date was written on the reverse.
May you like
It was tomorrow’s date.
👉 Reena had planned to move the children the day after they escaped—and the destination was a place from which they might never have returned.
