Locked In
The morning had started like any other Tuesday in our suburban neighborhood. Coffee brewing in the automatic maker Derek had insisted we needed. NPR murmuring from the radio about traffic on the interstate. September sunshine filtering through the kitchen window, casting warm squares of light across the tile floor I’d mopped just yesterday.
I was at the sink rinsing breakfast dishes when it happened, my hands moving through the familiar motions while my mind drifted through the day’s to-do list. Pick up dry cleaning. Return library books. Call about Lily’s dental appointment. The ordinary architecture of a life that felt, most days, like it fit me well enough.
The kitchen smelled like coffee and the lemon cleaner I always used—Mrs. Meyer’s, the expensive kind that made me feel like I was the type of person who had her life together. Derek had kissed my forehead just thirty minutes earlier, his suitcase rolling behind him with that distinctive rumble of wheels on hardwood, promising he’d be home by Sunday night.
“It’s the quarterly review in Chicago,” he’d said, adjusting his tie in the hallway mirror. “Should be straightforward. Just a few days of meetings and client dinners.”
He’d looked almost happy about it. Almost eager. I’d noticed that—the lightness in his step, the way he’d whistled while packing his bag the night before. At the time, I’d thought maybe he was just looking forward to a break from the routine, from the domestic monotony that sometimes settled over our household like dust.
Now, standing at the sink with soap suds cooling on my hands, I heard my daughter’s voice behind me.
“Mommy.”
It was barely a whisper, but something in the quality of it made me turn immediately. This wasn’t the playful whisper children use during games of hide-and-seek or when they’re pretending to be spies. This was something else entirely—sharp with panic, trembling with a fear that seemed too old, too knowing for a six-year-old child.
Lily stood frozen in the kitchen doorway in her pink socks, still wearing her flower-print pajamas. Her small hands gripped the bottom of her shirt like it was the only thing holding her together, knuckles white with tension.
“What is it, sweetie?” I asked, forcing lightness into my voice while a cold finger of dread traced down my spine.
“Mommy,” she whispered again, her eyes wide and glassy. “We have to run. Now.”
The dish I was holding slipped from my hands back into the sink with a clatter. “What? Lily, what are you talking about?”
“We have to leave right now,” she insisted, her voice breaking slightly. “We don’t have time.”
I dried my hands on a towel, my mind already trying to construct reasonable explanations. A nightmare, maybe. She’d been watching too much television. She’d overheard something out of context and misunderstood. Children had such vivid imaginations, such a loose relationship with the boundary between fantasy and reality.
“Slow down, sweetheart,” I said, crouching to her level. “Did you hear something? Did someone scare you? You can tell me.”
She shook her head urgently, her blonde hair—still tangled from sleep—swinging around her face. Then she grabbed my wrist, her small palm slick with sweat, her grip surprisingly strong.
“Mommy, please,” she pleaded, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks. “I heard Daddy on the phone last night. When you were in the shower. He was in his office and he didn’t know I was in the hallway. He said he’s already gone, and today is when it happens. He said…” She swallowed hard, her voice dropping to barely audible. “He said we won’t be here when it’s done.”
The kitchen seemed to tilt slightly. The cheerful morning light suddenly felt wrong, too bright, like stage lighting designed to illuminate a scene I didn’t understand.
“Who was he talking to?” I managed to ask, my throat tight.
Lily glanced nervously toward the living room, as if the walls themselves might be listening. “A man. I don’t know his name. But Daddy said, ‘Make sure it looks like an accident.’ And then he laughed, Mommy. He laughed like… like when he’s happy about something.”
My mind immediately started to rebel against what she was saying. Derek had his flaws—everyone did. We argued about money sometimes. He had a temper that could flare hot and fast over small things. He’d been distant lately, buried in his phone, coming home late from work with vague explanations about projects and deadlines. But this? Planning some kind of… what? What was she even suggesting?
“Lily, are you sure that’s what you heard? Maybe you misunderstood—”
“I know what I heard!” Her voice rose, sharp with frustration and fear. “Mommy, please! We have to go!”
Something in her absolute certainty cut through my instinct to rationalize, to smooth over, to make things make sense. I looked at my daughter—really looked at her—and saw genuine terror in her eyes. Whatever she’d heard, whatever she believed, it was real enough to her to trigger this kind of panic.
And there was something else. Something I’d been pushing down for months, maybe longer. The feeling that something was off in my marriage. The way Derek had been changing, becoming someone I didn’t quite recognize. The password changes on his phone. The hushed calls he’d take outside. The way he’d started talking about life insurance, about updating our policies, about making sure “everything was in order.”
At the time, I’d thought he was just being responsible. Now, with Lily’s hand gripping mine like a lifeline, those memories took on a different shade.
I didn’t let myself think about it. Fear moved faster than logic.
“Okay,” I said, my voice coming out calmer than I felt. “We’re leaving. Right now.”
I stood up and my body moved on pure instinct, on some primal mother-bear directive that overrode everything else. I grabbed my purse from the counter, shoved my phone charger inside. Snatched Lily’s school backpack from its hook by the door. My car keys from the bowl on the hall table.
I skipped coats even though it was cool outside. Skipped Lily’s favorite stuffed rabbit. Skipped everything except what mattered—our IDs, the cash I kept in my desk drawer for emergencies, the manila folder my mother had insisted I always keep ready. “You never know,” she’d said when she’d given it to me years ago. “Always have your important papers where you can grab them.”
I’d thought she was being paranoid. Now I blessed her for it.
Lily stood by the front door bouncing on her toes, whispering urgently, “Hurry, hurry, hurry…”
I reached for the doorknob, my hand already turning it, my mind racing ahead to the car in the driveway, to the road, to distance and safety and time to figure out what to do next.
And that’s when it happened.
The deadbolt—the electronic one Derek had installed six months ago as part of the “smart home upgrade” he’d insisted would make our lives easier—slid shut with a decisive clunk.
Not a soft click. A sharp, final sound that echoed through the hallway like a door slamming in my face.
I froze, my breath catching in my chest. For a moment, I thought I’d imagined it. Then I tried the door again. The knob turned uselessly in my hand, but the door didn’t budge.
“What…” I whispered, but I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Then the alarm keypad beside the door lit up. Red LED display suddenly glowing in the dim hallway. One soft beep. Then another. Then a third—exactly the pattern it made when the security system was being armed remotely, from Derek’s phone.
The thing he could do from anywhere. The feature he’d demonstrated proudly when the system was installed. “See? I can lock the doors, arm the alarm, even adjust the thermostat from my office. Isn’t technology amazing?”
Lily’s whisper broke into a sob. “Mommy… he locked us in.”
My hands were shaking as I pulled out my phone. I tried to open the smart home app, but the screen just spun and spun. No connection. Then I noticed the Wi-Fi symbol—no bars. I looked up at the router on the hall table. The lights that were usually steady green were dark.
He’d shut off the internet.
“Back door,” I said, grabbing Lily’s hand and pulling her through the house. We ran through the kitchen to the sliding glass door that led to the backyard.
Locked. The same electronic lock, the same red light glowing on the control panel.
I tried the windows. Every single window on the first floor had been upgraded last spring to the new smart locks. Every single one was sealed shut, unresponsive to manual override.
“Garage,” I said, pulling Lily toward the door that connected to the garage. Maybe I could force the garage door open manually, get us out that way.
But when I opened the interior door to the garage, I stopped cold.
My car was gone.
“He must have moved it,” I whispered. “Last night, after I went to bed. He moved my car.”
The garage was empty except for Derek’s car—the one he’d supposedly driven to the airport. But that meant…
“He didn’t go to Chicago,” Lily said softly beside me. “Did he?”
My mind was racing, trying to piece together what was happening. If Derek hadn’t gone to Chicago, where was he? And what had he set in motion before he left? What was supposed to “look like an accident”?
I pulled Lily back into the house and tried to think. My phone—I could call 911. But when I unlocked it and tried to dial, nothing happened. No signal. Not just no Wi-Fi, but no cellular signal at all.
“He’s jamming it,” I said aloud, remembering suddenly a conversation from months ago. Derek talking with a colleague at a party about signal jammers, about how easy they were to get online, how they could block cellular signals in a localized area. He’d been fascinated by the technology.
“Mommy, what do we do?” Lily’s voice was small, terrified.
I forced myself to breathe, to think. We were locked in our own house. No way to communicate with the outside world. My husband—the man I’d shared a bed with for eight years, the father of my child—had apparently planned this. But planned what exactly?
Then I smelled it.
Gas.
Faint at first, but getting stronger. That distinctive sulfurous smell they add to natural gas to make it detectable.
My stomach dropped. The stove. The water heater. The furnace. Any of them could be leaking gas into the house. And in an enclosed space, if enough gas accumulated…
“Upstairs,” I said urgently. “Now.”
I grabbed Lily and we ran up the stairs, my mind calculating how much time we might have. How long before the gas concentration reached a dangerous level. How long before a spark from any electrical appliance—the refrigerator cycling on, the water heater igniter, anything—could trigger an explosion.
An accident. Make it look like an accident.
A gas explosion would destroy evidence. Would be investigated as a tragic equipment failure. Would leave Derek a grieving widower, free to collect the life insurance policies he’d been so careful to update.
We reached the master bedroom and I locked the door—useless really, but it made me feel slightly better. I ran to the window and tried to open it. Of course it was locked, same as all the others. But this one was different. This window was original to the house, installed before the smart home upgrades.
I grabbed the bedside lamp and hurled it at the window.
The glass exploded outward in a shower of glittering fragments. Fresh air rushed in, cool and clean, carrying away some of the gas smell that had been building.
“Help!” I screamed through the broken window. “Someone help us! We’re trapped!”
But our house sat on a quiet cul-de-sac. Our nearest neighbors were at work. The houses across the street were empty at this time of day, families off to jobs and schools and their own busy lives.
I pulled out my phone again. Still no signal. But the laptop—Derek’s laptop that he kept on his desk in the corner of our bedroom. He’d left it behind, probably because he didn’t think I’d ever think to look at it.
I flipped it open. Password protected, of course. But I knew Derek. I knew how his mind worked. I tried his birthday. Nothing. Lily’s birthday. Nothing. Our anniversary.
The screen unlocked.
My hands flew over the keyboard, pulling up his email, his browser history, his files. And there it was—a digital trail of everything I needed to know.
Emails to a woman named Jennifer. Months of them. Plans to start a new life together. Discussions about my life insurance policy—$500,000 with a double indemnity clause for accidental death. Research into gas leaks and explosion investigations. Searches for “how to remotely control smart home devices” and “undetectable ways to cause gas leak.”
And a text exchange from yesterday, after I’d gone to bed:
“Everything set?” “Yes. Gas line will start leaking at 9 AM. Jammer activated. All exits sealed. She won’t have a way out.” “And the kid?” “Collateral damage. Can’t be helped. It has to look real.” “When will you be back?” “I’m not leaving town. I’ll be at the motel on Route 7. When it’s done, I’ll ‘rush back’ from Chicago. Play the devastated husband.” “Smart.” “I’ve thought of everything.”
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone to photograph the screen. But I did it. Screenshot after screenshot. Evidence. Proof.
If we survived this, he wasn’t going to get away with it.
The gas smell was getting stronger even with the window open. I looked at the time: 9:17 AM. The leak had been going for seventeen minutes. How much longer before something ignited it?
“Lily,” I said, forcing myself to sound calm. “We’re going to get out of here. I promise.”
“How?”
I looked around the bedroom, my mind racing. Then I saw it—the ladder. The stupid decorative ladder Derek had bought at an antique store and leaned against the wall because he thought it looked “rustic and authentic.”
It wasn’t tall enough to reach the ground from a second-story window, but it was something.
I grabbed it and shoved it through the broken window, lowering it as far as it would go. The bottom rungs hung about six feet above the ground. Not ideal, but survivable if we were careful.
“We’re going to climb down,” I told Lily. “I’ll go first and then catch you. Can you be brave for me?”
She nodded, her face pale but determined.
I climbed through the window, feeling glass crunch under my hands, and lowered myself onto the ladder. It wobbled alarmingly but held. I climbed down as far as I could and then dropped the last six feet, landing hard on the grass and rolling.
Nothing broken. I stood up, my heart pounding.
“Okay, baby! Your turn! Climb through just like I did!”
Lily was crying but she did it, crawling through the window in her pajamas, her small hands gripping the ladder rungs. I positioned myself below her, arms up, ready to catch her if she fell.
She made it to the bottom rung and then jumped. I caught her, stumbling backward but keeping my feet, holding my daughter against my chest while she sobbed into my shoulder.
“Run,” I said. “We have to get away from the house.”
We ran across the lawn to the sidewalk. I kept running, Lily’s hand in mine, until we were several houses away. Then I turned back to look.
Our house sat there in the September sunshine, looking perfectly normal. White siding, green shutters, flower boxes I’d planted in the spring. A charming suburban home. No sign of the death trap it had become.
I grabbed my phone. Still no signal—the jammer had a wider range than I’d hoped. But Mrs. Patterson’s house was just ahead, and she was retired, usually home in the mornings.
I pounded on her door.
She opened it with a surprised expression. “Emma? What on earth—”
“I need your phone. Right now. It’s an emergency.”
She must have seen something in my face because she didn’t ask questions, just handed me her landline.
I dialed 911 with shaking fingers.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My husband is trying to kill us. He’s rigged our house with a gas leak and locked us inside. We escaped but the house might explode any minute. I need police and fire department to 2847 Maple Grove Drive immediately.”
There was a brief pause. “Ma’am, can you repeat that?”
I did, forcing myself to speak clearly. “My name is Emma Matthews. My husband Derek Matthews has attempted to murder myself and our six-year-old daughter by trapping us in our house with a gas leak. He’s controlling the smart locks remotely. He’s using a signal jammer. We escaped through a second-floor window. You need to send someone now before the house explodes.”
“Units are being dispatched. Stay on the line with me. Are you in a safe location?”
“Yes. We’re several houses away.”
“And you said your husband did this intentionally?”
“Yes. I have proof. Emails, text messages, everything. He’s been planning this for weeks. He thinks we’re dead right now.”
I heard sirens in the distance, getting closer. Mrs. Patterson was staring at me with her mouth open, her hand over her heart.
“They’re almost here,” the dispatcher said. “Fire department and police. Stay where you are.”
Three fire trucks and four police cars converged on our quiet street. Neighbors were emerging from houses now, drawn by the commotion. Firefighters in full gear approached our house cautiously while others began evacuating nearby homes.
A police officer—young, with kind eyes—approached me. “Mrs. Matthews? I’m Officer Chen. Can you tell me what happened?”
I told her everything. The conversation Lily overheard. The doors locking. The gas smell. The escape through the window. The evidence on Derek’s laptop.
“And where is your husband now?” she asked.
“According to his texts, he’s at a motel on Route 7. He thinks we’re dead. He’s planning to ‘return from Chicago’ after it’s over.”
Officer Chen spoke into her radio. Within minutes, I heard confirmation that units were being sent to check local motels on Route 7.
The fire chief approached. “We’ve confirmed a major gas leak. Multiple points of release—looks like someone deliberately damaged several connection points in the basement. It’s a miracle the house didn’t explode already. The concentration was almost at ignition level.”
“Can you get his laptop?” I asked. “From the bedroom? It has all the evidence on it.”
“Once we’ve secured the scene and vented the gas, we’ll retrieve it,” the chief promised.
A paramedic checked us over. Minor cuts from the broken glass. Some bruises. Shock and trauma. But alive.
So incredibly, impossibly alive.
Two hours later, Officer Chen approached me again where I sat wrapped in a blanket in Mrs. Patterson’s living room, Lily asleep against my side.
“We found him,” she said. “At the Starlight Motel on Route 7, room 14. With a woman named Jennifer Shaw. He tried to run when he saw the police. He’s in custody now.”
“And the evidence?”
“We retrieved the laptop. Our tech team is imaging the hard drive as we speak. Combined with your testimony and your daughter’s, we have more than enough for attempted murder charges. Maybe conspiracy, depending on what role this Jennifer person played.”
I nodded, too exhausted to feel anything but a distant sense of relief.
“Mrs. Matthews,” Officer Chen said gently. “I have to ask. How did your daughter know to warn you? How did she understand what she’d overheard?”
I looked down at Lily, her face peaceful in sleep despite everything she’d been through.
“She’s always been perceptive,” I said softly. “Always noticed things other people missed. And she loves me. Sometimes that’s enough.”
Officer Chen squeezed my shoulder. “You’re both very brave. And very lucky.”
“I know.”
Over the next few days, the story emerged in full. Derek had been having an affair with Jennifer for over a year. She worked at his company, a detail that made me feel somehow both more betrayed and less surprised. They’d been planning to start a new life together, but Derek’s salary wasn’t enough to support the lifestyle Jennifer wanted. The life insurance money was supposed to solve that problem.
He’d researched it carefully. Gas leaks were common enough to be believable. Smart home technology gave him the perfect way to trap us inside. The signal jammer ensured we couldn’t call for help. The timing was planned for a Tuesday morning when neighbors would be at work.
He’d thought of everything.
Except Lily. Except a six-year-old girl who loved her mother enough to be brave. Who remembered what she’d heard and understood—on some instinctive level—that it meant danger.
The trial was scheduled for the following spring. Derek’s lawyer tried to argue that I’d misunderstood, that it was all a tragic accident, that I’d imagined the threatening evidence. But between the laptop files, the deliberately damaged gas lines, the remotely activated locks, and the text messages to Jennifer, the prosecution had an overwhelming case.
Jennifer took a plea deal and testified against him. The jury deliberated for less than three hours.
Guilty on two counts of attempted murder. Guilty of conspiracy. Guilty of fraud in connection with the insurance policies.
When the verdict was read, Derek finally looked at me across the courtroom. I met his eyes steadily, holding Lily’s hand, and I didn’t look away until he did.
We moved away after that. To a new town where nobody knew our story. To a small apartment with old-fashioned locks that worked with actual keys. To a life that was simpler and smaller but entirely ours.
Sometimes Lily has nightmares. Sometimes I do too. We’re both in therapy, working through the trauma of that morning when everything changed.
But we’re alive. We’re together. And every single day, I’m grateful for a little girl who heard danger and spoke up. Who trusted her instincts and saved our lives.
“Mommy,” Lily said to me one night as I was tucking her into bed in our new place. “Do you think Daddy ever loved us?”
I thought about how to answer. About whether honesty or comfort mattered more in this moment.
“I think he loved us as much as he was capable of loving anyone,” I said finally. “But some people’s capacity for love is smaller than others. And that’s not your fault, and it’s not mine. That’s just who he was.”
“I’m glad we ran,” she whispered.
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
I kissed her forehead and turned off the light, leaving the door cracked open the way she liked it now. Then I went to my own room and looked out the window at the quiet street below.
Somewhere, Derek was in prison. Somewhere, Jennifer was rebuilding her life without him. Somewhere, the house on Maple Grove Drive had been repaired and sold to a new family who had no idea what had almost happened within its walls.
And here, in this small apartment with its simple locks and its lack of smart technology, Lily and I were safe.
We were home.
THE END
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
Ethan holds a degree in Communications from Zurich University, where he developed his expertise in storytelling, media strategy, and audience engagement. Known for his ability to blend creativity with analytical precision, he excels at creating content that not only entertains but also connects deeply with readers.
At TheArchivists, Ethan specializes in uncovering compelling stories that reflect a wide range of human experiences. His work is celebrated for its authenticity, creativity, and ability to spark meaningful conversations, earning him recognition among peers and readers alike.
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