Part 2: The Trap Sprung
Kathryn was standing by the vanity, clutching her hands to her chest, her face pale with a mix of fury and embarrassment.
On the floor in front of the open dresser, a high-decibel personal security alarm was shrieking, filling the room with a piercing siren. But that wasn’t the main event.
Dripping from Kathryn’s manicured fingers, splashing across her beige linen trousers, and staining the white sheepskin rug beneath her feet was a thick, vibrant coating of anti-theft purple dye.
The night before, I had rigged a spring-loaded security pouch—the kind used by banks to tag stolen cash—and tucked it directly beneath a layer of folded laundry at the very front of my top drawer. The moment she reached inside to rifle through my things, the pressure mechanism triggered, blasting indelible security ink in a two-foot radius.
“What is this?!” Kathryn shrieked, her voice straining to cut through the deafening alarm. “She tried to poison me! Austin, look at what she did!”
I calmly stepped over the ruined rug, pulled the small key from my pocket, and deactivated the alarm. The sudden silence in the room made the atmosphere even heavier.
Austin stood frozen in the doorway, his jaw practically on the floor. He looked at the open underwear drawer, then at his mother’s bright purple hands, and finally back at me.
“Kathryn,” I said, keeping my voice utterly pleasant. “Why were your hands deep inside my closed underwear drawer in the first place?”
To see Kathryn’s wild excuse and Austin’s ultimate wake-up call, continue reading below for Part 3.
