I woke up at three in the morning to the sound of someone moving around downstairs, followed by a voice counting steadily through the darkness. When I reached the bathroom, I saw a man I had never seen before kneeling over my nineteen-year-old daughter. He was enormous, with a gray beard, a leather vest, and tattooed arms, and he was pressing both hands against Emily’s chest as if his life depended on keeping her alive. My daughter lay motionless on the bathroom floor, her lips turning blue. Empty pill bottles were scattered around her. For one terrifying second, I thought I was looking at a stranger killing my little girl. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept near the hallway and swung as hard as I could.
PART 1 — THE MAN IN OUR BATHROOM
The stranger moved faster than I thought a man his size could.
He caught the bat with one hand.
