“That dog needs saving, Kate. You don't. Walk to higher ground.” My mother’s voice cut through the narrow gap of the truck window, flat and chillingly efficient amidst a catastrophic flash flood at 3:45 AM.

At 11:30 AM, Arthur Vance, armed with a private investigator named Frank, took me in an unmarked SUV down the back county roads toward my parents' property. I kept my head down beneath the window line as we parked on a high gravel ridge overlooking the flooded lowland.

Through a pair of high-powered binoculars, Frank observed the family homestead.

The floodwaters around the main house had begun to recede, leaving behind two feet of thick, slick mud across the driveway. My father’s heavy Ford F-150 was parked near the barn.

Standing beside the barn were my father, my mother, and my sister Brooke.

Brooke was sitting on a lawn chair, scrolling casually on her phone while holding Tucker, her pristine golden retriever, on a leather leash. She didn't look distraught. She didn't look like a girl whose sister was currently lost in a churning flood basin. She looked bored.

My mother was on her phone, pacing back and forth on the porch, holding a mug of coffee.

And then there was my father.

He was hooking a thick steel tow chain to the front bumper of my old, rusted green sedan—the vehicle that had been sitting in the barn with a dead transmission for three weeks.

"Look at that," Frank muttered, adjusting the long telephoto lens on his camera. Click-click-click-click. The shutter fired rapidly, capturing crystal-clear, high-resolution photographs of Dale Miller rigging the non-operational car to the back of his four-wheel-drive tractor.

"He's going to haul it down to the creek bed," Arthur observed coldly. "He's going to push it into the high-water zone near the lower bridge to make it look like Kate drowned inside or was washed out of the driver's side window."

My hands shook with rage as I watched through the binoculars. "He’s staging my death right in front of them, and my mother and sister are just watching him do it."

"They aren't just watching, Kate," Arthur said, pointing toward my mother. "Look at what your mother is holding in her free hand."

I tilted the binoculars upward. In Denise's left hand was a thick blue folder—the original estate binder my grandmother had given her years ago.

They weren't mourning. They were preparing the paperwork for the probate court.

"Frank," Arthur instructed the investigator. "Keep the camera rolling. Document every yard he hauls that vehicle. If he rolls that car into the water, we have him on federal obstruction, staging a crime scene, and attempted reckless endangerment resulting in conspiracy to commit murder."

We watched in absolute silence as my father climbed onto his John Deere tractor, fired up the diesel engine, and began dragging the green sedan down the muddy lane toward the roaring banks of Cibolo Creek.

He drove slowly, carefully positioning the car near the edge of the steep, collapsing dirt bank right above the lower bridge—the exact location where the current was fastest.

He dismounted the tractor, unhooked the chain, and pulled a heavy crowbar from the tractor bed. He jammed the crowbar into the driver's side window, shattering the glass into a thousand pieces to simulate water pressure damage.

Then, he put his shoulder against the B-pillar of the car and pushed.

With a heavy, sickening splash, the green sedan slid down the muddy embankment and plummeted into the rushing, brown floodwaters, disappearing beneath the surface.

My father stood on the bank for a moment, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his glove. He pulled out his phone, snapped a photo of the submerged roof of the car, and walked back to his tractor.