When I arrived, the house was quiet. Locked. Curtains shut. I ran inside yelling for Ben. Silence. Then I froze as I noticed that Ben was standing behind the kitchen counter, wrapped in a blanket, his face pale and his eyes wide like he’d just seen something that didn’t make sense.
“Ben!” I rushed to him and scooped him into my arms. His little body was cold and tense.
“Where’s Ruby?” I asked, pulling back to look at him.
He shook his head, lip trembling. “She left.”
“She left? When? Why?”
He shrugged and whispered, “After I threw up. She said she had to get something from her car… but she never came back.”
I stared at him, trying to piece things together. Ruby had been our go-to babysitter for over a year. A quiet 17-year-old from two doors down. She was responsible, sweet with Ben, always on time. She even left little notes on the fridge like “Ben had some juice at 2” or “He’s resting now.”
But Friday? There was no note. No juice. No Ruby.
I sat Ben down and checked him over. No fever. He said his stomach still hurt, but he hadn’t thrown up again. I gave him some water and promised I wasn’t going anywhere.
Once he was calm enough to nap, I grabbed my phone and tried calling Ruby. Straight to voicemail. I texted. Nothing. I texted her mom, Paula, too, pretending it was about a school project. Ten minutes later, Paula called me back.
“Hey, Vanessa. Sorry, I just got your message. You said something about Ruby?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my tone level. “She was watching Ben today. She left… and didn’t come back.”
There was a pause.
“What do you mean she left?”
“She said she needed something from her car. That was over an hour before I got home. Ben called me. He was scared.”
Another long pause.
“She told me she was with you,” Paula finally said. “She came home around noon, said you canceled because Ben was feeling better.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“She wasn’t here. Not after 11. I dropped Ben off at 11:15 and left her with instructions.”
Paula was silent for a few seconds. “I’m going to check her room. One second.”
I could hear footsteps, a door creaking open, and then Paula’s voice again.
“Vanessa, her backpack isn’t here. Neither is her charger.”
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Something’s really off.”
That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat in Ben’s room, watching over him, watching the door. Every little creak made me jump. I thought about calling the police, but what would I even say? A teenage babysitter went AWOL and left my son home alone? It sounded bad—but not urgent enough. Not yet.
The next day, Ruby still hadn’t responded. Her mom hadn’t seen her since Friday morning. I went to the police with the timeline, the last text she’d sent me (at 11:02, saying “All good here”), and the fact that she never came back.
The officer who took my statement asked if Ruby had a boyfriend. I said I didn’t know. He asked if she had trouble at home. I said not that I’d ever seen. They filed it, gave me a case number, and said they’d follow up.
But I couldn’t let it go.
I started calling some of Ruby’s friends whose names I remembered from little things she’d mentioned. A girl named Becca finally answered on Sunday evening.
“She was acting weird all week,” Becca said. “Kept checking her phone. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on, just said she was doing someone a favor. Something about ‘easy money’.”
“What kind of favor?”
“She didn’t say. I asked if it was sketchy, and she laughed and said she’d be done with it after Friday.”
That made my blood run cold. Done with it after Friday.
That night, after Ben went to sleep, I sat on the couch with my laptop and started going through our home security footage. We had a doorbell cam and one in the hallway. I rarely checked them unless there was a package missing or something.
At 11:12 a.m., I saw Ruby walk in. She looked normal—jeans, hoodie, ponytail. At 11:47, she opened the door and stepped out. She didn’t come back.
But at 12:03, someone else entered the house. A man.
He wore a gray hoodie, baseball cap pulled low, and sunglasses. I couldn’t see his face, but he moved like he knew exactly where he was going. He walked past the camera without hesitation and turned toward the living room—toward Ben.
My breath caught. I scrubbed forward.
At 12:15, he left. Holding… something. A small bag. Not Ruby. Just the bag.
I called the police again and sent them the footage. This time, they took it seriously.
Detectives came over the next morning. They watched the footage with me, then started asking more pointed questions. Did I keep anything valuable in the house? Had I noticed anything missing?
Only after they left did I remember something. My ex-husband, Mark, had dropped off a box of old documents last week—stuff from the divorce. I’d shoved it in the upstairs closet, meaning to go through it later. Inside were some financial records, including details of an account I’d closed after the settlement. I checked the closet. The box was still there, but one of the folders was missing.
I called Mark.
“You didn’t take anything back from that box, right?”
“No,” he said, confused. “Why?”
When I explained, he sighed. “Vanessa, I should’ve told you… one of my old coworkers, Dean, he asked me a while ago if I thought you’d be open to some… consulting work. I told him no, but he pressed. He said you were smart, organized. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe he thought he could get to you another way.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think he might’ve found Ruby.”
That broke the case open. Dean Maddox had a history of light fraud, nothing major—until now. The police linked his name to a scam ring that used minors as go-betweens to avoid suspicion. Ruby had been paid to babysit, but her real job had been to get into my house, scan through those documents, and hand off anything sensitive to Dean or someone working with him.
But she backed out. Maybe she felt guilty. Maybe she didn’t realize what she was getting into. Maybe she left because she knew they were coming.
They found her a week later, hiding in a motel two towns over. She was scared, tearful, and admitted everything. She didn’t know Dean’s full name—just that she’d met him through a friend’s older brother. He promised her $500 to do “something easy.” She didn’t think it would go this far.
Ruby got probation, mandatory counseling, and community service. She apologized to me and Ben in person, tears streaming down her face. I believed she was sorry. She was just a kid.
As for Dean, he disappeared. The authorities are still looking for him.
It took me months to feel normal again. I replaced the locks, upgraded the cameras, and Ben started sleeping with a nightlight. He still asks about Ruby sometimes. I tell him she made a mistake, but she’s trying to do better.
Last week, Ben drew a picture of our house, with a big smiling sun above it and us standing outside. He handed it to me and said, “This is home. You’re always here now.”
I hugged him so tight.
I never thought something like this could happen in our safe little suburb. But it did. And we came through it stronger. Smarter. Together.
Have you ever trusted someone, only to realize too late that they were hiding something? Share your story below—and don’t forget to like and share this post if it made your heart race.
