The thermometer read nineteen degrees when I found my sixteen-year-old daughter, Kaylee, curled beneath three thin blankets inside an old camper in our backyard. Her lips were cracked, her cheeks looked sunken, and her hands shook so violently that she could barely hold the blanket around herself. I had driven nineteen hours from Atlanta to Amarillo, carrying a strawberry birthday cake on the passenger seat. I imagined surprising her, hearing her laugh, and spending her sixteenth birthday together. Instead, I stood outside a freezing camper, wondering how my own daughter had ended up there.

I rushed inside and wrapped my jacket around her. When I asked why she wasn’t sleeping in her bedroom, she lowered her eyes and whispered that her stepmother, Tara, had sent her outside five weeks earlier. Her bedroom had been turned into a home gym, and Tara claimed Kaylee was being punished for stealing forty dollars. I looked around and noticed the camper door could only be secured from the outside. The small electric heater was unplugged. Before I could ask another question, Kaylee grabbed my wrist and pointed toward a little white baby monitor taped to the wall. “Dad, please don’t confront them yet,” she whispered. “I need you to see something first.”