After a long day at work, I walked in the door and grabbed the baby monitor to check on my baby girl who was upstairs. I could hear baby Leila laughing as my wife was talking to her and reading her stories, or at least I thought it was my wife. This made me happy, and I continued to listen as I got water from the kitchen. To my surprise, I heard my wife walk through the door and say that she got caught up in traffic. This only left me with one question...who was the upstairs singing to Leila? I told my wife Shannon to stay downstairs as I slowly crept up the stairs to inspect the situation, I had no clue what to expect. My stomach was upside down and sweat was dripping from my face, what was I about to walk into? Without making a peep, I creaked open the door and saw nothing and no one. Where was Leila? Where was the mystery woman? Shannon walked into the room and screamed when she noticed the empty crib, we were paralyzed. Standing there petrified, we suddenly heard a noise come from the baby monitor, it was the woman’s voice. She whispered “Leila is with me, and if you come looking for her, she will be killed”.
I sprinted downstairs, unsure of what to do. My wife and I wanted our baby back. After notifying the police, we were forced to wait. “Just have patience” was repeated to us over one hundred times. We sat on the couch and cried, for we feared that we would never see our baby again. Days passed by and we had begun to lose all hope. The empty hole in our hearts was filled 3 weeks 2 days and 9 hours after the incident when Leila was found by the police. To our surprise, the baby monitor had a tracker inside of it, and since the woman took it with her, the police located her house. After “just having patience”, our Leila was returned to our arms and the woman whose name won’t be mentioned is now serving time… a long time.