Every ambient noise in the sprawling corporate bullpen evaporated. I could see my colleagues shuffling papers and mouthing words behind the frosted glass of my partition, but they were ghosts. The only reality was the sound of my five-year-old desperately trying to swallow her own tears.
Then, a woman’s voice—shrill, impatient, and vibrating with malice—echoed from somewhere in the background. “Ava! Who the hell are you talking to in there?”
My daughter gasped, the sound like a trapped bird striking a window.
I sprang to my feet, my headset clattering onto the carpeted floor as I switched the call to my mobile phone. “Baby, listen to my voice. Do not hang up. Where is Daddy?”
“He went away.”
A glacial dread colonized my chest. “Are you inside the house?”
“Yes.”
“Where exactly, honey? Tell Mommy where you are.”
“The little bathroom.”
Another shout rattled through the speaker, distinctly closer this time. My hands developed a fine, uncontrollable tremor, but my vocal cords locked into a register of absolute, terrifying calm. I had spent a lifetime conditioning myself not to shatter when others needed a foundation. In that infinitesimal moment, every ounce of that hard-won discipline belonged exclusively to Ava.
I pulled up Caleb’s address on my monitor, though the coordinates were branded into my brain, and furiously clicked the traffic map. Red lines clogged the interstate. Twenty-seven minutes. There was a twenty-seven-minute chasm between me and my trapped child. And the most agonizing unknown was whether that hockey stick was discarded on a rug, or still gripped tightly in Marissa’s hands.
I kept the mobile pressed to my ear while I grabbed my desk phone, dialing emergency services. I fed the dispatcher the address, the names, the weapon, and the sheer terror in my child’s voice.
