Chapter 1 - The Message on My Phone

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I looked down at the message glowing on my screen — Mr. Martin, police are in the lobby asking for Anna Silva and two children — and then back up at the woman standing in front of me, her whole body gone rigid with a fear I recognized instantly, the particular fear of someone who has already lost everything and is now watching the last thing she has left slip away too.

"Please don't let him take them," Anna whispered again, her voice cracking.

"Him," I repeated. "Who's him?"

"Their father. My ex." She glanced back toward the bed, toward the two small, sleeping shapes still curled together beneath my sheets, and something fierce and desperate moved across her exhausted face. "He's not supposed to have unsupervised contact. There's an order. But he has money for lawyers and I don't, and if he's called the police and told them some story about me being unfit, about not having stable housing—" She stopped, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth. "He'll use tonight against me. Losing the apartment, sneaking into a hotel room that isn't mine. He'll make it sound exactly as bad as it looks."

I stood there for a long moment, the key card still cool between my fingers, feeling the entire shape of my evening — a forgotten quarterly report, a quick trip up to an empty suite, twenty minutes and back down to my car — collapse into something I hadn't remotely prepared for.