“So what are you going to do?” he says eventually. “Keep them in your pocket forever? Hide them in some apartment and hope the world doesn’t find them?”
“I’m going to make sure anyone who even thinks about using them against me regrets it,” I say. “That’s step one.”
“And step two?”
My gaze fixes on the door just as it opens. I expect to see Bella but it’s not her.
I look at my watch. Two minutes. Three. Five.
Too long for a toddler and a bathroom, I tell myself. But the unease is already starting. It sits low in my chest and spreads.
I keep my eyes on the hallway. No one comes out. A couple of truckers go in, one after another. Some kids barrel past, laughing, a woman with a stroller follows. No Bella. No Lily.
“Stay here,” I tell Nikolai, already sliding out of the booth.
“You got it,” he says, but his eyes are sharper now, tracking me.
I move through the diner, past the counter, past the soda machines. A waitress with tired eyes and a ponytail steps into my path, polite, automatic. “Sir? Restrooms are back there,” she says, pointing, like I’ve missed the signs.
“I know,” I say. I’m already halfway there.
Another staff member—older, manager vibe, name tag I don’t read—steps in front of the ladies’ room door just as I reach for it. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”
“My wife and child have been in there too long,” I say. I don’t correct the wordwife. I don’t care enough to. “Move.”
“We just checked,” he says calmly, palms up. “A minute ago. There’s no one in there. They must’ve already come out.”
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. Cold spreads through my limbs.
“They haven’t,” I say flatly.
He gives me the kind of smile people give difficult customers. “I’m sure they just?—”
I shove him aside.
He stumbles back with a protest. “Sir, you can’t?—”
The door swings open under my hand.
It’s quiet inside. Too quiet.
The smell hits first—cheap soap, bleach, something flowery from a wall dispenser. Three stalls, all doors open. Empty. No feet, no voices. The baby-changing shelf is folded up against the wall. A paper towel hangs half out of the trash can, damp and forgotten.
And at the far end, above the sinks, the narrow window is open.
Cold air slides in through the gap, stirring the thin curtain. It lifts, falls, lifts again, like it’s breathing.
My heart stops.
For a second everything in me goes still, like the world has dropped out from under my feet. Then everything hits at once—sound, blood, movement.
I cross the room in three strides. The tiles echo under my boots. The window is small, but not too small. It opens onto the side of the building, a narrow strip of gravel and concrete and a rustydumpster just visible below. There are faint marks on the sill—scuffs, the smudge of a shoe.
She’s gone.
I grip the edge of the frame, fingers biting into metal. I see it play out in my head—Bella lifting the window, pushing it with her shoulder, checking the drop. Passing Lily through first, then climbing after her, dirt on her knees, one hand clamped over that little mouth to keep her quiet. The way her heart must have been pounding. The way she didn’t come back to say goodbye.
Survival instinct, I think.
