I wake up in the passenger seat of a moving car.
For one disoriented second there’s nothing—just motion, the smell of leather, and the low hum of an engine pushed hard. Then the second ends and everything comes back at once. My hand shoots out to grab the handle as the realization crashes into me.
Hannah!
“Seatbelt,” Nikolai says from the driver’s seat. “Loop your arm back through.”
I fumble with it, fingers clumsy, the buckle clicking into place just as the car takes a turn that presses me sideways. The speedometer reads something I don’t want to look at. Outside the windows, the city moves past in long amber streaks—low sun, long shadows.
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
Afternoon, then. She’s been gone—I don’t know how long. Long enough for Nikolai to carry me to a car and get us moving. Long enough for someone to take my daughter out of her bed and put her somewhere I can’t reach.
My throat closes.
I press the back of my hand to my mouth and breathe through it. The nausea is physical—the motion of the car, the weight of it, both at once—and I let it roll through me and subside because I cannot afford to fall apart in this seat. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Claire.
I should have told Nikolai sooner. The moment her hand trembled around that mug, the moment Hannah saidshe asks questions—I should have gone straight upstairs to speak to him. Instead I filed it away, told myself I was overthinking, and let hours pass.
I didn’t protect her.
I failed my own daughter.
I stare at Nikolai and force the thought down before it swallows me whole. There’s nothing in self-blame that gets Hannah back. Nothing at all.
“Where are we going?” I choke out.
“Private airstrip. Twenty minutes out.” He cuts across two lanes, smooth and deliberate, ignoring the horns. “We need to get to Atlanta.”
Atlanta.
The word lands in my stomach like something cold and sharp.
I slide the window down and press my face toward the gap, pulling air in. The highway noise floods the car—wind, engines, and the city doing what it always does, entirely indifferent. I focus on breathing and try not to think about the last time I was taken somewhere I didn’t want to go. About shipping containers and zip ties and the particular quality of darkness when there’s no way out.
Hannah is four years old. She won’t understand what’s happening to her. She’ll just know that she’s frightened, alone, and her mother isn’t there for her.
I press my knuckles to my mouth.
“It’s not your fault.”
I don’t answer. I don’t have the architecture for speech right now—my throat is locked, my chest is locked, everything has narrowed to the single unbearable fact of my daughter somewhere out there without me.
“We will get to her.” His voice is low, certain. Not the false certainty of someone trying to manage me. Something harder than that. “I promise.”
I look at him.
He catches my eyes briefly and holds them for just a moment before looking at the road again.
“Do you trust me?”
I wipe my face with the edge of my sleeve. Outside, the city gives way to highway, the buildings thinning, the sky opening up ahead of us in long horizontal bands of fading light.
I nod.
