“I’m calling you back in two minutes,” she says, and she is suddenly a completely different person, all the warmth is gone. She sounds like a whetted blade. “Drive to the precinct. Don’t stop anywhere. Go right now.”
She hangs up.
I drive.
The precinct is a low building on a corner, the kind of architecture that communicates authority without spending too much on it.
I push through the front door and the air in the precinct smells like floor wax and old coffee. I am still shaking, a fine, high-frequency vibration in my jaw, my hands, a seizing in my chest that feels like a physical hand squeezing my heart dry.
“My name is Mara Kovacs,” I tell the officer at the front desk. My voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. “My son. He was taken from his school. I need help right now. Please. Someone has to help me.”
I’m pleading. I’m a mother, falling apart and breaking. I don’t care about anything right now but my son.
I am leaning into his desk like he’s the only thing keeping me upright.
He looks at me with a flat, heavy stillness that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
He picks up the phone and presses one single button. One button, his eyes kept on me while it connects like he’s making sure I don’t move.
“She’s here,” he says. His eyes never leave mine.
She’s here? What the hell?
“She’s here,” he says into the receiver.
The ice that starts in my stomach doesn’t just chill me; it turns my blood to slush. My vision clears with a violent, agonizing snap.
You idiot,my mind hissed.You soft, desperate fool.
I scan the room. I should have done this the second I stepped over the threshold. I see it now. Two officers. One by the door I just entered. One by the corridor to my left. They aren’t looking at me, but they are angled toward me, their weight shifted onto the balls of their feet.
This isn’t a precinct waiting room. It’s a kill box.
“Mrs. Kovacs.” The desk officer sets the phone down with a small careful click. “If you’ll just come through to the back, the captain would like to take your statement personally. Just through there—” He gestures to his right, toward a door markedPRIVATE, and starts to rise from his seat.
The officer near the front door takes one step to his left.
Just one step. Casual. Like he’s stretching.
It puts him directly in front of the exit.
Cut off the retreat. Box her in.The panic for Theo is still there, a screaming animal in the back of my brain, but it’s being overridden by a cold, predatory calculation. If I go through that door, I never come out. If I stay here, they’ve got me. And if they have me, there is no one left to find my son.
Run.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me look at the exit. I turn left, walking toward the corridor like a submissive victim following a different set of invisible orders. I can feel the desk officer’s confusion—a half-second of static while he wonders if I just misunderstood him.
That half-second is my life.
The moment I hit the corridor and break his line of sight, I bolt. My boots thud against the linoleum.
Theo. I’m coming, baby. I just have to get out. I have to get out.Doors on both sides. Storage. Office. I grab the third handle on the right and it gives. A break room. Table, chairs, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. And a window.
Ground floor.
I grab a chair, two steps, and I put it through the window.
The glass goes outward and I don’t wait for it to finish falling, I’m up on the sill and through, one hand catching the frame. I cut my palm and I don’t feel it, dropping the six feet to the concrete below. My knees absorb it badly and something flares in my right ankle, but I don’t stop.
