in a yellow envelope.’ He looked ashamed, as if he had broken a rule by surviving. ‘She said it was a birthday surprise for you. She said I had to keep it at school because you always find surprises.’
I gripped the edge of the couch.
‘Where at school?’
‘In my cubby.’
Rowan spoke into her radio immediately.
Brookside Elementary was closed for spring break. It should have been empty except for a night custodian and a row of silent classrooms smelling of crayons and floor wax.
Then Rowan’s radio crackled.
‘Unit Twelve, be advised, we have a female matching Mara Keene’s description entering the north side of Brookside Elementary. She is carrying bolt cutters.’
Eli made a broken little sound and folded into my chest.
I held him so tightly he squeaked.
My phone, sealed in an evidence pouch on Rowan’s table, buzzed again.
Another unknown number.
Rowan crossed the room and checked it. Her face hardened.
She turned the screen toward me.
It was a photo.
Eli’s dinosaur backpack sat open on a classroom floor. Beside it lay Mara’s wedding ring.
For a moment I could not understand what I was seeing. Mara never removed that ring. Not to wash dishes, not to knead bread dough, not even when the stone snagged lace and made her curse under her breath.
In the photo, the ring looked abandoned. Deliberate.
Like a signature.
‘We go now,’ I said.
Rowan shook her head. ‘You stay here.’
‘That is my son’s school.’
‘And if whoever sent that message wants you there, you walking in gives them exactly what they planned.’
She was right. I knew she was right.
I went anyway.
Not inside a police car, not officially, not with permission. While Rowan barked orders into her radio and officers moved toward the exit, I lifted Eli into the arms of a desk sergeant named Mrs. Holt, told him I would come back, and ran out through the side door.
I am not proud of that. Fear makes fools of good people. Love makes criminals of careful ones.
Brookside Elementary sat six blocks from the station, a low brick building with bright murals along the front wall and one flickering security light over the north entrance. By the time I reached the parking lot, two patrol cars were already there with lights off. Officers moved along the sidewalk in a crouch.
I stayed behind a row of shrubs, chest burning, and saw Mara through the glass doors.
She was in the hallway near the kindergarten wing, wearing the green wool coat.
One button missing.
Her hair had come loose from its clip. She held bolt cutters in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She looked nothing like the calm woman who folded Eli’s pajamas into neat squares and labeled leftover soup with dates.
She looked hunted.
A side door clicked behind me.
I turned.
A man stepped from the shadow of the loading dock. He wore a custodian’s jacket, but I recognized him before my mind supplied his name.
Cal Voss.
Mara’s cousin by marriage, though she rarely called him family. He had come to one barbecue two summers ago, too charming, too loud, the kind of man who shook your hand with both of his and watched your watch
