You make three calls.
The first is to your head of private security, a former FBI agent named Vaughn Mercer who once told you trust is just paranoia that went to graduate school. You tell him to get to St. Mary’s and bring two people you can bet your life on.
The second is to an assistant district attorney you know from a fundraising board, Elena Brooks, one of the few prosecutors in Maricopa County with a reputation for treating child exploitation cases like personal wars.
The third call is the one you hate making.
To your mother.
Not because she is cruel. Quite the opposite. She is soft where your father was steel, and years of living under his contempt taught her to confuse love with careful silence. But she has known you longer than anyone, which means she can hear cracks before you do.
“You sound different,” she says after hello.
“I found two kids.”
A pause. “Are they alive?”
“Yes.”
Another pause, thinner now. “And you’re asking yourself why that feels like it has something to do with the son you lost.”
You close your eyes.
There it is. The room inside you that never stops existing.
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