“Tell me the hospital,” she repeated, quieter now, and somehow stronger. “Tell me what happened to him, and I’ll decide what I’m doing next.”
Leonard exhaled sharply, irritated that she was not collapsing on command. “You are wasting precious time,” he said. “I cannot believe you’re acting like this.”
And there it was, the note that finally split the whole performance open. Not grief. Not fear. Not the ragged disorientation of parents with a son in danger. Just anger that their usual tool was no longer working.
Diana felt something inside her go still. It was not numbness, and it was not cruelty. It was the strange, almost holy calm of seeing a trap clearly enough to step around it.
“You should call Allison,” she said.
Patricia sucked in a breath as if Diana had slapped her. Leonard started to say something, but Diana ended the call before the words could land, then set the phone back on the nightstand with a steadier hand than she would have thought possible.
For several seconds she stood in the dark, listening to the silence return to the room. Luke stirred at last, lifting his head slightly. “Everything okay?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.
Diana looked at the dark screen of her phone, then at the window, where her own reflection stared back at her, pale and alert and suddenly older than she had felt an hour earlier. “I don’t know yet,” she whispered, sliding back under the blanket. “But I know I’m not wiring anyone twenty thousand dollars tonight.”
She expected guilt to flood her the second she closed her eyes. Instead, sleep came faster than it should have, deep and startlingly clean, as though some exhausted part of her had finally chosen truth over family panic and wanted to reward her for it.
Morning arrived cold and gray, carrying the smell of coffee and rain through the kitchen while Luke stood at the counter in a faded T-shirt, filling two mugs. Diana had only just begun telling him about the call when a hard knock struck the front door, not once but three times, crisp and official, with a weight that made both of them freeze.
It was not the knock of a neighbor. It was not the careless rhythm of a package delivery. It was the sound of authority, and it made Diana’s stomach drop so suddenly she had to grip the edge of the table.
Luke set down the coffee and looked toward the front hall. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No,” Diana said, though the word came out thinner than she intended.
She walked to the door in wrinkled sweatpants and the loose shirt she had slept in, painfully aware of the pulse beating in her throat. When she opened it, chilly morning air rushed into the hallway, and two police officers stood on the porch, one tall and broad-shouldered with a small notebook in hand, the other silent and watchful just behind him.
“Good morning,” the taller officer said, his tone calm enough to be almost kind. “Are you Diana Grayson?”
Every nerve in her body lit up at once. Diana swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”
The officer glanced at his notebook, then back at her face. “Did you receive a phone call around one o’clock last night,” he asked, “asking you to wire twenty thousand dollars?”
The world seemed to narrow around that question. Behind her, Diana could hear Luke take one quick step forward, and somewhere deep inside her, the memory of Patricia’s sobs and Leonard’s anger came roaring back with a terrible new shape.
