I was halfway through another soul-draining quarterly review when my phone buzzed: “This is Officer Valerie with Metro PD. Your daughter is safe, but you need to come in right now.”

“Is this Lucas, father of Ellie?”

The words hit like cold water thrown directly in my face. Nobody opens a phone call that way unless something has gone wrong. My entire body went still.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Officer Valerie with Metro PD. Your daughter is safe, but we need you to come to the station immediately. There’s been an incident.”

I don’t remember what I said to my boss. I don’t remember walking out of that conference room or taking the elevator down to the parking garage. I just remember the feeling of the steering wheel under my hands and the traffic lights refusing to turn green fast enough, my mind cycling through every terrible possibility with the mechanical cruelty of a machine that won’t stop. Ellie was supposed to be at Riverside Park with my mother. Grandma Tuesday, she called it. Every week since Ellie was about three, my mother would take her for a few hours, usually to a park or for ice cream, and come home with a child who was overtired and oversugared and completely happy. It was supposed to be normal. It was supposed to be safe.

Potential abduction. That was the phrase Officer Valerie had used before she said she’d rather explain in person.