My heart stops for a second. “What? Excuse me?”

“Yes, ma’am. You are Samantha’s next of kin, correct?”

“Yes, I am. What happened? Where did she go?” I demand, starting to feel weak in the knees. This cannot be happening.

“Well, we don’t know yet, ma’am. This is just a call to let you know.”

“It’s Officer. Officer Burns,” I correct her. “Please tell me what you know.”

“What happened?” asks a deep male voice from across the room. In my state of distress I forgot that Misha was even here. I glance over at him to see that he looks genuinely concerned, which doesn’t make sense. He hardly knows me. And what little he does know of me can’t possibly mean he likes me very much. After all, I am the whole reason why he’s being bars right now. But when I glare at him, he sits back down, a solemn expression on his handsome face.

“Ma’am,” she says, undermining my title once more, “there isn’t much information for me to give you at this time. We will call you if we hear anything further. Goodbye.”

“No, no. Don’t go. Please, I need more information! Something. Anything. What do the police think happened? How long has she been missing? Is she hurt?” I ramble, pressing my hand to my chest. I can feel my heart fluttering a million miles a minute.

“Miss— Officer Burns, I wish I had something more to tell you,” the woman sighs in more annoyance than compassion. “I understand how stressful this must be.”

“Stressful? Excuse me, but no, you do not understand what I am feeling right now!” I exclaim, tears starting to burn in my eyes. “You couldn’t possibly understand. Is your sister missing, too?”

There was a moment of silence and I laid my face in my palm, sighing in frustration. “Look, I’m sorry,” I tell her quietly. “I’m just worried, that’s all. I know you’re just doing your job. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s fine. I don’t blame you for getting emotional. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through your head right now,” she replies, in a much more sympathetic tone. “But just try not to overthink this too much yet, okay? If I can be frank with you, people go missing all the time, and nine times out of ten, they come back on their own. Now, your sister is a bright young woman, I expect. She’s a student, right?”

“Yes,” I answer, a lump forming in my throat. “She’s studying to be an artist.”

“So that means she has classes to attend, homework to do, papers to write. She has a routine. She has a life here. If she’s gone missing, she’s got a thousand reasons to come home,” the woman explains slowly.

“No, but that’s the thing. She wouldn’t just leave like that,” I protest, shaking my head.

“Who? What is going on?” pipes up Misha. I give him another silencing glare, but he just watches me with those stony blue eyes. I know there’s no chance that I am going to finish this interview. I have to get out of here. My priorities have shifted. I’m not interested in getting the facts straight for my case.

I need to find my sister.

“Sometimes young people can be hard to predict, but it sounds like you and your sister are very close. Hopefully she will reach out soon. Keep in touch and we will update you if there are any new developments in the case. Try to stay calm.”

“Thank you,” I tell her quickly before hanging up and sliding the phone back into my pocket. I look over at Misha, who hasn’t taken his eyes off of me this whole time.

“You’re upset. Something happened. Something personal,” he says grimly.

“Yeah, good guess,” I shoot back, a little more viciously than I meant to. Misha seems totally unperturbed by my sarcastic response, though. He still just looks worried.

About me.

Why?

“This interview is over. I will get back to you and we will finish this... soon. I have to go now,” I tell him hastily. “Guard!”

The same guard as before comes hurrying back. “Is there an issue? Is he giving you any trouble, Officer?” he asks, leaning around to glare at Misha over my shoulder.

“No, no. He’s fine. It’s fine. I just have to leave. Something… something has come up,” I explain, forcing a polite smile to hurry things along. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time. I just need to get out of here.”

“Of course. No problem, Officer Burns,” the guard says, sliding the bars so I can get out. As I stride away from him as fast as I can go without actually running, he calls out after me, “Hey! Tell your lieutenant I said hi!”

“Sure!” I call back, rolling my eyes.

I all but dash down through the rows of inmates, ignoring them as they all shout and whistle and catcall me lewdly from their cells. Right now, I couldn’t care less about them. Any of them. The only thing that matters to me right now is Samantha and making sure she’s okay.

I rush out of the detention center, fidgeting my way through security, and burst out into the desert sunshine. I jog across the parking lot and fiddle with the car keys to unlock the driver’s side door, my hands trembling so badly I can hardly stick the key in the hole.

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, annoyed at how my body’s nervousness is betraying me right now, when I need to move quickly. Finally, I manage to open the door and slide behind the wheel, jamming the key into the ignition. I have a terrible ache in the pit of my stomach as I peel out of the parking lot and back onto the dusty highway. I turn off the music and stare straight ahead down the flat road, watching the little blurry mirage of water dancing in the distance.

It makes me think of long car rides with my family as a little girl. Sam and I used to point out the watery mirage shimmering down the road and tell our parents they were going to drive through a big puddle, only to watch with awe and disappointment when we got closer and the shimmer disappeared.

It was an almost magical phenomenon to me as a little girl. Sam and I could never quite figure out why such an illusion could occur, but we didn’t question it too much. Life was amazing back then, and the idea of a magical illusion dancing along on the open desert road wasn’t too hard to believe in.

Nowadays, I find it hard to believe in any kind of miracle. Life is hard, and the magic has more or less been power washed away by the harsh reality of adulthood. I work twice as hard to get half the recognition as my male colleagues. I throw every ounce of effort and energy into my job, so that at the end of the day, there’s nothing left for myself. And for the most part, I have accepted that without too much issue. After all, I have convinced myself that my line of work is important, that I help make the world a better place. A safer place.

But right now, I feel completely fucking helpless. I couldn’t even protect my own sister from something terrible happening.

I know in my heart Sam didn’t just get up and leave of her own accord. She may be a free spirit, considerably less of a workaholic than I am, but she’s not reckless or irresponsible. She loves her classes and her friends. She pays her own bills, even though I pay her tuition and send her extra money to help out when I can. Samantha isn’t some empty-headed drifter who would just drop everything and abandon her life in San Francisco.

No.

If she’s missing… it’s because somebody took her.

And that is why I am driving to the airport.

If there is one thing in this world I care about more than my career, it’s family. And right now, the only family I have is Samantha. She’s the only person in this world who truly cares about me, and I’ll be damned if I just sit back and watch the San Francisco police department treat her like a runaway case.

“She wouldn’t do that,” I murmur under my breath. “Sam isn’t a runaway.”

I don’t have a solid plan. Not yet. All I can think to do is buy a plane ticket, whatever it costs, and fly out to California to start investigating this case myself. I may be a cop, and that may mean that I should put my trust in other police departments to handle cases on their own.

But instead, it’s just made me more suspicious and wary of other departments. How do I know that the San Fran PD is going to actually look into Sam’s case properly? It sounds like they’ve already dismissed her case as a simple runaway scenario. Strike one against them. I can’t trust them to do this right. Nobody cares about her the way I do, and that means nobody will investigate her whereabouts as thoroughly as I can.

I throw the car into the next gear and floor it. At this point, I don’t even care if I’m speeding like a bat out of hell. This is my baby sister we’re talking about. I need to be on the next flight out of town. I need to get there as soon as possible.

My phone starts ringing at top volume and I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Holy shit,” I swear, glancing over at the cell phone buzzing on the passenger seat. I grab it and answer hastily, pressing the phone against my ear.

“Hello? Is this the San Francisco police department? Do you have more information about my sister?” I rattle off, my voice shaking.

There’s a crackling sound through the phone and I frown in confusion. There’s a clicking. Like the call is being recorded. What the hell? I worry that maybe I just don’t have very good reception out here in the desert.

“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” I ask impatiently.

“Nicole Burns,” growls a rough voice. It’s soft and gravelly, with that crackling noise overlaid. The voice sounds muffled, as though someone is holding their hand over the phone while they speak.

“Yes. That’s me. Who the hell is this?” I demand.

“The answer to your question,” the man replies. There’s a slight accent to his words, and it’s almost familiar, but not quite. It’s infuriating.

“Excuse me? Is this a prank call? I don’t have time for this right now,” I retort, about to hang up and toss the phone in the back seat. But before I do, the voice says something that makes my blood run cold.

“Where is Samantha?” hisses the voice.

I nearly run the car off the road, struggling to regain composure.

“What did you just say? Who is this?” I ask breathlessly.

“That is your question, yea?”

“What do you know about my sister? Who’s calling? What the hell is going on?” I reply, tears starting to sting in my eyes.

“I am the answer,” he continues on, just as calmly as before. “I know where she is.”

“Then tell me, you fucking asshole! Where is my sister?” I shout into the phone.

“Patience, Officer.”

“Screw patience, what did you do with Samantha?” I snap.

“Nothing. Yet.”

The yet gives me pause and makes my stomach churn.

“Are you… are you threatening her? What is this? What do you want from me?” I ask tearfully. I can hear what sounds like another voice in the background, a more familiar one, though I can’t place how.

“Money,” is the simple reply.

“Money,” I repeat in a whisper. “You want money. How much money? How much do you want?”

I can barely get the words out now. It feels like all the air has been kicked out of my lungs. Has someone really kidnapped my little sister for ransom? There is no way this can be happening to me.

“Four million dollars,” answers the man coolly.

“Four million. Are you fucking kidding me?” I shoot back. “You seem to know I’m an officer, yes? So you know I don’t get paid anywhere near enough to have that kind of money.”

“Hmm. Perhaps,” he replies.

I’m stunned into silence for a moment, a thousand thoughts ricocheting around in my head. He doesn’t even seem worried about the fact that I don’t have the money. It dawns on me that it isn’t actually money he’s after. It’s something else.

But what, I don’t know.

“Is there anything else I can do? I don’t have the money. You know I don’t. But please, please, don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything,” I beg of him.

“You love your sister, hm?”

“Yes! Of course, I love my sister. Don’t you lay a hand on her! Oh god. Put her on the line. I need to hear her voice and know that she’s okay. Please. Just let me talk to her for a second,” I whimper, the tears rolling down my cheeks.

“You will do anything to save her?”

“Obviously, yes. She’s my baby sister. Shit, just let me hear her voice,” I beg.

“You don’t have the money.”

“No. I don’t. But I can give you something else,” I protest, unable to think clearly.

“What would you give?” he asks calmly.

I wrack my brain for an answer, but come up empty.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, please, please... I can’t think of anything right now, but there’s got to be something—”

“If you want to see your sister again,” he begins flatly, with a second voice chattering in the background, “You will find something. And Nicole… no cops.”

Click.

“No. No, no, no,” I mutter, looking at the phone screen. Call ended, it reads.

“No!” I scream, desperately thumbing over to my recent call log to check the number. It was a blocked number, no way to call back or track it. Gone, without a trace. I’m no closer to finding out what’s happened to my sister. I immediately start to dial the number for the San Francisco police department, but then I stop myself, remembering the man’s final words.

No cops.

I’m on my own.

And it occurs to me that the accent I struggled to place sounded awfully close to Russian. And it wasn’t ‘yea’, he’d said... It was da.

I slam on the brakes and whip the car around in a massive U-turn, hurtling back in the direction I came from. Toward the detention center. Where the only man I think might be able to help me is sitting behind bars.

Because I put him there.