Page 65 of Sinful Reality

And on the screen on the right, labeledtwo, is a shaky view of a lower-income neighborhood in New York, each side of the street filled with established trees and junker cars. Trash cans put out for collection,a kid’s bike dumped on the sidewalk, and a half dozen police cruisers parked to close off street access.

Officers wait in silence, preparing to breach a home the moment the order is given, but brutally aware they can’t move until word travels down from the brass.

“Can you describe his eyes, Ms. Donohue?” A sketch artist’s voice echoes through my screen speakers. But so does Paxton’s constant, measured breathing from the other camera.

Wherever he goes, we’ll follow.

“Not the color,” the artist murmurs. “I mean the shape. How close they are together or how far apart. Heavy eyelids on top, or not so much?”

“Um…” I don’t know if she allows her voice to shudder because she wants to appear nervous or if she genuinely is. But she anxiously plays with her fingers, the rub of her dry hands like a beacon for me to focus on. The peeling of skin I doubt others even notice, like a glaring neon sign and monkeys with cymbals to my brain. “They’re not really close together,” she explains. “But not far apart, either. They’re normal.” She closes her eyes, the shadowing from her swollen lids playing across the tops of her cheeks. “His nose was wide, I guess. Nothing crazy. Just…” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “The rest of his face was kind of slim, so that made his nose stand out a little more.”

“Can we get eyes on Lachlan Donohue?” Pax’s voice burns hotter than Gloria’s, the slight movement of his camera drawing my attention back to a neighborhood not a hell of a lot different from the one I grew up in. “Chavez?”

“No eyes in the last fifteen.”

“Jackson?”

“Last contact at fourteen-oh-nine,” another gritty voice answers. “Movement in the kitchen, then he exited south side.”

He went into the basement.

He’s with her, right now, while Mommy is away.

And perhaps that’s why Gloria is uneasy.

“They suggested she bring him to the station, right?” Fletch paces by my office windows. “She wouldn’t bite?”

“No.” Archer folds his arms, his shoulders bristling with secondhandadrenaline. “Gilbert didn’t wanna spook her, so he put the offer out and mentioned showing the boy around the station for fun, but she didn’t take him up on it, and he didn’t wanna push. He’s in the house. If he’s our guy, then Janiesa’s in there, too.”

“His eyes were a little longer than that.” Gloria peeks over the sketch artist’s lap at a drawing that bears a horrifying resemblance to Archer’s face. She knew who I was when I called the other night, mentioning the similarities between her neighborhood and the one I grew up in. Which means she’s following this case as closely as the rest of us. It means she looked me up and dove down a rabbit hole of publicly available information. Worse, in my mind, she looked my husband up. Now, she sits in a police station and describes his eyes to a man whose literal profession is to sketch criminals. “A really nice green,” she coaches. “But longer than that. And a heavier brow.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t make a fuss about what she asks him to draw. He merely tweaks and runs a pencil over paper. “Longer eyes. Heavier brows. What about the shape of his face?”

“It’s been sixteen minutes since last visual confirmation.” Another cop—Chavez, maybe—grows antsy. “He might not come up again for a while.”

Go,I think to myself.Get in there before he hurts her.

“Alright.” Pax’s breath comes a little faster. His heart pounding against his diaphragm until it becomes an audible relay through my screen. “We’re gonna run out of time if we’re not careful. So let’s get it done. Remember your objectives, men. One male inside the home, approximately two hundred and fifty pounds. Five feet, eleven inches. He won’t be reasoned with, and he may become aggressive once he notices we’re here. Suspected female victim inside, possibly in the basement. Possibly bound. Five years old, approximately forty-one inches and thirty-five pounds. Black hair, blue eyes. Missing two front teeth. She may be in bad shape, may be nonambulatory. We don’t know if she’ll be conscious or stable enough to move. Priority one is to neutralize Donohue and extract the girl for handover to paramedics. If we cannot extract her safely, we secure the scene and bring medical in. I want a final check-in before wego.”

“Chavez, ready to go.”

“Tyson,” another voice rumbles, “ready on go.”

“Jackson. Ready on go.”

“Lieutenant Curby on scene. This is your show, Detective Gilbert. You take the lead.”

“Thank you, sir.” Pax noisily swallows and shifts on his feet to get a clearer view of where he’s going, eyeing the street and the shady spots as New York enjoys a sunnier day than typical for January. Snow still sticks to the gutters, and the trees are all but bare of leaves.

I catch a haunting view of the corner of the park from my dreams.

The girls were so close all along, and yet, too far for their families to find them.

“Detective Gilbert?”

“Yep.” Pax pulls back and bounces on the balls of his feet, preparing to run toward God-knows-what. He’s like a fighter at the edge of a boxing ring, nervous but ready. He knows what’s going to happen. Even the boxer who wins in the end walks away with bruises and a limp in his stride. Pain is inevitable. But he shifts, his body cam following the movement, then he steps out of the shadows and starts forward. “We’re rolling.”

“What about his jaw, Ms. Donohue?” The sketch artist holds Gloria’s attention securely inside a boardroom within the NYPD. He runs a light line of lead across a thick, porous page. “Sharp? Square?”

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