Chapter 2 - The Race Against Time
At the elevator, my hands were shaking so badly that I pressed the down button three times.
I was twenty minutes away from Lena’s house on a good day.
On a downtown lunch-hour day, with delivery trucks and red lights and construction cones, twenty minutes could become thirty.
Noah was four years old.
He was alone with a grown man who had just hurt him.
I could feel rage rising in me so fast it almost became useless.
Rage wanted me to scream.
Rage wanted me to throw the phone.
Rage wanted me to drive like an idiot and become one more problem between my son and help.
But panic only helps the people who are not depending on you.
I needed action.
So I called my brother.
Derek answered on the first ring.
“What’s up?”
“Noah called me,” I said.
The elevator doors opened, and I ran into the parking garage.
My shoes slapped the concrete hard enough to echo.
“He said Travis hit him with a baseball bat. Lena isn’t home. I’m twenty minutes out. Where are you?”
There was one second of silence.
Then Derek’s voice changed.
Derek had always been the calm one in emergencies.
When we were kids and I fell out of an oak tree, he was the one who ran for our mother without crying.
When my tire blew out on the interstate years later, he showed up with a jack, a flashlight, and a thermos of coffee before I had finished apologizing.
He had fought in regional MMA shows in his twenties, but the fights were not what made him dangerous.
What made Derek dangerous was that he did not need to perform anger.
He got quiet.
“I’m maybe fifteen minutes from Lena’s place,” he said.
“Go now.”
“You calling 911?”
“Right now.”
“I’m moving.”
He hung up before I could say anything else.
By 1:20 p.m., I was in my car with one phone connected to emergency dispatch and the other line waiting for Derek to call back.
I gave the dispatcher everything.
Noah’s full name.
His age.
Lena’s address.
The fact that Travis was an adult male.
The fact that a baseball bat was involved.
The fact that my son said he had been threatened if he cried.
The dispatcher kept her voice steady.
“Is the child breathing?”
“He was talking less than a minute ago,” I said. “Then the man took the phone.”
“Are you currently at the location?”
“No. I’m driving there. My brother is closer.”
“Sir, do not enter the residence if the suspect is armed. Officers are being dispatched.”
I heard the words.
May you like
I even understood why she had to say them.
But all I could see was Noah’s bedroom with the blue dinosaur blanket, the little plastic bin of toy cars under the window, and the baseball glove I had bought him even though he still wore it on the wrong hand.
