A year or so earlier, a string of nighttime shootings had made the city councilmen call for police to enforce a teen curfew in the city. Even though all the shootings had involved only adults, the police were directed to use every law enforcement tool they could to crack down on the recent spike in violent crime. On this, one of only two nighttime shifts he worked, Officer Hawkes and a group of other officers had been sent out on a juvenile sweep. Hawkes knew the routine well. He was expected to arrest them and either take them home or take them to a law enforcement post until their parents could come pick them up. It had been a rather ironic stroke of bad luck that Aria was spotted walking across the city exactly on that night. But her bad luck was offset by the fact that Officer Hawkes hated curfew law. Not only was there absolutely no evidence that it did anything to prevent crime, he found it to be an embarrassing waste of law enforcement resources. Most of the kids he ended up arresting were Latino or black, and every time he put the handcuffs on, he could feel the already strained relationship between law enforcement and minority groups worsening.

When he had spotted Aria weaving in and out of alleyways and under overpasses, he had considered whether to simply let her go. He worried more for her safety than that she was up to no good. But he decided to give her a scare in the hope that it would discourage her from running amuck at this time of night. Aria didn’t run. When she saw the police car sparkle its lights once from behind her, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Aria was surprised at first to see the officer that stepped out from the car. This was the third time she had crossed paths with this same cop. Though she had seen him act kindly, that did not fool her into forgetting that he was a cop and she was an underage runaway. Aria pretended to be ignorant of the curfew law and told Officer Hawkes that she was visiting a friend here because she was from out of town. She had expected to be arrested. She had half expected the karma of what had happened at the car lot to make today the day that she was caught and sent back to Illinois state foster care.