Except, it was now one-thirty. No Brian. No Sophie. And no one answering the phone at the house. What had happened?

I didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Refused to picture the possibilities that immediately leapt into my mind. The way a teenager’s body could eject from a car and wrap around a telephone pole. Or the way the steering column of an older, pre–air bag vehicle could cave in a grown adult’s chest, leaving a man sitting perfectly still, almost appearing asleep in the driver’s seat until you noticed the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Or the eight-year-old girl, who’d just three months ago had to be cut out of the crushed front end of a four-door sedan, her relatively uninjured mother standing there, screaming how the baby had been crying, she’d just turned around to check the baby.…

These are the things I know. These are the scenes I remembered as I slammed my cruiser into gear, flipped on lights and sirens and fishtailed my way toward my home, thirty minutes away.

My hands were shaking when I finally careened to a halt in front of our brick garage, front end of my cruiser on the sidewalk; back half in the street. I left on my lights, bolting out of the cruiser and up the snow-buried stairs toward the dark home above. My boot hit the first patch of ice and I grabbed the metal railing just in time to keep from plummeting to the street below. Then I crested the hill and was pulling on my front door, working my keys with one hand, banging on the door with the other, even as the dark-eyed windows told me everything I didn’t want to know.

Finally, with a sharp wrench of my hand, I twisted the key in the lock, shoved open the door.…

Nothing. Empty kitchen, vacant family room. I rushed upstairs; both bedrooms unoccupied.

My duty belt jingled loudly at my waist as I rat-tat-tatted back down the stairs into the kitchen. There, I finally paused, took several steadying breaths, and reminded myself I was a trained police officer. Less adrenaline, more intelligence. That’s how one solved problems. That’s how one stayed in control.

“Mommy? Mommy, you’re home!”

My heart practically leapt out of my chest. I turned just in time to catch Sophie as she hurtled herself into my arms, hugged me half a dozen times, and started prattling about her exciting snow day in one long breathless rush that left me dazed and confused all over again.

Then I realized Sophie hadn’t returned alone, but that a neighborhood girl was standing in the doorway. She raised her hand in greeting.

“Mrs. Leoni?” she asked, then immediately flushed. “I mean, Officer Leoni.”