Chapter 1 - The Door That Wouldn't Hold
The first crack ran down my bedroom door while my father was still shouting my name.
I was ten years old, kneeling behind a desk I'd shoved against the knob, with an old phone pressed so hard to my ear that it hurt. Mom had hidden it beneath my mattress, with one saved contact: CALL IF DAD HURTS US. Downstairs, the kitchen faucet was still running. I could hear it through the floorboards. Every time I hear water rushing into a metal sink now, some part of me goes back to that afternoon.
"Emily?" the man on the phone said. "Listen to my voice. Are you hurt?"
My cheek burned where Dad had hit me. "I fell. Mom's downstairs. He has her."
Five minutes earlier, I'd come home carrying a spelling test with a red A on top. Dad was gripping Mom's hair over the kitchen sink. Her blouse was soaked. He kept pushing her face toward the water and yelling that she should have kept her mouth shut. I grabbed his waist. He turned, struck me, and sent me sprawling beside my backpack. Mom got between us long enough to scream, "Run!"
Now his boot struck my door again. The desk moved an inch.
"What's your name?" I whispered into the phone.
"Nolan Pierce. Your mom knows me. She's the one who gave you this number."
"Are you the police?"
"I'm a deputy U.S. marshal. We are close. Don't open the bedroom door. Go to the window, but don't climb out yet."
Dad stopped kicking. "Who are you talking to?"
My thumb slipped onto the speaker button. Nolan's voice filled the room, low and clear. "Ryan Parker. Step away from your daughter's door."
The silence on the other side was worse than the kicking. Then Dad said something I'd never heard from him before, not even when he lost his temper at work.
"Pierce?" He sounded frightened. "She called you?"
Red and blue light washed across my curtains. I could hear car doors, men calling to one another, someone pounding on our front door.
"Open the window, Emily," Nolan said. "Your father is about to learn why your mother needed federal protection in the first place."
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I lifted the window. Below me, a man in a dark jacket raised a portable ladder. Behind him, two officers surrounded Dad's truck.
But I couldn't see my mother anywhere.
