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Chapter One


"Happy Anniversary," I said, raising my champagne glass. Emma blushed and raised hers as well. Her hair hung in long, thick curls that framed her face. Her red dress cupped her breasts perfectly. "For an entire year, I have known happiness more fully than I ever imagined possible. For three hundred and sixty-five days, Emma, you've made my world complete. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart." I clinked my glass against hers.

She laughed and the tiny twinkle lights that lined our rooftop garden sparkled in her eyes, her coral lips parting in a smile. "I don't even have words for what a colossal nerd you are," she said, "And that is precisely why I adore you with every fiber of my being." She sipped the champagne.

We'd ordered in Chinese take-out and put an air mattress out and there we lay in the dark, pretending the strands of lights were stars.

Emma reached over and brushed a stray strand of my long hair back, behind my glasses, and stared into my eyes.

"Make love to me," she requested.

I leaned over, my mouth landing on hers like puzzle pieces. I slid my hand down her back, pulling her body closer to mine. She felt so small, so perfect, so breakable. I gently rolled so that I was leaning over her as her chest rose and fall with her breathing, our mouths never breaking the kiss. She hummed against my mouth, her eyes closed.

Then I heard the Blue Bloods theme music. Her ringtone for her partner, Seth.

"Jared, my phone."

"Ignore it, just this once," I pleaded.

"I can't," she replied, "You know I can't."

I rolled away and Emma got up and went over to the table where she'd left the phone. She anwered it, "Hey Seth. This better be important, you know I'm on my anniversary date with Jared." She paused, listening. And as I watched, I saw her face pale, saw her eyes widen. "What's the address? Okay. I'll be right there."

She turned to me.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A little boy's gone missing," she replied.

"Then you need to go," I said.

"I need to go," she replied.




I'm a freelance writer. I'm the guy that writes those random little blurbs of information in travel brochures or the inside of the Hallmark cards. The most incredible thing I've done was a collection of short stories that somehow got published and released to go on to sell a whopping three-hundred and twenty-one copies in six years time. Three of those copies were my mother.

My adventurous soul exists just enough for me to research something and write about it. As for actually doing any of the stuff I write about, I'd rather pass.

Emma, though, she doesn't write. She lives the adventure everyday.

When Emma graduated from Police Academy, nobody could believe it. We lived in one of those small New England towns where things like that were unheard of, where women cops were built like gym teachers or yetis or something, not petite little things like Emma. But she passed with flying colors, mastering several types of karate and being the sharpest shooter in her graduating class.

She was accepted to the New York City Police Department almost as quickly as she'd applied there following training.

Every day, Emma risked her life to protect the people of New York.

She did things like you see on TV. Things like stop robberies, arrest murderers, and rescue hostages. She'd once travelled overseas to collect a wanted terrorist from one of the roughest prisons in Afghanistan.

Emma did things like interrupt her anniversary dinner to go find a lost boy.

To be frank, Emma kicked serious ass.

"How did you ever end up with a boring guy like me?" I asked her once, when I'd been sitting in the living room watching her clean her guns t the dining room table.

"You aren't always boring," she replied. "Sometimes you surprise me still." She smiled.




I tried to stay up for her to come home that night, but it was around two when my eyes just wouldn't stay open any longer and I fell asleep. When she came home, she was quiet. She took off her things, unaware that I was watching her, and she sighed as she unloaded her gun, clipped the safety on, and slid it into her underwear drawer. She stared at it for a long moment before pushing the drawer shut. She sighed, then turned, pulled the elastic from her hair, letting it cascade around her, then crawled into bed beside me. She lay on her back, her hair pulled up in an arc over her head, staring up at the ceiling. I gave her a couple moments before I rolled into her, wrapping my arm around her. I kissed her shoulder.

"Did you find the little boy?" I asked her.

"No," she replied.

"Any leads?"

"Not a one."

"You'll find him tomorrow," I said quietly.

Emma didn't reply.




Whenever Emma was working on a big case, one that really bothered her and ate at her, she became silent. She'd wander around the house like a ringwraith, consumed by thoughts of the case, muttering details to herself as she made dinner or stared at the TV vacantly, not really watching it. She'd take long showers and go up to the roof and lay on the concrete floor. Once I found her doing that in the dead of winter, making an angel in the snow, and I had to drag her inside before she caught frostbite.

That's how she was getting by the third day that the little boy hadn't been found.

After a certain amount of time with these cases, they start looking for bodies instead of children. They stop looking at the living, and start looking among the dead. They start looking for clues instead of for a face in a crowd. Clues like Daniel Gregor's backpack, which showed up on the bank of the Hudson River on Day Three.

Emma called me from the field on her cell phone after submitting the bag into evidence. "I can't bring myself to believe this kid is dead," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

When Emma finally came to me about a case it was because she'd thought it through thoroughly, because she'd come up with ideas and connections that she needed verified. It was because she needed to know she wasn't crazy, wasn't making things up.

"The backpack was full of stuff, like homework and stuff, but there wasn't anything personal. No stuffed animals, no comic books, no CDs, nothing that a kid would have in their bag," she said. "His mother said he just got new Batman action figure for his birthday. Batman is his favorite. He takes it everywhere with him. He had it in the footage from the school, out on the playground, and on the way out the door at the last bell. He made Batman slide down the banister." Emma was quiet for a long moment. "Why wasn't there a body with the backpack? Why wasn't Batman with the backpack?"

"Maybe Batman and the body are still together somewhere," I suggested.

"That's what I think, too," Emma said. "Except I don't think there's a body. I think there's a little boy still holding onto his superhero."