I came back to my hotel suite after midnight for a report I’d left on the desk.

I found my night-shift housekeeper, Anna, standing in the dark between two sleeping children and the window, and a message already glowing on my phone: Police are in the lobby asking for Anna Silva and two children.

For a moment the suite went so quiet I could hear the hum of the city forty-seven floors below.

Anna stood beside the bed, one hand resting over her sleeping son, her eyes locked on the phone in my hand. The color had drained from her face so completely that she looked almost translucent in the blue wash of Manhattan light.

“Who?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Anna,” I said, softer. “Who is downstairs?”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “My husband.”

Something cold moved through the room.

I looked again at the children. Sophia’s golden hair. Samuel’s tight grip on his stuffed elephant. Their shoes lined up carefully by the nightstand, as if their mother had tried to preserve some dignity in a situation that had stripped her of everything else.

“Are the police with him?”

She nodded.

“Does he have custody?”