She had picked up her watch and defied the one authority she had ever known, because some deeper thing in her, some instinct that all of Sondra’s careful training had failed to kill, had looked at Rhys on the ground and understood that a rule telling you not to save a life is a rule you break.

I did not understand, in that first moment in the car, the full weight of what it had cost her to make that call — how many years of conditioning she had to override in the space of a few seconds, how completely she was risking the only love she believed she had.

I only knew my son wouldn’t wake, and my hands were already on my keys.

I was already grabbing my keys.

“Mira, stay right next to him.

Tell me where you are.”