I had spent days asking what could be proven about a pale sedan and a box.

Now the woman who could connect them was sitting close enough for me to see a loose thread on her cuff.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“Listen to me.

I needed an officer to find them before he did.”

She did not say it loudly.

She did not ask me to call the act reasonable.

She said Caleb had told her, more than once, that if she involved outsiders he would take the babies and make sure she could not keep them.