In that moment I stopped hoping to find my sister somewhere inside the woman in front of me.

The woman in front of me had made her calculations, and I was not in them except as an obstacle.

So I made my own.

Chapter 6 — A Family Dinner

My first instinct was to call the police right then, standing in the basement.

But I did not, and I want to be honest about why: because I did not yet understand the full shape of what was happening, and a compliance officer who acts before she understands the whole picture makes mistakes that let the guilty escape.

I needed to see who my sister had just texted.