Through sheets of rain the chapel finally rose out of the gray — a black wooden silhouette against the storm.

A battered pickup, the same one from my kitchen footage, sat by the rotting steps.

Darius hit the brakes and the SUV slewed to a stop, and I was out the door and running before it fully stopped, through the heavy doors, into a vast rotting dark that smelled of mold and wet cedar, rain pouring through holes in the roof onto broken pews.

I have no memory of deciding to run into that building.

There was no decision.

A mother whose child is somewhere inside a dark structure does not weigh her options; the body simply goes, ahead of thought, ahead of fear, ahead of any sensible calculation about the man with the duffel bag or what might be waiting past the doors.