I’m coming.”

I didn’t bother with civilian clothes — tactical jacket, badge on my belt, keys. Tearing through the deserted amber streets, my mind ran the variables.

Rodney’s silence wasn’t the freeze-response of a man caught in a sudden domestic dispute. It was complicity. This was surgical. They were manufacturing a psychiatric crisis to lock my father away and get unrestricted access to his estate.

But they’d made one catastrophic miscalculation.

They forgot who his daughter was.

The precinct’s fluorescent lights beat down on Dad’s exhausted face when I pushed through the glass doors. He sat huddled on a hard plastic chair in the corner, looking ten years older than he had a month ago.

A few yards away, my sister-in-law, Priscilla Thorne, was delivering an Oscar-worthy performance at the front desk.

I bypassed the waiting area and went straight to the counter. “I need to speak with that man in a private interview room,” I told duty officer Keith Miller, keeping my voice level.

“I’m also formally requesting the duty public defender before another syllable is extracted from him.”

Miller looked up from his clipboard, annoyed. Before he could open his mouth, Priscilla spun around, clutching a crumpled tissue, producing heaving sobs.

She jabbed a manicured finger at a faint pinkish mark on her right shoulder and shoved closer to the plexiglass.

“You don’t understand, officer!” Her voice ricocheted off the cinderblock. “He snapped! He’s out of his mind! You have to write a 72-hour psychiatric hold and commit him tonight, before he kills someone!”