They both knew where the child was.
But they did not yet know where Marcus was.
“Marcus,” Nathan said, keeping his voice steady, “we’re here to make sure the child is safe. Step out where we can see your hands.”
“You’re not taking him,” Marcus said.
Nathan moved one slow step forward.
Nobody says that sentence from a calm place.
Nobody says it in a house with a broken door, a smashed phone, a crying child, and a mother covered in sauce outside begging police for help.
Jenna angled toward the bathroom door, flashlight cutting a line across the floor. Nathan kept his body oriented toward the hall.
“Mateo,” Nathan called, not too loudly. “This is Officer Cole. If you can hear me, stay where you are, buddy. We’re coming.”
The crying behind the laundry door hitched, then continued.
A shadow moved behind the partly closed bathroom door.
Jenna saw it.
“Hands!” she shouted.
The door flew open.
Marcus Bell stepped into the hallway.
He was thirty-three, tall, broad through the shoulders, wearing dark jeans and a black hoodie. His hair was close-cropped, his jaw tense, his eyes wild with the kind of anger that looks less like fire and more like a room where all the windows have been nailed shut. In his right hand, he held the shattered remains of a cell phone.
Elena’s phone, Nathan assumed.
Marcus looked from Nathan to Jenna and then toward the laundry room door.
“She called you?” he said.
Nathan kept his hands visible but ready.
“Put the phone down.”
Marcus looked at the broken phone as if he had forgotten it was in his hand.
Then he smiled.
It was not amusement.
It was contempt.
“You people always show up for her story.”
Jenna said, “Phone on the ground. Now.”
Marcus dropped it, but the movement was exaggerated, theatrical. The broken phone hit the hallway floor and slid against the baseboard.
Nathan said, “Step into the living room.”
“No.”
“Marcus—”
“No. That’s my son.”
Behind the laundry room door, Mateo cried harder.