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"They're going to hurt my family." Rowan's voice came out broken, half-swallowed by the wind. "I can't pay them back and they know where my family lives. My mom. My sister. She's graduating high school this year and she doesn't even know I'm in trouble. None of them know."

I sat at my console and listened. Alex wasn't saying anything. The silence on his channel stretched five seconds, then ten, and every instinct I had was telling me to fill it, to say something, to keep the voice moving the way I'd been trained. But this was Alex's scene now. He was on that roof and I was in a chair five miles away, and I had to trust him.

"What's your sister's name?" Alex asked.

"Cait."

"Does Cait know you're in Boston?"

"She thinks I'm doing great. She FaceTimes me after school and tells me about her classes and I pretend everything is fine."

"Rowan, the people you owe money to, they want money. That's what they want. If you go to law enforcement, you give them names, connections, how the operation works, those people go away. That's the only way this stops. That's the only way Cait is safe."

"My life is ruined."

Alex didn't answer right away. The pause lasted long enough that I checked the radio channel was still open. Then his voice came back, and it sounded like he'd had to find the words somewhere deep and pull them out by hand.

"You can still fix this. It's not too late."

"You don't know that."

"I do. Because you're still here. And every person who can help you is waiting on the other side of that railing."

I sat with my hands flat on the desk and I could not move, could not breathe wrong, could not do anything except hold the line open and trust that Alex would bring him back.

Then I heard shoes on metal, the scrape of hands on railing. Sawyer's voice came through low, followed by the click of a harness.

"Dispatch." Alex's voice on the radio. "We have him. He's safe. PD can stand down."

"Copy, Engine 19." I took the headset off and set it on the desk. The sounds of the dispatch center flooded back in, voices and keyboards and the hum of the building, and I realized I hadn't heard any of it for the last fifteen minutes.

It doesn't matter who's on the other end of the line or how many calls you've taken. No dispatcher wants to listen to someone die.

I closed the call, logged the disposition, and sat at my console with my eyes shut. The breath I'd been holding came out all at once.

Hazel was asleep before the second page of the book. I pulled the blanket to her chin, kissed her forehead, and stood in the doorway watching her breathe. The hockey-stick pillow was wedged under her arm. The nightlight threw soft shapes across the ceiling.

I closed the door and walked to the living room.

The call was still with me. I could still hear Rowan's voice, the way he broke down on the phone, how he'd told the story of moving to Boston from Chicago in search of a new life. My heart started pounding the way it did when a bad call stayed in my body after the headset came off.

I sat on the couch and looked around the room, trying to name each item I could see to get my breathing to settle. The couch cushion under my hand. The lamp on the end table. Hazel's sneakers by the door. The stack of library books on the coffee table. The hockey bag in the corner. The blanket folded over the armchair. The framed photo of my parents on their wedding day. The painted wooden cat from Prague. The tiny brass Eiffel Tower.

The Edinburgh snow globe.

I got up and picked it up. The glitter swirled around the tiny castle. I watched it drift and settle the way I'd watched it a hundred times since I brought it home. My breathing slowed with it. By the time the last flake landed, the room was still and so was I.

I set the snow globe down and pulled out my phone. I found Alex's name and pressed call before I could talk myself out of it.

He picked up on the second ring. "Janine? Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Hazel's asleep." I leaned back on the couch and looked at the ceiling. "I'm sorry. I know you're on shift. I shouldn't be calling."

The truth was I just needed to hear his voice.

"Don't apologize. I'm just sitting here waiting for the next lift assist."

I laughed. It came out tired and real, and it surprised me how much I needed it. "That was a pretty heavy call today."