“Is that recording?”
Tyler swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Do not delete it.”
Michael finally found his voice.
“This is my jurisdiction.”
The man in the suit looked at him the way adults look at children who have repeated a phrase they do not understand.
“Not anymore.”
The cuffs came off my wrist.
The pain arrived fully once the metal was gone.
My hand shook, not from fear, but from circulation coming back through bruised skin.
The uniformed man helped me sit up.
I touched my cheek and saw blood on my fingers.
My mother crawled toward me on her knees.
“Sarah,” she whispered.
I had not heard that version of my name from her in years.
Not General.
Not honey.
Sarah.
The name she used when I was eight and sick on the couch.
The name she used when she still believed she could put a cool hand on my forehead and fix the world.
