Chapter 2 - The Alleys of Queens
The address in Long Island City was a dilapidated, four-story brick monolith sandwiched between an auto salvage yard and an elevated subway track. The neon sign above the dented metal door flickered with a dead hum: St. Jude Community Youth Foundation.
Ava stepped inside the linoleum-tiled intake vestibule. The air smelled of burnt grease, damp wool, and industrial floor stripper. A sour-faced woman in a faded acrylic cardigan sat behind a scratched acrylic window, chewing gum while clicking through an ancient computer monitor.
"I’m looking for Emmy Sinclair," Ava said, pressing both palms flat against the speak-hole. "Or Emmy Harper. Five years old. She was placed here fourteen months ago."
The woman barely looked up from her screen. "Records request takes forty-eight hours. Fill out Form G-12 and come back Thursday."
"I just spent five years in prison for a crime I didn't commit, and my daughter is five years old," Ava said, her voice dropping into a register so low and freezing that the woman stopped chewing. Ava leaned closer, her dark eyes hollowed by half a decade of survival. "You are going to look at that screen right now, or I will tear this acrylic off the counter and find the filing cabinet myself."
The woman swallowed hard, tapped three keys, and squinted at a digitized case file. Her face paled slightly.
"She’s not here," the receptionist muttered.
"Where is she?"
"She... she slipped out the delivery bay six days ago during the morning supply drop," the woman stammered, pulling a printed runaway flyer from beneath the counter. "Look, we notified the precinct, but she's five. She was small for her age. She had a little stuffed bear and a brown wool coat. The street kids around the rail yards said some older boys were chasing her for her boots."
Ava snatched the paper from the slot.
The photograph on the flyer was grainy, taken under fluorescent lighting: a little girl with huge, solemn hazel eyes, dark curls wild around her shoulders, and a stubborn set to her jaw that made Ava’s heart shatter into dust. It was Michael’s stubborn chin and Ava’s dark, fierce gaze.
"Six days?" Ava whispered, horror flooding her veins. "You lost a five-year-old child in freezing November weather six days ago, and you didn't call the federal marshals?!"
"She's a ward of the state, lady! We got eighty kids and four staff members!" the woman shouted defensively.
Ava didn't wait to hear the rest. She shoved the heavy door open and ran into the sleet.
The rail yards behind Borden Avenue were an expanse of rusted boxcars, crushed gravel, and freezing wind coming off the East River. Twilight was settling fast, painting the industrial wasteland in shades of bruising violet and soot.
Ava searched every abandoned loading dock, every plywood lean-to, calling her daughter's name until her voice tore into a ragged, bloody rasp.
"Emmy! Emmy, baby!"
May you like
Nothing answered except the distant shriek of train wheels on cold steel.
She didn't know that three miles west, in the shadows beneath the Queensboro Bridge, five-year-old Emmy was currently running for her life.
