"How long has he been gone?"
My voice comes out sharp and fast before Julian even stops the car fully. I am already pushing the door open. The cold morning air hits my face like a warning.
Nathaniel is standing beside the empty car. His jaw is tight. His eyes find mine immediately and I see something in them that he is working hard to control. Not panic. Nathaniel does not panic. But something very close to it lives just underneath his steady surface right now.
"Twenty minutes," he says. "Maybe twenty-five. I stepped away to make a call. When I came back the door was open and he was gone."
Twenty-five minutes. A sick man in a wheelchair alone in a dark city at four in the morning. My chest does something painful and complicated that I do not have time to sit with.
I pick up the discha
