“They are going to take them,” I cried, tears finally breaking past my eyelids. “They are going to kill them.”

“They won’t,” Ethan said, looking into my eyes. “I will not let them leave this floor.”

He pulled me into a small office just off the hallway.

It was a doctor’s dictation room, dark and smelling of stale coffee.

He locked the door behind us and turned off the overhead light.

Through the small window in the office door, we could see the hallway.

The security men were trying to clear the crushed bag from the door track.

Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

He did not dial the police.

Instead, he opened an encrypted messaging application.

“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against a desk.

“I am contacting someone who can stop my father,” Ethan said.

His thumbs moved quickly across the screen.

“Who?”

“Her name is Sarah Vance,” Ethan said. “She is an investigative reporter with the Tribune.”

He looked up at me, his eyes dark with a anger I had never seen in him before.