“Audio and high-definition video of the entire assault,” Travis said, his voice cold and hard as steel. “The wide-angle lens was in my tie clip. The audio receiver was in my watch. You have the mother striking her with a deadly weapon, the father acting as a physical restraint, and the sister conspiring to strike a second time.”
The detective took the device, nodding grimly. “Good work. We’ll handle it from here.”
I stared at Travis, my mind spinning, struggling to connect the dots through the concussive fog. “Travis?” I rasped, my voice sounding like crushed gravel. “Why…?”
Travis smiled. It was a sad, broken, beautiful smile. He reached out and gently brushed a strand of blood-matted hair from my forehead.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “Ten years is a long time. I was taller, and a lot angrier back then.”
I squinted my good eye. I looked past the expensive haircut, past the sharp jawline, past the designer clothes. I looked deep into his dark eyes. And suddenly, a memory broke through the pain.
A teenager. A sixteen-year-old boy sitting in a sterile, fluorescent-lit county interrogation room. He had a black eye, a busted lip, and a terrified, defensive sneer. He had been caught running drugs for a local gang to survive after fleeing a violently abusive foster home. I was a twenty-two-year-old rookie social worker, fresh out of college, working my very first solo case.
Instead of letting him be thrown into the juvenile detention system where he would have been consumed, I had fought for him. I had spent three weeks aggressively battling judges, parole officers, and the system itself to get him placed in a specialized, out-of-state rehabilitation and tech-education program for at-risk youth. I had driven him to the bus station myself, bought him a sandwich, and told him he was meant for more than a cage.
