The room disappeared around Rowan.
The spreadsheets on the screen, the coworkers at the table, the numbers they’d been discussing only seconds earlier—none of it mattered anymore. His chair scraped violently backward as he grabbed his keys and phone and rushed for the elevator.
He called Delaney immediately.
Voicemail.
He called again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
By the time he reached the parking garage beneath the building, his pulse was hammering so hard his hands shook on the steering wheel. Earlier that week, Delaney had told him she was taking the kids to stay with a friend at a lake cabin where the phone signal was unreliable. Because they were in the middle of one of their carefully negotiated custody weeks, and because their co-parenting had been tense but manageable for months, he had believed her.
Now all he could hear was Micah’s trembling voice saying there was no food left.
