For a second, his brain refused to understand what he was looking at.
A child.
Alone.
She couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe younger, though something about her face made age hard to measure. It wasn’t just the dirt streaked across her cheeks or the way her hair hung in uneven, tangled strands like it hadn’t been brushed in days. It was her eyes.
They didn’t belong to a child who had come in for help with something small.
They belonged to someone who already knew help might come too late.
Daniel stood up slowly, careful not to move too fast. Experience had taught him that frightened kids reacted to sudden motion the way animals did—with instinct, not logic.
“Hey,” he said gently, keeping his voice low. “You’re okay. You can come in.”
She didn’t answer right away.
She just stood there, breathing like she had run a long way, clutching something to her chest so tightly her knuckles had gone pale beneath the dirt.
A paper bag.
