Chapter 3: Six Minutes
Ryan grabbed Jason's sleeve again.
"We need to go.
Right now."
"I'm not running," Jason said.
But his voice had gone flat.
"You're not running." Ryan stared at him.
"Jason.
Her dad runs this city's entire police department.
Every squad car, every officer, every—"
"I know what he runs."
"Then why are you still standing here?"
Jason didn't answer.
He was looking at Emily, still trapped in the swamp below.
She had stopped crying.
She was just watching him now, the phone pressed to her ear, mud drying in streaks across her face.
Her eyes were steady in a way that made Jason's stomach drop.
She wasn't afraid of him anymore.
Ryan pulled harder.
"Come on—"
"Get off me." Jason shook free.
He took one slow step toward the slope, then stopped.
From the phone in Emily's hand, her father's voice came again — quieter now, controlled in a way that was somehow worse than shouting.
"Emily.
Are you still there?"
"I'm here, Dad."
"Can you see him?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Good.
Keep your eyes on him.
Don't look away."
Jason heard every word.
He stood at the top of the slope, the mud below him, Emily below him, and felt the ground shift under his feet in a way that had nothing to do with the hill.
Ryan was gone.
He'd slipped away into the trees without another word, leaving Jason alone on the ridge.
Six minutes.
That was how long it took.
The first squad car came in silent — no siren, no lights.
It rolled to a stop at the edge of the sports complex parking lot, and two officers stepped out with a quiet efficiency that was more frightening than any siren could have been.
A second car pulled in behind the first.
Then a third.
Jason watched them from the top of the hill.
His phone was still in his hand.
He hadn't moved.
One of the officers looked up the slope, spotted him, and said something into his radio.
Then the last car arrived.
Chief David Carter didn't rush.
He stepped out of the passenger side, buttoned his jacket once, and looked up the hill.
The distance between them was maybe forty meters.
It felt like nothing.
He walked to the edge of the swamp first.
Crouched down beside Emily's wheelchair.
Said something to her quietly that Jason couldn't hear.
Checked her hands, her face.
Signaled to one of the officers, who immediately moved to help lift the chair back onto level ground.
He didn't look at Jason once.
That was the part that made Jason's legs finally start to shake.
When Emily was out of the swamp and wrapped in a jacket one of the officers had produced from the back of a car, Chief Carter finally turned.
He looked up the slope.
He found Jason's face.
He didn't shout.
He didn't gesture.
He just looked.
One of the officers was already climbing the hill.
"Jason Miller?" the officer said, reaching the top.
"Yeah."
"Come with me, please."
It wasn't a question.
Jason knew that.
He went.
At the bottom of the hill, they walked him past Emily.
She was seated in her wheelchair, the officer's jacket around her shoulders, a bottle of water in her hands.
She watched Jason walk past.
She didn't say anything.
Jason stopped.
"Emily, I—"
"Keep moving," the officer said.
"I just want to—"
"Mr.
Miller." The officer's hand came to his shoulder, not rough, but final.
"Keep moving."
Jason looked back once.
Chief Carter was kneeling beside Emily, one hand on her arm, talking to her in a low voice.
He still hadn't looked at Jason directly since that moment on the hill.
Jason understood then that the Chief wasn't ignoring him.
He was saving him for later.
They put Jason in the back of the second squad car.
The door closed.
Through the window, he watched the officers moving around the scene, and he thought about the thing he hadn't told Ryan.
The thing he hadn't told anyone.
May you like
The thing that connected him to Chief Carter in a way that, if it came out today, wouldn't just end his school career.
It would end his father's.
