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My hand hovered over my phone, thumb resting near the screen. Should I call the police right now? What would I even say — that my fourteen-year-old daughter got into a pickup truck outside her own school, calm and unhurried, like she’d done it every single day that week?
Maybe I was overreacting completely.
But she was supposed to be at school. She had been supposed to be at school for five straight days, and instead, she was climbing into a stranger’s truck without a single second of hesitation.
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My hands were shaking as I pulled out and followed at a careful distance, staying two cars back the way I’d seen people do in movies, feeling absurd and terrified in equal measure.
I kept telling myself I’d call the police the moment they turned anywhere that didn’t make sense.
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The truck drove steadily across town for almost twenty minutes, eventually pulling into the parking lot of Bellhaven Regional Hospital.
