Chapter Text
The Los Angeles sun was particularly merciless that afternoon.
Tamara adjusted the strap of her backpack, feeling the weight of the design books Lucy had insisted she bring to college. She was happy. For the first time in years, life didn’t feel like a series of fires to put out, but a path waiting to be built.
She quickly texted Lucy:
“Leaving class. Want me to grab Thai food for dinner?”
While waiting for the reply, Tamara stepped up to the crosswalk. The pedestrian light turned green. She took her first step, headphones muting the chaos of the city with a soft melody.
That was why she didn’t hear the engine roaring two blocks away.
A black SUV, fleeing a botched robbery just a few streets over, blew through the red light at over 80 km/h. Tamara’s world became a blur of dark metal and the deafening screech of tires against asphalt.
The impact wasn’t head-on—but it was enough to throw her violently onto the sidewalk. Pain came instantly and completely, a burst of heat along her left side followed by sudden darkness as her head struck the concrete.
⸻
Mid-Wilshire Station
Lucy Chen’s radio crackled with the dispatcher’s voice, but it was the tone that made her blood run cold.
“Unit 7-Adam-19, we have a hit-and-run at the intersection of Figueroa and 9th. Female victim, young, unconscious.”
Lucy, who had been sipping coffee with Tim Bradford in the parking lot, felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She didn’t look at the screen, but a terrible intuition—one only trauma survivors truly recognize—tightened around her chest.
“Tim,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “That’s Tamara’s college street.”
Tim didn’t hesitate. He was already opening the door of the interceptor.
“Get in. Now.”
⸻
At the scene
By the time they arrived, the street was a storm of red and blue lights. Lucy jumped out of the car before Tim had fully stopped. She ran, ignoring the officers trying to secure the area, until she saw it—
The yellow backpack.
The one she had helped Tamara choose.
It lay abandoned in the middle of the road, notebooks scattered across the asphalt like fallen leaves.
A few meters ahead, paramedics were kneeling over a small, motionless figure.
“Tamara!” Lucy’s scream cut through the noise of the crowd.
Tim reached her a second later, placing a firm hand on her shoulder—both to support her and to keep her from interfering with the paramedics’ work. He took in the girl’s condition: her pale face stark against the blood trailing from a cut on her temple, her left leg twisted at an angle that made him briefly look away.
“She’s seizing!” one of the paramedics shouted while stabilizing Tamara’s head. “Severe head trauma. We need to intubate her—now!”
Lucy felt her knees weaken. The girl she had taken in, who had become her little sister, her family, was lying there fighting for her life on a strip of cold asphalt.
Tim tightened his grip on her shoulder, his voice low but filled with iron determination.
“She’s a fighter, Lucy. She’s not going to give up.”
He looked toward the chaotic street, jaw set.
“And we’re going to find whoever did this.”