"She says he threw a bottle to draw away the men who came back looking for her."
Beau stood very still.
"How old?"
"She thinks 14."
Beau walked past the doctor.
He pushed open the door of the trauma bay.
Maggie was in the bed with an IV in her arm.
Her dark hair was spread across the white pillow.
Her face was pale.
Her eyes opened when he came in.
She tried to smile.
The smile broke his heart in a way nothing else in his 50 years ever had.
"Beau," she whispered.
He went to his knees beside the bed.
He took her good hand in both of his.
He pressed his forehead against her knuckles.
He did not speak because he could not.
"Beau," she said again. "You have to find him."
He lifted his head.
"Find him," Maggie said. "He saved me."
"He took off his coat in 20 below and put it on me."
"He's 14 years old, Beau."
"He's the same age Daniel was."
Beau's jaw tightened.
"His name is Eli Carter."
Maggie took a breath.
"And Beau, listen to me. Listen."
"His father was Jameson Carter."
"The steel mill in Pittsburgh eight years ago."
Beau stared at her.
"I held his hand when he died. I held that man's hand."
"He asked me to find his son."
"I tried, Beau. I tried for a year, and the system swallowed the boy, and I lost him."
"I lost him, and I never forgave myself."
Beau looked at his wife.
The woman he had built his life around.
The woman who ran a free clinic out of a storefront on the east side.
The woman who had buried their only child 15 years ago and had spent every day since trying to save somebody else's.
He understood what she was telling him.
This did not feel like coincidence.
It did not feel like chance.
It felt like the thing Beau's mother used to call providence when he was a small boy in Kentucky and the world made a different kind of sense.
"Where is he now?" Beau asked.
"I don't know."
Tears were running down Maggie's face.
"He left."
"He saved me and he left, and he's out there."
"Beau, he's out there in the cold without a coat."
"Find him."
Beau stood.
He looked down at his wife for one long moment.
Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead very gently, the way a man kisses something precious to him beyond the saying of it.
He walked out of the trauma bay.
Cyrus Boyd was waiting in the corridor.
Beau looked at his sergeant-at-arms.
His eyes were the eyes of a man who had made a decision and the decision was the kind that did not get unmade.
"Call them," Beau said.
Cyrus waited.
"Call all of them."
"Cleveland. Columbus. Indianapolis. Chicago. New York. Newark. Philadelphia."
"Every charter east of the Mississippi."
"Tell them what happened."
"Tell them I want every patched member who can get to Detroit here by tomorrow morning."
"Tell them we're looking for a 14-year-old child who saved my wife's life."
"And tell them we're going to search this city until we find him."
Cyrus nodded once.
He took out his phone.