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her chair and sat down, pulling her near-full bundle of crack from one of her robe pockets and making a great show of counting each of the plastic caps.
    Daneen turned away and tried to ignore the sudden churning in her stomach. But there was no denying the rumble that soon grew to a growl. It echoed across the room as Judy placed one cap after another on the table beside her chair.
    â€œI think we should try to find her first,” Judy said, still counting the crack-filled vials.
    Daneen couldn’t hear Judy. Her nostrils were beginning to fill with the lingering scent of crack smoke. Her pores expelled tiny beads of sweat as her heart climbed out of her chest and beat wildly against her throat. The rumble in her stomach began to work downward until she felt that her bowels were going to burst.

    And still, Judy counted. Daneen thought she could see a tiny smile playing on her aunt’s lips.
    â€œYou know what I think, Daneen?” Judy asked as she counted. “I think Kenya gon’ show up ’round nine o’clock talkin’ ’bout ‘What’s for breakfast?’ Same way you used to do when you was her age. Disappearin’ and showin’ up when you felt like it. Remember how you used to do that?”
    Daneen’s mouth was beginning to water. She could hear Judy now, but couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. The taste of crack was once again dancing on her palate. The smell of it was overwhelming her.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Daneen?” Judy said, with a self-satisfied smirk.
    â€œYou always did like to fuck with me, didn’t you, Judy?” Daneen said, turning to face her aunt. “Probably doin’ Kenya like that, too, ain’t you? Figurin’ out how to push her buttons. That’s probably why she got the hell up outta here.”
    â€œKenya ain’t weak as you,” Judy said, taking out one of the caps and opening it. “She don’t give me the satisfaction.”
    â€œI ain’t gon’ give it to you neither,” Daneen said, moving toward the door.
    â€œYou sure about that?” Judy picked up the open cap and held it in the air. “’Cause I sure could use some satisfaction right about now. You got some money, don’t you, Daneen? First one’s free.”
    Daneen swallowed hard, ignoring the taste in her mouth, the rumble in her stomach, the stench in her nostrils. She backed toward the door, staring at the crack, even as she reached behind her and pawed at the air until her fingers closed around the doorknob.
    â€œI gotta find my baby,” she said as she opened the door and stepped backward. “I just—I gotta find her.”
    And with that, Daneen was gone—without a word about the final call she’d made before coming to Judy’s apartment.

Chapter Three
    Not twenty miles from the chaos that was about to erupt in the projects, on the edge of a tree-lined section of Philadelphia called Chestnut Hill, Kevin Lynch could feel the quiet bearing down on him.
    The solitude of middle-class living was the one thing Lynch hadn’t mastered, even ten years removed from his last years in the projects. He still found himself wishing for profane tirades and breaking glass, childhood games and pulsing music. Sounds he had almost forgotten since leaving the richness of ghetto poverty.
    Whenever the silence he hated was broken, he jumped to embrace the noise, secretly hoping to snatch a piece of the confusion that was so much a part of him.
    That’s what had happened when he had received the phone call shortly before five. He had snapped awake to the sound of the ringing phone and listened with growing panic to Daneen’s sordid tale of crack dens and missing children.
    It had taken him just minutes to get up and bathe and dress. When he came back to his bedroom and his sleeping wife, he moved quietly, strapping on his shoulder holster and his handheld radio before easing himself