Rowan Mercer was deep in a budget meeting at his downtown Nashville office when his phone buzzed with an unfamiliar number. He almost ignored it. Meetings often brought interruptions that could wait.

But something made him answer.

At first there was only faint static. Then a small voice came through the line—tight, trembling, trying not to cry.

“Dad?”

Rowan’s stomach dropped. He knew that voice instantly.

“Micah? Why are you calling from another phone? What’s wrong?”

Micah inhaled sharply, as if he had been holding his breath for too long.

“Elsie won’t wake up right. She’s really hot. Mom’s not here… and we haven’t eaten in three days.”

In that moment, the meeting disappeared from Rowan’s mind. The spreadsheets, the conversation, the room—none of it mattered. He stood so quickly his chair scraped loudly against the floor.

Within seconds he was in the elevator, keys in hand.

A Race Through Nashville Traffic

Earlier that week, Delaney—Rowan’s former partner and the children’s mother—had told him she was taking the kids to a friend’s lake cabin where the cell signal was unreliable. Since it was her scheduled time with them, and their co-parenting had been stable enough, he had trusted her word.

Now all he could hear was Micah’s frightened voice.

And one detail that wouldn’t leave his mind: no food.

Rowan tried calling Delaney again and again while pushing through traffic.

“Pick up,” he murmured under his breath. “Please pick up.”

He reached Delaney’s rental house in East Nashville in less than thirty minutes, pulling in harder than he meant to. The place felt wrong the moment he stepped out—no toys outside, no television noise, no sign of movement.