Don't Come Out

While Nadia Cole accepts an award for protecting children, her friend Celia takes Nadia’s home visit. Celia and the mother she visited are found dead, and the mother’s seven-year-old is missing.

In the basement, Nadia kneels by a dryer with a sock wedged in its latch and speaks into a finger’s width of dark: “Nevaeh? My name is Nadia.” The door opens from inside. On the girl’s forearm is one word: NADIA. Her mother told her to count ten times through her fingers, then she’d come for her. Nevaeh’s first words: “I’m on nine.”

In her interview, Nevaeh remembers the killer asking, “When’s Nadia coming?” Detectives blame her mother’s ex. But seeing the ex on the news, Nevaeh says, “That’s the knocking man. He wasn’t the inside man.” The ex confesses anyway, and the police stop looking. Then a car starts idling outside Nevaeh’s foster home, lights off.

Nadia can let the confession stand and the inside man walk, or believe the girl. Nevaeh is the witness the real killer cannot leave alive.