Detained

Elena Vargas keeps three copies of every document, memorized her A-number the day she got it, and built her whole life around the rule that no one gets to handle what matters — not her papers, not her safety, not her. So when an ICE raid sweeps her into a detention facility over a lapsed DACA status she didn't know had lapsed, Elena doesn't fall apart. She survives. That's the only thing she knows how to do.

The officer who arrested her — who zip-tied her wrists, filed the intake form, walked her into the facility — is Ryan Holt, ten years on the job, three hours of sleep a night, and a transfer request that's been pending for six years because asking for a different desk is easier than asking for a different life. He's seen hundreds of cases like Elena's. He's never stayed on one this long. He tells himself it's the paperwork. He knows it isn't.

Elena has forty-eight hours before a deportation order sends her to a country she last saw at six years old. Ryan has everything he needs to stop it — and everything to lose if he does. She doesn't trust men who say I'll handle it. He doesn't trust himself to be anything other than the system.

They are exactly wrong for each other, in exactly the wrong place, with exactly no time left.