He remembered the call…
Arthur’s voice on the other end, rough with exhaustion. “I don’t want to give you hope, lad…but we think we’ve found her.”
He had dropped the phone.
Callum caught him as he sank to his knees, clutching him in a desperate, wordless embrace. Neither of them said anything—they couldn’t. Callum just held him, crying into his shoulder as Cormac shook silently.
Time had stretched like a rubber band, taut and trembling, as they waited for Arthur to pick them up. It felt like hours before his car pulled up to the curb of a large building in the middle of nowhere.
They didn’t go to a hospital, as he’d assumed.
Arthur drove them to a quiet industrial block, the sky bruised with dusk, the world far too quiet.
“She refuses to come out,” Arthur had said as they climbed out. “We found three other girls , all locked in separate rooms. But she…she was in the basement. She has dug a niche in the wall. We can’t get her to come out. She screams whenever we try to get close.”
When he approached the crumbling dugout, he heard an unearthly moan which made his hair stand at end. It was a cry of pain and fear that he thought came from an animal. Cormac remembered sitting on the cold concrete floor and humming an old lullaby—the one she used to beg for at bedtime when they were little.
At first, there was nothing.
Then…a rustle followed by a thin scraping sound.
Her head came out first, followed by the rest of her.
His breath had left his body.
Her face was all sharp angles and shadows, dull blue eyes too big for her face. Her hair was filthy, clinging to her temples in stringy clumps. Her arms and legs were skeletal, covered in grime and bruises. He could barely recognize her, but it was still her.
He hadn’t dared move too quickly. He’d just unfolded a blanket, draped it gently around her trembling frame, and whispered, “Can I hold your hand, Fee?”
She’d looked at him for a moment like she didn’t know if he was real.
Then she whispered his name.
Seconds later, loud ugly sobs of relief burst from her. Like she was waking up from an unending nightmare.
She clung to him with thin arms and sobbed until she had nothing left. Her whole body had shuddered against his chest, and he had rocked her like he had when she was little and scared of the dark.
That had been the last word she’d spoken for weeks.
In the hospital, sterile and quiet, she hadn’t made a sound. He’d sat beside her every day, watching her shrink into herself. Doctors ran tests—STD screens, trauma assessments. Words too big and too awful for someone who was only nine to understand. Worse because it had to do with his little sister.
But he’d shouldered it all along with Callum. Because he had to.
Now, twenty years later, she lay before him again, as fragile as she’d been back then.
Still fighting.
Still breaking his heart.
He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, careful not to disturb the IV. “I’m here, Fee,” he whispered. “Just like I was back then.”
The machines beeped. She didn’t move.
“I’ll wait again,” he said softly. “As long as it takes.”
The days blurred together.
It was two steps forward, one crashing step back.
