“You fucking left her alone?”
“I thought she was with you! You took her from the house, according to my officers, then I saw her with you!”
“Fuck!”
I hang up, and I start sprinting to the SUV we took here. Craig and Donny are on my heels.
“I’ll stay here and see what I can find!” Donny calls out.
Craig hops in the passenger seat, buckling up quickly as I tear out of the parking lot. I toss him my phone.
“Keep calling her.”
He does, but curses each time, hanging back up. “Her phone is either off or dead. It’s not ringing through.”
I push the pedal all th
e way to the floor, turning the lights on.
“Get someone over there, now!”
“Already on it,” he tells me, the phone at his ear. He’s shouting orders at someone, telling them Lana’s address, and I weave in and out of traffic, never hitting the brakes.
“They said they’re twenty minutes out,” he tells me, hanging up. “How long has she been home?”
My stomach flips and turns inside out. She left an hour before I did. It would have taken her thirty minutes to get home. It took me almost two hours to get out here. That’s at least two and a half hours he’s had her to himself.
With no one to save her.
In the middle of nowhere.
Her closest neighbor would never hear a thing.
“Too long,” I whisper hoarsely, dreading the worst as I gas the car harder, hearing Craig hiss out a breath as I narrowly dodge a car. “Too fucking long.”
Chapter 2
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
—William Shakespeare (The Tempest)
HADLEY
Earlier…
They say children see the magic in everything. The eyes peering up at me as I sit down beside her tell a different story. At such a young age, she’s seen some of the worst of the world’s depravity. There’s no magic in that. Only evil.
Lindy May seems to have jaded eyes as well, but I’m too emotional to think practically right now.
This man kept doing things because I let them convince me it was all in my head. The therapist. Him. My mother…
Because of me, this child is hurting right now. Because of me, so many other children are dead. So many other children suffered what I went through.
Because I was weak. So weak I let them manipulate me.
It’s a guilt I can’t bear, and I’m barely able to breathe as I force myself to sit by her. To distract myself from my own misgivings, I focus on the fact she knew Lana. There’s no doubt in my mind that the child who hasn’t waved at another soul waved at Lana because she knew her.
“You know Lana Myers?” I ask her.