Rylla was right. Just what had they stumbled upon in this house?
“You stay with her, and I’ll check the rest of the house,” his partner said.
Alone with the woman, Matthew shrugged out of his shirt, then very carefully rolled the woman onto her back and wrapped her in it. While too thin and too pale, her face was beautiful, and for a moment he stared at it, transfixed.
Long, thick dark lashes fluttered on her cheeks, then her eyes opened slowly. Dazed and confused, when she felt his hand on her shoulder she whimpered and made a feeble attempt to swing a fist at him.
“Shh, it’s all right. My name is Matthew. I'm a police officer, you're safe now,” he crooned in her ear.
She stilled instantly at his words, her large blue eyes seeking him out and then fixing on him as though she were afraid he may be an apparition, and if she blinked he would disappear.
The haunted gleam in those eyes punched him in the gut, and he wondered the extent of what this woman had endured. Matthew fought to keep a warm, encouraging smile in place and asked, “Can you tell me your name?”
“Grace,” came the soft reply. “Grace Bennett.”
The name sounded familiar, and almost immediately he placed it, but before he could confirm her identity, her eyelids quivered and closed as she passed out again.
“I found another woman in the room down the hall,” Rylla announced, reentering the room.
“What’s her condition?” he asked as he reached for a blanket and tucked it around Grace. Despite the warmth of the room her skin was cold to the touch.
“Physically uninjured.”
“Well, she isn’t. We need to get her out of here.”
“I already called an ambulance and reported what we found here.”
“She woke up briefly. She said her name was Grace Bennett. I think she’s the sister of Detective Bennett.” Matthew didn’t really know the man very well, but they had mutual friends.
Rylla’s green eyes grew wide. “Grace Bennett has been missing for five and a half years.”
“Yeah, she has.” As he looked down at the unconscious woman, he felt a strong rush of pride and amazement flush through him. If this woman had survived over five years of treatment like this, she had to be the strongest person on the planet.
“There are bolt cutters in the car, I’ll go grab them,” Rylla said.
Once more alone with the woman, Matthew gently eased her into his lap and surveyed the room. It was large and the floor was covered in a thick and opulent carpet that no doubt felt wonderfully soft to bare feet. The walls had been wallpapered in maroon and gold stripes, the furniture was chestnut and had been polished till it shone. Besides the enormous canopy bed, whose curtains matched the wallpaper and had been tied back around the bedposts with gold tasseled cord, there was a wardrobe and bureau on one side of the room, and a loveseat, a chaise lounge, and two wingback chairs grouped around an open fireplace on the other. There were also two bookcases stuffed to the brim with books, two bedside tables, and a coffee table. Through an open door he spied an exquisite bathroom, every bit as opulent as the bedroom. It was a beautiful prison, but a prison nonetheless, and he wondered if Grace had been kept in here the entire five years she had been gone.
“Here.” Rylla returned and handed him the bolt cutters. “EMTs are ten minutes out, if we can’t cut the chain, we’ll have to …”
“I’ll get it cut,” he replied instantly. He didn’t want Grace to spend a single second more in this room. The thought of her having to endure her prison any longer made him feel ill. He managed to break the padlock in a couple of tries, then looked from Grace to the door. He wanted to get her out of here, but there was another woman locked up in this house who had no doubt endured the same things she had, and she too deserved to be free of her prison. Torn, he was going to ask Rylla to stay with Grace and go and do the right thing when footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“Rylla? Matthew?”
“In here,” Rylla called back, then said to him, “you take her out of here, we’ll get the other one.”
Scooping Grace’s limp body into his arms, Matthew cradled her gently. The bloody blisters on her back looked painful, and he tried not to press against them. He took the stairs two at a time, consumed with the need to get Grace out. Taking her straight to his car, he settled into the back seat with her on his lap. Her cheek pressed against his bare chest, her head tucked under his chin, her hands rested against his stomach, the combination of the three stirred something deep inside him.
A need to protect that he hadn't felt since he was a young boy.
Ignoring it, he wrapped one arm around her and with his other pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the precinct. Once he had obtained Detective Elijah Bennett’s phone number, he called and waited. He couldn’t imagine the mess of emotions that would swirl inside the other man when he learned his sister had been found. Matthew couldn’t comprehend living for five and a half years not knowing where someone you loved was, but knowing they were more than likely suffering horrendously.
“Detective Bennett.”
The voice on the other end of his phone ripped him from his thoughts. “This is Detective Greer. I need to ask you some questions about your sister.” He was almost positive the woman in his arms was the detective’s sister, but he also wanted to be careful that he didn’t give out false hope.
Detective Bennett inhaled a sharp breath, then asked, “What about her?”
“Does she have any identifying marks?”