“Where are my brothers?” she asked, looking around the room.
“They’re coming,” he assured her. “On their way now.”
She nodded then hesitated, it looked like she wanted to ask him something but wasn’t sure how to go about it.
Pulling up the chair he sat beside her, and because he didn't know if she was okay with physical contact, he rested his hand on the bed, right beside hers. “If you have any questions, you can ask me.”
“Do you have him? Emmanuel?”
“Is he the man who abducted you?”
“Yes. I’m not sure that’s his real name, but it’s what he told us to call him. Do you have him in custody?”
“No, I'm sorry we don’t. He wasn’t at the house when we found you.” Matthew hated telling Grace that, and he expected it to be the thing to finally have her break down, but again she surprised him. There was fear in her eyes, but there was also a spark of determination. The right thing would be to let her get some more rest, she certainly needed it, but he had to take advantage of that determination he saw. “Would it be all right if I ask you a few questions? I know you’ve been through a lot, and it might be hard to answer some of them, but everything you tell me could help us to find him.”
Grace nodded her consent.
“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?”
She hesitated for a moment. “I think it’s been five and a half years.” Her look said she wanted him to tell her that she hadn't been kept prisoner for so long, but he couldn’t.
“It has been.” So she didn't dwell on that, he continued on to his next question. “You said the man who took you wanted you to call him Emmanuel. Did you know him? Had you ever seen him before?”
“No. I’d never seen him before.
Emmanuel meant God is with us. Did this man consider himself some sort of God? “What did he look like?”
“Brown hair, he wore it a little long, so it hung in his eyes. His eyes were brown, too, and they crinkled at the edges when he smiled. He was average height, average size, he had freckles,” she rattled off.
“How old is he?”
“Our age I guess, late twenties to early thirties.”
“Did he keep you anyplace else other than the house where we found you?”
“No. I woke up in that bedroom.”
“Can you tell me what happened when you woke up?” Matthew felt his insides clench as he prepared to hear details of her imprisonment.
“I was chained to the bed, and he was there. Emmanuel.” Her hands shook a little and she shifted the one beside his a little closer so they just touched. “He told me he was going to fix things, make them better. That he had a lot to teach me and if I was a good girl, I had nothing to worry about.” Her hand moved a little more until she hooked her pinkie finger over his, the only indication she wasn’t holding it together as well as she wanted him to believe. “He put a metal cuff around my ankle and hooked it to the chain, told me it would allow me to move freely around the bedroom. Then he left. I tried to find a way out, but I couldn’t. When he came back, I tried to attack him.” When her hand moved this time it covered his completely. “I failed and he punished me. Five days with no food and water, five lashes of his whip each day increasing in increments of five. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. Emmanuel likes the number five.”
Matthew turned his hand so he held hers. “I’m so sorry, Grace. What did he mean by he had lots of lessons to teach you?”
“Fables. He liked fables. They were tests, one girl against another, one lived, one didn't. He brought in a new girl just yesterday, is she okay?”
“She’s okay, not injured.”
“Good,” she murmured, her hand somewhat absently squeezing his.
She looked tired now. Exhausted. Matthew lifted his free hand to cup her head, his fingers absently stroking her hair. “Sleep now, Grace.”
“Are you going?” For the first time, a hint of panic tinged her tone.
“No,” he promised. “I'm not going anywhere.”
That relaxed her and she fidgeted on the bed, presumably trying to get her body into a position that didn’t bother her injured back. As soon as she closed her eyes her fatigued body gave out and she drifted off to sleep, leaving him sitting silently by her side, watching over her, protecting her as best he could.
* * * * *