“I know.”
She paused, the muscles in her arm stiffening. “When Samuel asked how you got out, was he talking about this?”
My eyes watered, tears rolling down my cheeks—from the smoke, or something more. “They got in,” I said, and the words pushed their way out with a sob. I hiccupped, trying to force it back, but even my breath rattled. “Ryan, Cole, Annika, and I were trapped in the safe room, and they were right outside the door.”
“But you found it,” she said, sounding breathless. “You got out.”
I pulled away from her, started crawling through the tunnel, hearing the crackle of foundation somewhere above. “Cole was shot. And you were gone,” I said. “You just left me there, and I didn’t know what to do.” My hand over my mouth, my head shaking back and forth. I was glad for the darkness, for the noises above. I sat back on my heels, feeling her somewhere nearby.
“No,” she said. Her hand was around my elbow, and she was holding on tighter. “No. I ran, Kelsey. Because it was the only thing I could think to do. It was my biggest fear, Samuel coming back. Samuel coming back for you. I ran to draw them away from the house. So they wouldn’t find you as you tried to come back inside.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t know what to believe after all the lies, all the stories. The version from the police, from Jan, and now the one from her.
“Kelsey, we’re running out of time.”
I pressed my face closer, made my voice lower. “They’re going to arrest you, Mom. The money…they know.”
“It’s okay, Kelsey.”
“No, it’s definitely not okay!” If I had no father, and no mother, and nowhere else to go—how was that possibly okay?
She nudged me on the shoulder, a little rougher than I expected. “Move, Kelsey.” Her words rang in my ear, as they had earlier. Instinct. Muscle memory. We had no light, and the tunnel was endless. I started moving faster, more frantically, thinking the tunnel was longer than I remembered—wondering if there was a fork I didn’t know about, if I was heading in the wrong direction.
And I was overwhelmed by the feeling we were not alone in this tunnel. It was the noise that echoed, the feel—like the opposite of when I arrived home to my empty house.
Maybe it was just the fear. My imagination, running away with me. But I kept feeling something more. A shadow in the darkness, that you could feel but never see. A breath at the back of your neck—look over your shoulder, but nothing’s there.
But then I heard a shuffling in the tunnel somewhere ahead, and I froze. My mother collided into my back, and she let out a grunt—and the noise stopped. I started pushing her the other way before realizing there was nowhere else to go. I groped for anything I might use. But it was just me. Me and her.
I slowed my breath, and I waited.
A bright beam of light shone from the corner ahead, and I tried to make myself smaller. Make myself ready. My mother started moving backward. We were trapped. The fire behind, the light ahead…
I heard the crackle of a radio. “Baker,” it said, and his name echoed off the walls of the pipe, straight to my gut. “Come in. Where the hell are you?”
“Ryan?” I called.
“Kelsey?” His voice echoed around the corner, and then the light hit me full on, so my eyes squeezed close on impulse. But then his hands were on my shoulders, and I moved by feel, by instinct. My arms circling around his shoulders as his arms pulled me closer. He took in a shuddering breath. “Holy shit. I’ve got you,” he said.
And then he shined the light past me, at my mother. He fumbled for his radio. “I’ve got them,” he said.
And then, to me, “I told them,” he said. “I told them there was another way in.”
—
We stood huddled beside Ryan’s Jeep, waiting for the team to meet us there. He’d left his car just off the road, across the street from the sewer, in a small clearing surrounded by trees and fog. My mother had her eyes closed—as she had since we emerged from the tunnel—and I could see her mouth moving, as if she was listing off the things that might still keep us safe. She slumped to the ground with her back to Ryan’s car, her head between her knees—and I went with her. The ground was cold and damp, and I held her hand as Ryan paced in front of the open sewer grate we’d emerged from, still holding his flashlight.
Ryan was speaking into his radio, directing them, repeating what he’d said before. He had us both. Both, and we were safe.
I could see the smoke now over the trees.
But there were still secrets to learn, and to keep.
When they arrived, my mother would be gone. Even now, even free, there were so many ways I could lose her.
I pressed my shoulder up against hers. “Mom? I need to know what to say. What to tell them.” I knew we would need to be careful. And I would do it still, for her.
She raised her face to mine. “No more,” she said. As if she knew that this was the end. That something was shifting, for her, and for me. The vastness, and all its possibility, stretching before the both of us.
“You never told me,” I said. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.” The truth was, I was angry. But under that, I was hurt. It stung to realize the secrets that had been kept, the lies that had been told.
“I was going to tell you,” she said. “At fifteen, I decided. Then sixteen. And then at seventeen. But I didn’t know what it would do to you. I didn’t know what good it would do, as long as I was there to protect you. I thought it was the safest thing, to keep it from you.”
My throat tightened. “Then tell me now where you’ve been. The police think you went with them on purpose. Tell me the truth. All of it.”
She looked at me like surely I must know this. “He rang the doorbell. Just rang it, and waited. I saw his face on the video screen, and I couldn’t find you. I tried to call you, but the line had been cut. And you’d left your phone. I knew it was too late for anything else. All I could do was run. So I ran, and I kept running.”
She left on her own, like they told me. Even though I thought she wasn’t capable. These men had been her nightmare. The scars on her back, a year of horror and guilt and fear—but she still took the risk and drew them away from me.
“They caught me, deep in the woods behind the house. Got that kid Eli to take me back to wherever they were staying, tied up underground. They kept showing me pictures of you to get me to behave. To talk.”
“They hurt you?” I asked, remembering the bruises, the blood under her nails. Her history repeating itself.
She shook her head, like I didn’t understand. “My worst fear was coming true,” she said, and my heart dropped.
“That they would find you again?” I asked.
“No. No. That they would find you. I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing I could do. So I did it.”
Everything I’ve done, she’d said on Jan’s tape.
“But when that didn’t work, when they threatened to hurt you even after they had me, I told them the money was still at the house. If I was at the house, I thought I could figure something out. I thought I’d have a chance….” She lowered her voice. “Don’t you understand? I took you from him.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You can’t take something from a man like Samuel and get away with it. So I made a choice, and I hoped it would save you.”
“It did,” I said. It gave us time to make a plan, to fight, to defend ourselves.
“No,” she said. “You did that all on your own.”