Her silent guardian demon. Her monster in the dark who loves her too much to let go and too much to hold on.
She gets out of her car, and even from here, I can see her hands shaking as she fumbles with her keys. The way she looks around, quick, nervous glances into the darkness. She knows she's being watched.
But she doesn't run. Just walks faster, that controlled not-quite-panic that women perfect when they're alone at night.
I want to make some kind of sound so she turns around. Want to sign to her that it's just me, that I'd never,everfucking hurt her, that I've been keeping her safe all this time. But what would that accomplish? Make her more afraid? Prove that I'm not just a monster but a stalker, too?
She reaches her dorm building and I watch her punch in the door code. Watch her disappear inside. A few minutes later, a light flicks on in a third-floor window.
I've memorized which room is hers, obviously. I've stood here through rainstorms and snowfall, through spring nights when the air smelled new and autumn evenings when everything felt like it was dying and nothing would ever come back to life.
Her silhouette appears in the window. She's safe. Home. Away from us, which is what she wanted all along. She stands there for a moment, and I wonder what she's thinking.
If she's crying. If she's scared. If she regrets finding us.
She was the only one who never looked at me with fear. Even that first day, eight years old with a scraped knee and tears on her cheeks as she stared up at me, she looked at me and saw someone worth knowing. Worth befriending. Worth loving in that innocent way before the world taught us better.
But she never saw my face. Not really. Just the parts I couldn't hide.
The scars that creep above the bandana, the damaged eye with the drooping lower eyelid that won't close all the way. She never saw the reason I eat alone and drink through straws with my tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth.
Why even hardened criminals go pale and look away when they glimpse what animal instincts and human cruelty did to me before I was old enough to defend myself.
Maybe if she had seen it all back then, she would have run even sooner.
But if I had to do it all over again, even knowing what I know now, I'd let her.
Maybe the others wouldn't, but if there's one thing in this world I've always needed, even more than Ellie herself, it's for her to be happy and free.
Even if it's without us.
But the woman who walked into our cage tonight didn't look free at all.
Her shadow moves across the window as she paces in her room. Five steps one way, five steps back. Everything in fives because that's her safe number, her control when everything else spirals. I taught her to sign numbers first, remember the way her small fingers curved to make the shapes so much better than my huge, clumsy hands.
When there werefiveof us, not four.
Chapter 15
ELLIE
The lecture hallspins around me like I'm drunk on cheap vodka, except I haven't touched a drop in three days.
The pills are another story, but that's survival.
Professor Dodge’s voice drones on about economic theory, supply and demand curves that look like the trajectory of my sanity, plummeting fast and hard toward rock bottom.
My phone sits face-down on my desk, and I flip it over for the fifth time in as many minutes. Still nothing from Mom. She usually texts back within an hour, even if it's just a thumbs up emoji or a GIF she discovered that makes zero sense even in context.
But it's been radio silence since yesterday morning.
One, two, three, four, five.
My fingers tap the rhythm against my thigh, trying to calm the storm brewing in my chest.
It's been three days—a bad number—since I found my boys again. And I've been jumping at shadows, checking my rearview mirror for a bike I know is there even when I can't see it.
Tank has been following me.
