Until my last breath.
I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the cold concrete. My wrists had gone numb. The blood had stopped flowing, or I'd stopped noticing.
"Okay," I whispered to the darkness, to Carter somewhere above, to whatever fate awaited. "You win. I'm yours. Do what you want with me."
"Just leave her alone."
17.Jack
Icouldn't feel my hands.
They were locked on my knees, knuckles bone-white, but the sensation was distant. Like they belonged to someone else. Everything did, the screaming sirens, James's terse voice crackling over the radio coordinating the tactical team, the city blurring past the window in streaks of light and shadow.
The only thing that felt real was the video playing on an endless loop in my head. Anna's bruised face. That livid handprint on her cheek. Her split lip. Daisy pressed against her back, trembling, too terrified to even lift her head. Anna's lips moving:I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so sorry.
Sorry.Like any of this was her fault. Like she hadn't just used her body as a shield for my daughter.
"Jack." James's voice cut through. "We're two minutes out. You hear me? Two minutes."
Two minutes. One hundred twenty seconds. Each one a lifetime.
Just let them be there. Just let them be alive. Please, God, just let them be alive.
The scene hit me like a punch to the gut.
Blue and red lights strobed across brick, turning everything into a nightmare disco. Police cruisers were blocking the street at both ends. Yellow tape already up, snapping in the wind. Neighbors crowded stoops and sidewalks with their phones out, filming, their faces slack with the ghoulish fascination people get when tragedy strikes someone else.
My daughter was entertainment. A developing story. Breaking news.
The building itself was worse than the surveillance photos had suggested. Four stories of sagging brick and moss-stained concrete. Fire escape listing to one side. The windows dark except for the flickering blue of TVs. This was where Anna had lived. Where she'd been trapped. Where Carter had controlled every aspect of her existence.
And now he'd brought them back.
Their apartment, 4B, second floor, had its lights on. Harsh white fluorescents visible through cheap curtains. Shadows moving behind them. The tactical team.
I was out of the car before James killed the engine, my legs carrying me forward on pure instinct.
"Jack!" His hand clamped on my arm like a vise,yanking me back hard enough to jar my teeth. "You stay here. Right here."
"That's my daughter in there?—"
"Which is exactly why you stay." James pulled me behind a police cruiser, his face hard as granite. "If he's in there and sees you through a window, if he hears your voice, it could trigger him. He could hurt them before we breach. You want that?"
The logic was sound. The logic was unbearable.
"Let them do their job," James said, quieter now. Almost gentle. "Let them bring your girls home."
Your girls.I felt endless dread hearing those words.
It was the most helpless feeling of my life.
Standing behind a police cruiser, forced to be still when every cell in my body was screamingmove, fight, do something. Watching men in body armor with rifles move with precision up the stairs and out of sight.
I counted their footsteps. Twelve steps to the second-floor landing. Then silence.
My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my temples, in my throat, in my fingertips. Every second stretched into infinity. I strained to hear if there was anything within that apartment, a shout, a cry, a gunshot, Daisy's voice, anything.
There was only the static crackle of police radios and the distant wail of more sirens converging.
