Daisy's voice. Crying. Calling my name over and over.
"Anna! Anna! ANNA!"
Not screaming in terror. Crying in relief.
Alive. She was alive.
I tried to turn, to see her, but my body wouldn't cooperate. My legs gave out. The floor rushed up.
More hands caught me. Lowered me down gently. Someone put something under my head.
"Daisy," I tried to say, but it came out as a whisper. "Is she?—"
"She's safe," the voice above me said. Firm. Certain. "She's safe. They got her."
I closed my eyes. I needed to just be with my thoughts for a moment.
We found a way.
20.Jack
The single gunshot from the mill's upper floor didn't just echo across the industrial wasteland. It tore through the fabric of my soul. It was a full stop, a period written in gunpowder at the end of a sentence I couldn't bear to read.
No.
The sound was still ringing in the air, corrosive and final, when I moved. I was out of the van, past Vance's outstretched arm. The world tunneled to the rusted stairwell entrance that the tactical team had breached. The fear was a physical entity, a metallic taste, a deafening roar in my ears, drowning out Vance’s shout behind me.
The tactical team's "clear" path was a conduit straight to my worst fear. The air smelled of dust, decay, and the sharp, alien scent of explosives.
I burst into the third-floor room, and a wall of black tactical gear blocked my view.
"Sir, youneed to stay?—"
"Where are they?" My voice was barely human. I shoved past the officer's outstretched arm, my eyes scanning desperately through the controlled chaos. Black-clad SWAT officers moved with urgent precision. A commotion near the door, shouts, scuffling. Two of Carter's associates on the ground, subdued and cuffed.
But where?—
"Daddy!"
The wail cut through everything. I turned and saw her.
Daisy was wrapped in a silvery thermal blanket, a tiny, shivering bundle in the arms of a female officer. Her face was buried in the officer's vest, but she was sobbing. They were harsh, gulping, alive sobs. She was alive. The relief that hit me was so violent it buckled my knees for a second.
My frantic search continued. The room reeked of gunpowder and copper. And then?—
Anna.
She was sitting on an overturned wooden crate near the far wall, almost hidden behind two officers. A paramedic crouched before her, carefully cutting through the brutal plastic ties on her wrists. Her hands were a mess of raw, bloody skin and dark bruising. Her face was ghostly pale beneath the dirt and the livid mark on her cheek.
But she was breathing. She was whole.
"Sir, the child needs you." The female officer was beside me, gently guiding Daisy toward my arms.
I took her, crushed her to me, her small body trembling violently against mine. Her cries muffled in my neck. I buried my face in her hair, on the verge of tears. "You're safe, baby," I choked out. "Daddy's here. You're safe now."
Over the crown of her head, my eyes found Anna's again.
She had looked up at Daisy's cry. Her gaze met mine across the room, and in the depths of her exhausted, traumatized eyes, I saw it all: the echo of the terror, the weight of guilt, the sheer fatigue. But I also saw something fierce and defiant that hadn't been extinguished. A resilience that left me in awe.
