Explosions popped off in rapid succession. Cheers rose up in a roar outside this lavishly decorated penthouse venue. Celebrations carried on as the ball dropped, heralding a new year.
The clock had struck midnight and the whole city reacted with glee.
Not me.
I sat numb and trembling on the couch. Locked in a fugue state of panic and terror, I let my body shut down.
All I could do was close my eyes and shake, my heart cracking into pieces as I willed it not to be true.
They had taken Maisie. My daughter had been snatched away.
There in her pretty holiday dress beaming up at me with excitement one minute. Then gone the next.
“Get another blanket,” Claire ordered calmly, a solid force of comfort in this time of crisis. This was what she did, what she was trained for as a former doctor in the emergency department.
She hadn’t left my side once and I wasn’t sure if I could cope if she did. Crouching next to me, she stayed seated with her arm wrapped around me.
I felt the couch dip and rise as the cushion shifted. Anya had been next to me on my other side in this penthouse party space. While she didn’t say much, she was here for me too. She got up to retrieve another blanket, almost like she was eager to have something to do.
I didn’t. I hated the misery of knowing I couldn’t do anything to help my precious daughter now.
The blanket wasn’t requested because I was cold. I was so mindless with shock and fear that I couldn’t have registered whether I was cold or not. I was suspended in such a blank density of horror that I couldn’t track what I was doing or feeling or thinking.
They’d brought me up here and I dropped onto the couch, trying to absorb that every parent’s worst nightmare had happened.
She’s gone.
Only one thought rocketed in my brain, ricochetting like a bullet that smacked my skull and made it ache.
She’s gone.
They took my baby girl.
Maisie is gone.
Until that changed, I couldn’t react to anything. I couldn’t acknowledge anything else of what I felt or saw or heard.
I was helpless to do anything but curl into myself and sob. To weep and panic as one second turned into another. As minutes passed by slowly with my daughter remaining in her kidnappers’ custody.
“How is she doing?”
Mikhail. I knew it was his voice. He was here, pacing and ordering his organization of killers and spies to get my child back. Not to party and celebrate with his new wife, but as the commander of the operation.
Claire shook her head. “She’s in shock.”
“Does she need anything to address that?” he asked.
Claire set the blanket over my back. One thin throw was already draped over my lap. She didn’t move away, rubbing her hand up and down my spine.
The pressure was reassuring, reminding me that I wasn’t alone at my darkest moment. I hadn’t been dismissed. They were all protecting me and keeping me updated as they worked to get Maisie back. Claire was here for me, but I couldn’t feel any more connection to reality than that.
This reality that my baby girl was gone.
Just like that, she was taken from me.
“She needs her child to be found and brought back,” Claire said curtly.
“I meant medically,” Mikhail replied. “Is there anything you can do for her medically?”
