“Lucy,” I said, but she didn’t acknowledge me and I could hear her softly crying. It took several more calls of her name before her teary eyes shifted to me. “Does this place have warm water?”
Lucy looked at me and nodded her head, but didn’t react otherwise. She seemed completely lost. “Can you bring me some along with some clean washcloths or towels?”
“Um, yeah,” she murmured and then she cast Ethan a quick glance before she hurried from the room. I used the time to pull Ethan’s pants the rest of the way off. His briefs were dry so I left them on and maneuvered him to the head of the bed. But as I turned him to get him beneath the cover, my eyes caught on the bruises covering his back…and then several large spots of blood on his briefs. My chest tightened at the possibility of what that blood meant. I could hear the water running in the kitchen, so I worked quickly to pull Ethan’s briefs down and off his body entirely. I nearly threw up at the sight of dried blood along the crack of his ass and across the backs of his upper thighs.
White hot rage went through me as I accepted what I was seeing, but the sound of the water turning off in the other room had me quickly rolling Ethan onto his back and covering him with the blanket as I tucked the bloodied underwear beneath the pillow. Lucy appeared at my side a moment later with a large Tupperware container full of water and a hand towel.
“I couldn’t find a washcloth,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“This is fine,” I acknowledged.
The girl’s hands were shaking violently as she handed the items over. “Is he..is he gonna die?”
“No,” I automatically said, though I had no idea if that were true or not. The bruises on his back and torso meant he could have internal bleeding of some kind and the head wound was potentially a whole other issue. I searched out my phone so I could call Ronan, but I had no signal.
Fuck, we were on our own.
“Is there a phone here?” I asked.
Lucy shook her head.
“What about your cell phone?”
The girl hesitated before saying, “We got rid of them on the way up here.”
Right, so they couldn’t be tracked.
“Ethan…Ethan said he was okay…that nothing was broken and he just had a concussion. He told me to wake him up every couple of hours if he fell asleep and ask him questions like who I was and stuff.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked as I began washing Ethan’s face to get rid of the dried blood.
Lucy didn’t respond and I glanced up to see her eyes filled with fear and confusion. “Who are you?” she whispered and I could hear a mix of terror and hope in her voice.
“My name is Cain. A friend of Ethan’s sent me,” I hedged.
“Ethan doesn’t have any friends,” she automatically responded.
“Someone he worked with at the hospital was worried about him when he didn’t show up for work yesterday or today. He sent me to make sure he was okay.”
“How…how do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked warily.
I sighed, though I couldn’t really fault her for her suspicions. “Because if I’d wanted to hurt you guys, I would have done it already. If I wanted to take you back to whoever did this” – I motioned to Ethan’s battered face – “We’d already be halfway down the mountain.”
Lucy was silent for a long time and I was certain she wasn’t going to answer me when she finally said, “We got here yesterday.”
“Has Ethan been out the whole time?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He sleeps off and on and I wake him up like he told me to. He didn’t want to eat anything, but he’s been drinking water whenever he wakes up.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“Are you hurt anywhere? Did the man who hurt Ethan-”
“No,” she interjected. “Just Ethan.”
I waited for her to say more, but she remained silent.
