Our lips meet, and we're frenetic, desperate, whispering I love you between kisses, between breaths. My hands in her hair. Hers reaching for my face. They're bound.
She's bound.
I take her wrists, my gut twisting painfully at the sight of the raw flesh, the bleeding cuts. With shaking hands, I reach for a paring knife in the scattered mess of knives and cut her loose. And then her arms are around my neck, and I break.
Carlin groans, stirring.
We snap apart, look at him.
"I need to restrain him," I tell her, already moving for him.
"I'll call 911," she says stronger than I expect, wiping her tears, pulling herself together.
Carlin barely stirs as I search him, search his pockets where I find zip ties ,then his waistband where I find a small handgun.
"He had a gun." My words sound far away.
He could have shot her. Or the stranger. Or me.
The stranger.
Before I can ask, I see Molly staring at the gun, ghostly pale, phone in her hand hanging by her side. "Is it loaded?"
Magazine in, round chambered. Safety on.
"Yeah."
The word sits heavy in the air. He could have killed her. He could have killed all of us.
I stuff it in the waistband of my jeans, not trusting it anywhere else.
When I roll Carlin over, it's to bind his hands and ankles as Molly talks to dispatch. And then I approach the stranger.
His eyes are closed, but he's breathing. I kneel next to him. "Hey. Hey, can you hear me?" I lift his limp hand from where it rests on his wound as Molly approaches.
"Yes, he's breathing." She says to the dispatcher. A pause. "His left side--oh--"She gasps when I tug up his shirt so I can see.
I hiss a swear at the sight--the wound is deep, blood pooling dark and fast. I stretch for a towel, pressing it hard against his side. He comes to with a noisy inhale and a groan.
"You're okay," I say, even though I don't know if he is. "Help is coming." I can already hear the sirens. "What are you doing here?" Molly kneels next me. "Why is he here?" I ask her.
She looks at him and says simply, heavily, "He says he's my father. My biological father."
"What? Your father? Your…" My face falls as the pieces click into place. The story Cate told me in the driveway. The kidnapping, the prison time, the restraining order. This is him. This is the man who took her.
This is the man who just saved her life.
"Oh my god. Your…yourfather." I breathe. "Your mom…she told me what happened, just now. Just today."
"What are you talking about?" Her voice is sharp, bewildered. "What do you mean she told you?" Then recognition streaks across her face, leaving her stunned. "The secret. This is…heis the secret."
Danny shifts, trying to sit up straighter, weak but conscious. "Molly…I need to tell…tell you…"
I help him shift, then try to keep him still. There's gratitude behind his eyes, but they move to her and melt.
"Your mom she…she…when you were five, she cut me off, wouldn't let me see you--" He breathes hard through a pause. "Ididn't know what to do. Just wanted us to be with my little girl. So I got you from school, took you. Thought we could start over. You don't remember."
She shakes her head.
