She was relieved, and from the way she was holding me, I could tell she’d just had a brush with the worst fear of her life. She had looked directly into hell, and at the last minute, she’d been released from it.
“My little girl,” she said. “It’s gonna be OK.”
“Kamila, where are my boys? Where are they?” cried Ms. Di Bianco.
Eyes full of tears, I confessed: “They’re inside. Thiago got my brother and me out, but he wouldn’t come with us, he said he had to find Taylor.”
“Oh God,” she moaned, covering her mouth to muffle her sobs.
I looked over at the captain, who had been watching the scene in silence. She was looking at Ms. Di Bianco, and once she had ourattention, she spoke: “Ma’am, I promise you, I’ll do everything possible to get your boys out of there alive.”
And unlikely as it seems, I believed her.
I had to.
My mother hugged me tight, and just as we started out to find Cam, a cop sprinted inside the tent.
“Someone else has escaped through the roof, Captain,” he told the woman who had just promised me the impossible.
Nervous, but with a glimmer of hope, I watched as Mrs. Di Bianco asked desperately, “Do you know who it is?”
“No, ma’am, we’ll find out soon enough.”
I wanted to run out and discover for myself that Thiago had made it out safely, that he’d managed to come after us.
But instead, I looked to the tent door and prayed in silence.
Please God, let it be him.
Please.
