"Oh my God,” I whisper, my heart hammering violently against my ribcage.
There she is.
Right there on the grainy, flickering black-and-white feed, her form barely distinguishable through the poor quality of the camera. A girl. A real, living, breathing girl. She's curled up in a tight ball on a thin mattress that's been thrown carelessly on what looks like bare concrete floor, her body small and vulnerable in the harsh shadows of the maintenance room's single overhead light.
Claudia.
"Holy shit!" Raine leans in, eyes wide. "This is crazy shit!"
I want to say something… anything. But the words die in my throat. My chest feels tight, constricted, like someone's wrapped steel bands around my ribcage and keeps pulling them tighter. I try to draw in air, but it catches somewhere between my lungs and my mouth, refusing to cooperate.
My stomach feels queasy, twisting itself into impossible knots. The nausea rises in waves, hot and acidic, climbing up my throat. I have to swallow hard, fighting against the bile that threatens to spill out right here, right now, all over Daniel's pristine, ridiculously expensive Persian rug.
She's alive.
Claudia is alive.
The feed is blurry, the image degraded, but I can make her out. That sweet face I remember, now gaunt and hollow. She's wearing what looks like an oversized t-shirt, her knees pulled to her chest. There's a mattress—just a bare mattress—thrown on the concrete floor. In the corner, a portable toilet. Next to the makeshift bed, a metal shelf stocked with bottled water and what might be granola bars or canned food.
No windows. No way out.
"Jesus Christ," I whisper. "He kept her down there."
My mind races, trying to calculate. When did Claudia disappear? I remember exactly, back to when it was first on thenews. Is this how long this girl’s been trapped in that basement room?
"We need to call the cops," Raine says, already pulling out his phone.
"Wait." I grab his wrist, eyes still fixed on the screen. "We need to get her out first. She can't spend one more second in there.
"Liza." Julian's voice cuts through from the doorway. "How's it going in here?"
"Julian." My voice cracks. I can't look away from the screen, from Claudia curled up on that filthy mattress. "Come here."
His footsteps cross the hardwood, slow at first, then faster when he sees my face. He leans over my shoulder, and I feel his whole body go rigid.
"No."
"Look." I point at the feed, at the girl who's been missing for months, the girl everyone assumed ran away with her drug-dealer boyfriend… and just never came back. The girl who's been here. Right here. All this time. "It's her. It's Claudia."
Julian grips the back of my chair, knuckles white. "Where is that?"
"Maintenance room." I click through the menu, trying to find any identifying markers. "It's in the basement. Has to be."
Raine's already standing, shoving his laptop and tools back into his briefcase. "We're getting her out."
"Now." Julian's already moving toward the door, his face hard and determined in a way I've never seen before. "We're getting her out right now."
I'm on my feet, following him out of the apartment. All thoughts of being caught, of breaking and entering charges, of someone seeing us—gone. Evaporated. This girl has been trapped down there for months while we've been tiptoeing around, worried about cameras and getting caught.
We sprint to the elevator. I jab the button repeatedly, uselessly, until the doors finally slide open.
The ride down feels endless. Raine shifts his weight from foot to foot. Julian stares straight ahead, jaw clenched so tight I worry he'll crack a tooth.
When the doors open to the basement level, we burst out.
The hallway stretches before us, dim and concrete, lined with storage cages for tenants. At the far end, a door marked "Maintenance - Authorized Personnel Only."
Julian reaches it first, grabs the handle.
