"Emma." A faint smile broke through Sophia's tears. "She corrected everyone."
"Corrected?" Jasper asked.
"If somebody called a Brontosaurus a dinosaur, she’d tell them it was technically an Apatosaurus." She laughed gently.
Ronan blinked. "That's oddly specific."
Sophia nodded. "She'd whisper facts through the air vents." Her smile disappeared. "So we'd remember there was still a world outside." The words hit everyone hard. An eight-year-old child had kept hope alive.
Avery spun her laptop around. "I recovered one frame before the feed died." The image filled the screen with Emma standing in the rain, and behind her was nothing—only trees.
Jasper leaned closer. "No." He pointed toward the left edge of the image. "There." Ronan followed his finger and saw a reflection. It was barely visible in the wet leaves, but he saw a rifle scope. Somebody had been watching Emma and using her as bait.
"They wanted Sophia to see her,” Jasper said.
Ronan's expression darkened. "Why?"
"So she'd chase Emma,” Jasper said.
Ronan nodded slowly. "Classic manipulation."
Sophia looked sick. "I almost did what they wanted me to do."
Jasper looked directly at her. "But you didn't."
She swallowed. "No."
"You stopped,” Ronan said. Six months ago, she would've probably run without thinking, but tonight, she hesitated. Sometimes, healing was making a better decision, and that was exactly what Sophia had just done.
Ronan grabbed his jacket. "I'm going outside."
Jasper frowned. "Alone?"
"I'll stay inside the fence," Jasper said.
"He's checking for tracks,” Ronan said to Sophia. She nodded and watched him walk out the door.
Rain soaked through his jacket almost instantly. The air smelled like wet pine and fresh mud—perfect conditions for tracking, but terrible conditions for electronics. He moved carefully along the inside perimeter fence, with his flashlight off. His eyes adjusted quickly, and something caught his attention near the eastern gate: small, bare footprints—Emma. He crouched beside them—they were fresh. His pulse quickened, and he noticed something else—adult boot prints. There were four sets of them, and no signs of a struggle. Emma hadn't been forced. She'd walked with them, either willingly or because she'd believed she had no choice.
Ronan's jaw tightened because neither possibility sat well with him. A flash of white caught his eye beneath a cedar tree, and he approached cautiously to find a stuffed rabbit with one ear missing. It was old, worn, and rain-soaked. He picked it up, and a folded piece of paper had been tucked beneath its threadbare sweater. Ronan unfolded it and found three words that made his smile vanish.
"Jasper." His voice over the radio was suddenly all business. "I found something."
Five minutes later, the team gathered around the kitchen table. The soaked note lay in the center. Sophia seemed to recognize the handwriting immediately. Her face drained of color.
"Emma wrote this." She picked it up with trembling fingers. Childlike block letters covered the paper, and she read them aloud.
HE MAKES ME CALL HIM DADDY
Silence crashed into the room, and no one spoke. Sophia's hands began to shake. "No.” She looked at Jasper. "He found another little girl." Jasper's expression hardened into stone. Ronan had seen that look exactly twice before, and both times, very bad people had ended up in handcuffs—or worse.
Dante slowly closed his hand over the note. "We're getting her back."
Sophia looked at him. "What if we're too late?"
Ronan met her eyes. "We're not."
"You can't know that,” Sophia said.
