Page 142 of The Ashes of Summer

Ice settles in my stomach.

Then I hear it. A muffled sound behind the fabric. Weak. Desperate. Somebody trying to scream through something over their mouth.

My pulse spikes. I raise the gun—not because I want to, but because I have no idea what's behind it.

"Summer?"

Jacob sees me moving, but I'm already there.

The sound comes again, louder, and I grab the edge of the curtain and pull.

And freeze.

Harris.

Oh God. Harris.

He's tied to a chair so tightly his wrists have bled down onto the seat. His face is bruised past recognition, one eye swollen completely shut, dried blood all down the front of his shirt. Silver duct tape stretches across his mouth.

My brain simply refuses it. Because I left him on that driveway. I saw him go down and I ran, and I have carried that for every hour since.

They must have taken him when they ran. Jackson's men, clearing out of the Ridge, throwing the traitor in the back of a van on their way through.

Then the panic hits.

"Jacob!"

He reaches me in seconds, and the second he sees the old man in that chair his face changes.

"Jesus Christ."

I drop the gun and get to Harris, peeling the tape off his mouth as gently as my shaking hands will let me while Jacob cuts through the restraints.

The moment the gag comes free⁠—

"SARAH!"

The sound that comes out of him isn't like anything I've ever heard. Pure panic. Pure desperation. The sound of a father who's certain he's already lost his child and is going to scream her name anyway.

My chest physically hurts listening to it.

Then, from somewhere near the exit⁠—

"Daddy?"

Everything stops.

A young woman steps out from the crowd. Bruised. Terrified. Crying.

Harris makes a broken sound the second he sees her. "Sarah⁠—"

And she runs.

Actually runs. Jacob cuts the last restraint and Harris half falls out of the chair, and he catches her, and the sound the two of them make together nearly takes me off my feet.

"I thought you were dead," she sobs into his shoulder.

"I thought I'd never see you again."