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No.

The cop did.

But I asked her to come.

I made her believe we could be safe.

Another sob rips through me. This time I don’t muffle it. I can’t.

I cry like something in me has finally split open, like every scream I swallowed tonight has found its way out at once. Audrey. The grave. Nathaniel. Hazel. The knife. The blood.

I cry and I cry and I cry…

Until I jolt when an arm wraps around my shoulders.

“Easy,” a voice says. A female voice.

I scramble backward, my hand instinctively going to my apron pocket for Nathaniel’s gun. It’s not there, of course. They took it.

“Easy,” the woman says again. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I stare into the dark.

At first, all I see is shape. A body next to mine. Hair tangled around a thin face. Then she shifts into the faintest thread of light leaking beneath the door.

And I see her eyes.

Silvery blue.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I’m Delaney Cross.”

I gasp.

The woman from the message.

The woman who didn’t back down.

She’s sitting on the floor of this dark room, covered in dirt, cheekbones too sharp, lips cracked.

But her eyes⁠—

God, her eyes.

They don’t show any defeat.

Pain, yes.

Exhaustion.

Hunger.

Fear buried so deep it’s become something harder.

But not defeat.

“Delaney?” I whisper.