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I looked at him curiously. “Injured,” I explained and pointed to my head, leaning into his touch for stability. “I think I hit my head. How well can you see?”

He shrugged. “I can see fine. Why?”

“Can you look at my eyes and tell me if the pupils are the same size?” I asked and turned to him. It was a rudimentary test for a concussion I had read on the internet years ago, and for some reason, it stuck. I wasn’t even sure if it actually worked, but I was working with what I had, which wasn’t much.

He grabbed the lantern and held it to my face. “What’s a pupil?”

I stared at him, glancing between his grey eyes, trying to understand how he knew so little about basic concepts. His words came back to me: Forever. Shit, that’s how long he said he had been here. Wherever "here" was. Something was wrong—so wrong. My mind wasn’t working, and I could tell there were answers locked away deep within, behind a door I didn’t have the key to.

“The black center of the eye,” I explained. “Do you know what I’m talking about?” He nodded. “Perfect. That’s a pupil. Can you look at mine and tell me if they are the same size?”

He nodded again and leaned in closer. I held my eyes open as he looked between the two, and I took the moment to study his features up close. He was familiar—so damned familiar. His sharp jaw and grey eyes danced in my memory. After a moment, he shook his head. “One is bigger than the other. Is that what they should look like?”

I had a concussion, damn it. “No, it means my brain is hurt. It’s called a concussion,” I explained and turned my head to where the pain was radiating from. “Is there a bruise around here?”

He leaned in again and nodded. “A bruise and a cut. I sewed it up.”

My gaze whipped to him so fast my world spun again. Silas balanced me before I toppled over with a grip on my forearm. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “What do you mean, sew it up?”

“When he brought you in, I saw the cut and sewed it up,” he explained and reached tentatively toward my head. “It’s like sewing a shirt.”

I closed my eyes for a beat. He gave me stitches, but didn’t have the word for it. There was too much information to take in at once, so I focused on my list: I needed to find out where I was. “Can you show me around?”

Silas nodded and turned toward the doorway, the lantern still in his grasp. He motioned me forward with his head. I followed slowly, pausing for a moment as the world spun, but continued forward. Silas guided me out of the room and into a dirt hallway. The ceiling, the floor, the walls—all dirt. It was a short and narrow hallway. I could touch each wall with my arms outstretched, and end to end, it couldn’t have been more than forty feet. One end was concrete, the other dirt. Each side wall of the hallway held three doorways—six in total.

I followed Silas into the first doorway and into another concrete room. This one was outfitted as a kitchen. There was a wood-burning stove in one corner, a chimney reaching up and out of the ceiling. There was a small table in the center of the room, and shelves on one wall with various cans and dry goods.

“This is where I eat,” he explained. I looked around for a way out, but there was none in here. He led me out and into the next doorway, this room empty save for a faucet on one wall and a drain in the center of the concrete floor. “This is where I clean.”

I nodded in understanding, but kept my mouth shut as I scanned this room as well. We had to have gotten into this maze of rooms somehow, but I couldn’t see from where. I continued to follow Silas into a makeshift bathroom, and finally what I assumed was a med bay based on the Band-Aids, painkillers, and random medical instruments.

We walked into the hallway again, and Silas paused. “That’s it,” he explained.

I glanced at the final room and pointed. “What’s in there?”

“The door,” he explained nonchalantly.

My eyes went wide, and I pushed past Silas into the room. Why he hadn’t started there, I wasn’t sure. All that sat inside was a looming staircase leading to a metal door at the very top. I took the steps two at a time, ignoring the pain in my head from the movement, and desperately grasped at the door handle. But it didn’t budge. I let out a frustrated sigh, and my head dropped to the cool metal with an audible thump.

“It’s locked,” Silas explained behind me.

I turned, and felt the tears spilling down my cheeks. “Silas, where are we?”

“Home.”

Lexington

River was asleep in my arms, and I couldn’t find it in me to let him go. His head was in the crook of my shoulder, his arms limply around my neck. He was young enough to believe the safest place in this world was in my arms, and I prayed that I could make that a reality.

We sat around the Fibonacci Files conference table in sheer disbelief. It wasn't often that the entire team was gathered under one roof, but today, nobody was missing. The shock of it all kept us pinned to our seats.

Oliver and Theo sat side by side, their hands intertwined. Violet was in Oliver’s office with her younger siblings, Kaia and August. Much like me, Oliver didn’t want to let his kids out of his sight. Jackie was pacing while her husband, Will, was on the phone in another room with the Cherrytree Hills Police Department, trying to convince them to send all the information they had compiled from her car. Fai was near-catatonic, and his wife was talking to him softly.

I hadn’t understood the depth of his relationship with Goldie until now, seeing it in the flesh. He loved her like a daughter, and right now his daughter was missing.

I held River tighter in my arms, unwilling to let him go. Not now. Not ever.

“Has anyone called her uncle?” Oliver asked, and no one answered. Oliver swallowed. “Does anyone have his number to call him?”