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That strain climbed and climbed, becoming suffocating as they approached, the woman completely unaware that we’d come for her where we were concealed behind the hedge.
Thinking she would go on living the life that she was living.
No more.
This was it.
“Go,” Theo ordered the second they were close enough, and we both clicked open our doors and flew out.
The second we rounded the hedge, she whirled in our direction, a gasp of shock and crippling fear tearing out of her before it turned into determination. Into the same kind of fight I’d seen out of my Little Warrior.
The determination to survive even when the light had been dimmed.
“No.”
Before we could explain ourselves, she grabbed her son and swept him off his feet, guarding his head as she turned to run.
Theo’s voice curled like a dart behind them.
Deep.
Quiet.
Piercing.
“We aren’t here to hurt you. Morgan sent us.”
Sophia stalled with her back to us, her shoulders heaving up and down with her harsh breaths. She didn’t turn to look, ready to bolt back into action at the first indication that she needed to.
Theo took one step forward, and his words curled on the breeze. “She asked you that if you had the chance to get out, if you would take it. This is that chance.”
Silence hovered thick. She continued to face forward with her son pinned to her chest, the child not making a sound, though I could feel the terror wafting from him.
A type of terror so distinct.
So familiar.
The same kind I’d been in for my entire childhood.
Finally, she turned a fraction, her son’s face buried in her neck, chaos bounding around her.
The pounding of a violent storm.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Help.” Theo stated it simply.
Her chin lifted. “What do I have to do?”
Theo gestured with his chin at the outline of the Suburban barely visible through the foliage. Only noticeable when attention was brought to it. “You get in the SUV, and you never look back.”
Incredulity flared through her features, and she tightened her hold on the child.
“And I’m just supposed to trust you? What if he sent you?” Her tone went raspy at that.
Rage flared between me and Theo. No question, we both were thinking the same thing as we saw the sheer panic the idea evoked in her.
The traumas she’d been inflicted.