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CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

February 12, 2019

“She’s gone,” Agnes says. She drags her body backward on the couch. The leg is useless, but the rest of her, she can move. “She’s safe.”

“What are you talking about?” Thor asks. Still that rope, hanging from one hand.

“ása,” she says. “I found her.”

Thor looks around them. “Where is she?”

“Not here,” Agnes rasps. “I got her away from you.”

Frowning, Thor steps out of the living room, making his way down the hallway. Agnes can hear doors opening and closing. “Is she okay?” he asks, calling from the master bedroom. “Is that how you hurt yourself?”

She’s not sure if it’s the shock of everything that’s happened today, the cold or the pill making her so slow, but she can’t keep up. What does he mean, Is she okay? He’s had ása locked in a cellar for nine days. Now he’s worried for her safety?

Thor returns to the living room. “Tell me what happened,” he says, more urgent now. He resumes his seat on the couch beside Agnes. “You were at the farmhouse, weren’t you? You’re covered in dust. You hurt your leg. You found her there? Is she still there?”

Agnes shakes her head.

He doesn’t believe her. “I will be right back,” he says. “Stay here.”

She has no other choice but to watch him open the sliding glass doors and disappear into the churning snow. She drops her head back to the cushions, trying to stop the spinning from overwhelming her again. This isn’t what she expected. Does she have it wrong? How is that possible? She found the phone on Thor’s bedside table. She found ása trapped in the cellar of the abandoned farmhouse on his property. But, Agnes realizes with a growing sense of horror, did ása ever actually say that it had been Thor? Everything has become a blur of pain, of trying to survive.

She feels herself slipping into a sort of fever dream. Exhaustion washes over her in waves, and she feels like she’s being dragged under. Hands on her body, wrapping around her shoulders, her legs, pulling her under the surface, down where there’s no air, nothing but the deep.

She’s halfway to oblivion when she hears the sliding door open again. When she hears the puffing breaths, the footsteps racing toward her. The pressure on her body. Shaking her back to the present moment. Forcing her to look into those thin gray eyes.

“Where is she?” Thor asks her.