they were going to make it out.
There would be a long road ahead, but the first and hardest step had been taken. When the girls were finally brought up from the underground chamber, the cold winter air made them cough. They squeezed their eyes shut against the brightness of the sun, which they had not seen in more than a thousand days.
Sophie clung to her older sister’s coat, half hiding behind her. The outside world seemed too large, too loud, too unfamiliar. Eleanor stayed close, doing what she could to shield them from the rush of medics and officers.
Out front walked Thunder, carrying himself like he knew the job was done. His tail moved in steady sweeps, and there was something unmistakably proud in the way he held himself. It was his instincts, more than anything else, that had broken the case open.
The area had been sealed off, with patrol cars and ambulances flashing across the snow. Laura Bennett started toward her daughters, then stopped herself. She was afraid of overwhelming them.
Tears ran down her face. “My girls… you’re here…” she kept saying, as if she needed to hear it out loud. Emma and Sophie looked at her cautiously, trying to match the woman in front of them with the fading memory they still carried.
The kidnapper had spent years poisoning that memory with lies. But then Thunder walked over to Laura and nudged her hand with his nose, as if giving the girls permission to trust what they were seeing. Watching the dog accept this woman, the sisters took one hesitant step forward…
