On another page was a dark, carefully drawn figure of a tall bearded man. One more sketch showed a large dog that looked a lot like Thunder. Seeing the drawings, Eleanor felt a wave of nausea.
The paper looked recent. There was no longer any doubt: the girls were still here somewhere. Following procedure, she quickly photographed the room with her phone. Then she moved silently toward the opposite wall.
There, in the deepest shadow, stood a large old wardrobe. Thunder lunged toward it, scratching at the doors and barking sharply. Eleanor raised her weapon and pulled the doors open.
Instead of shelves and clothes, there was another hidden passage. This time the voices were clear: frightened whispering, then nervous laughter, and then a man’s voice speaking in a calm, eerie monotone.
“We’re safe now, girls. Up there, everything turned to ash. This is our real home now,” the man was saying. Eleanor felt the blood drain from her face. They were only a few feet from a deeply disturbed kidnapper.
In a cramped chamber lit by dozens of smoking candles sat a hunched, unshaven man. In front of him were two severely undernourished teenage girls, sitting with their hands folded in their laps. Their hair hung in dirty strands, and their skin had the pale, unhealthy cast of children who had gone far too long without sunlight.
What was most disturbing was the look in their eyes—flat, detached, and full of misplaced trust in the man who had kept them there. “Emma… Sophie…” Eleanor said, barely recognizing the Bennett sisters as older versions of the children from the case file. At the sound of their real names, both girls flinched as if jolted.
One of them grabbed the kidnapper’s sleeve, instinctively looking to him for protection. The man slowly turned his head and stared at Eleanor with open hatred. His eyes were feverish and unmoored from reality..
