But Colton was already at the edge of breaking. “Where is she?” he asked Lila, softer now, kneeling so they were eye level. “Sweetheart, where’s your mom?”
Lila’s lower lip trembled. “She’s sick.”
Every nerve in Colton’s body went taut.
“Where?”
The girl looked toward the window, toward the highway, toward the vast emptiness beyond. “At the house with the red gate. The one where Darren says we can’t leave.”
Romero immediately signaled another deputy. “Get Child Services notified. We may have unlawful restraint, possible kidnapping, and a missing person case reopened.” He turned back to Colton. “You ride with me.”
Colton didn’t argue.
---
The house was twenty miles out, hidden beyond a dirt road lined with mesquite and rusted fencing. A sagging one-story place with boarded windows and a red gate half hanging from its hinges. The desert around it was silent, too silent.
Romero and two deputies approached first. Colton followed when they cleared the entrance.
Inside, the air smelled of mildew, medicine, and neglect.
“Mara!” Colton shouted.
No answer.
They moved room to room until they reached a locked bedroom at the back. One deputy forced it open with his shoulder.
And there she was.
Curled on a narrow bed beneath a thin blanket. Too pale. Too thin. Hair chopped short and uneven. Eyes sunken, but alive.
For one awful second, she looked at him like he was a dream she didn’t dare trust.
Then her mouth parted.
“Colt?”
His name broke in her throat.
He crossed the room in two strides and dropped beside the bed, and suddenly both of them were crying too hard to speak. Nine years of grief, guilt, rage, and impossible longing collapsed in that single moment.
“I looked for you,” he choked out. “Mara, I looked everywhere.”
She touched his face like she had to be sure. “I know,” she whispered. “He told me you stopped. He told me no one cared anymore.”
Colton shut his eyes.
Darren.
Romero gently asked the questions while paramedics were called in. The truth came in fragments, jagged and horrifying. Darren had been involved with Mara years ago. Charming at first. Then controlling. Then violent. When she tried to leave after learning she was pregnant, he isolated her, moved her constantly, cut her off from everyone, convinced others she was unstable or gone by choice. Every time she tried to run, he found her. Every time she tried to reach out, he stopped her.
And for the last year, when she’d gotten sick and weak, he’d kept her hidden in that house.