When Daddy asked what I remembered, I told him nothing. I lied and said that I'd gone to sleep in a small, gray room, then awakened under that tree. I said it because I had to. Because I had to keep Dallas safe.
But as the hours ticked by without him, I began to doubt. And the fear that I was wrong to keep the secret ate at me.
"Can you remember anything at all about the last three weeks?" my mother asked as she tucked me into bed that night. "Anything about where they kept you? Sounds? What they looked like?"
"They told me not to." My voice was barely a whisper, but she heard me. And when I looked up, I saw hope in my mother's eyes.
Within minutes, my father was in the room, too, along with the leader of the vigilante team Daddy had hired. I told them what my captors had said. About how it would be bad for Dallas if I told anything, and so I hadn't.
But they said what I was already starting to believe--that the threat was meant to keep me silent. If I had any information that could help them rescue Dallas, I had to use it. Because for all we knew, they never planned to let Dallas go at all.
They had no leads except me. And I knew that if we wanted to rescue my brother--if I wanted to help the boy I loved--I had to tell the team what little I knew.
And so I did.
It took forty-eight hours and lots of forensic stuff I didn't understand--everything from analyzing the dirt on my shoes to running some sort of diagnostics on the burner phone to pinpointing the location of airports in conjunction with clock towers.
They'd found it, though. My father's money had bought the best, and his team soon determined that Dallas and I had been held in the basement of a semi-demolished building that had been abandoned after funds for a renovation had fallen short.
They'd set out before dawn. I wasn't there, but I heard about it soon enough. How they'd approached silently. How they'd entered the building with the utmost care--and how they'd triggered explosives when they'd moved in.
Two of the four were killed instantly. Another lost an arm and an eye. The fourth had been unconscious for a week, but ultimately recovered.
The building itself had collapsed into rubble.
I felt as though I had, too.
He'd been in there--I knew it. Dallas had been in that basement, and because of me he'd been blown up. Or worse, buried alive.
I'd spent the next four weeks in tears, mourning a boy I was certain was dead. And hating myself for getting him killed.
But he wasn't killed, and now he's standing right before me in a cramped cabana, looking at me with so much compassion that I actually turn away.
"Jane," he says gently. "I didn't die."
"But I thought you had." A tear snakes down my cheek and I wipe it away violently. "For four long weeks, I thought you had, and then they sent that damn ransom letter and it turned out they'd already moved you out of the building." I draw a breath, remembering the wave of relief that had washed over me, coupled with the fear that it was all a cold, cruel joke.
"Jane." He takes a step toward me, but I hold up a hand to stop him. I'm too raw, and I don't think that I can protect myself right now if he offers me comfort.
He stops, his features tightening.
"I'm just making a point," I say. "It was the ransom that got you out. The vigilante bullshit almost got you killed. The way it almost got the kids on the bus and the Darcy girls killed. And those kids in Nevada did die, Dallas. Two children, and that's way too high a price."
Now that I've shifted back to work, I'm starting to get steady again, thank goodness. "Anyway, that was the original core of the book I'm currently writing--Benson's organization and how his idiotic vigilante mission endangered so many kids."
"The original core?" he says. "That's not what the book's about now?"
"It is, yes. But I expanded my focus after Bill told me that there's another organized vigilante group out there offering its services. The thesis is still the damage done by these groups, and why it's so important to shut them down. But I'm examining two sides. The fallout and prosecution of Benson's group on the one hand. And I'm juxtaposing that against WORR's search for this other group that rescued the Darcy girls."
"You're saying it's an active investigation?"
"One of their top priorities," I confirm. "It has been ever since Bill talked with Elaine Darcy and became convinced that there really is a particular organized group out there that's working for diplomats, millionaires, celebrities. People like Dad who don't want the FBI or Interpol involved. And then Henry Darcy confirmed, and--"
Dallas raises a hand to cut me off. "Wait. You're telling me that Henry Darcy admitted to hiring this vigilante group you're talking about?"
"Sounds like something out of a movie, doesn't it? But yeah, he did. According to Bill, Darcy doesn't even know how to contact them. It was all very secret, with burner phones and passwords and complicated contact protocols. But he did hear one thing that he thinks he wasn't supposed to. It's how I got the title for the book, actually." I smile, because the title is freaking awesome. "I'm calling it Code Name: Deliverance."
His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and he looks a little shell-shocked. I'm not surprised. He lived through what I did and more. Every day he's known that he might have died in that raid. Maybe he almost did. Maybe he was unconscious. Maybe fighting for his life.