Page 34 of Fighting Shadows

“We’ll find him. Let’s search for a while longer, and if there’s still no sign, we’ll go to the hospital. We can always come back.”

“I’m going to search the cabin and then torch the place. Maybe not letting him have a place to hide will help flush him out.”

“Good idea. I’m going to retrace our steps and see if I can figure out where he went.”

There’s nothing.

There is no sign of where Charlie managed to disappear, and I’m desperate to get to the hospital and see how Autumn is doing. My phone vibrates every fifteen minutes, check ins with the others with no real updates, only that they suspect she has sepsis.

I gave up searching in the woods; it’s pitch black, and I see no need to trek through the mud and branches when it’s evident that he’s managed to slip away somewhere. The cabin holds no evidence as to where he could have gone.

The only signs of life in here are the room Autumn was kept in.

Silver chains with shackles taunt me as they dangle from the black metal bed frame above the pillows. The sheet she lay on has apparent signs of never being changed, littered with sweat and stains. Uneaten food is discarded to the side, a crust forming over whatever sludge she was given, if she was given any.

There’s another set of chains at the base of the bed, the shackles lying open and on the floor. Is there whereheescaped from?

I have no idea how long I stand in this room, just staring at the space my girl was kept in for two weeks. Scenarios play through my mind, and all the worst things possible I can think of play in my head in vivid detail. I’m torturing myself, unable to allow myself to do anything more as I stand here frozen.

This is where she was, for fourteen days, kept from the people who love her and subjected to her monster’s whims.

What Autumn have we managed to get back?

Chapter 18

Noah

“You just need some stitches in the back of your head. Once I’ve cleaned it out, you are free to go,” the older nurse smiles at me, her eyes kind.

“It’s fine,” I try to wave her off, but she gives me a disapproving tut and turns back to the packets as she puts on new gloves, “Is there any update on the girl I came in with?”

“She’s in surgery. The others are all out in the family wait room, awaiting news on you both.”

“Not me, I don’t know them. Only her,” I say.

I don’t want to go into that room with Strange Girl’s harem; the interrogation I know is waiting for me sets my nerves on edge, but I want to know how she’s doing.

I need to know.

The door swings open before I can knock. The blonde man with tattoos and piercings manically smiles at me, sweeping his arm out and gesturing me to enter.

“Thank you. I just wanted to come and ask if there is any news on her condition?” I ask, eyeing the room warily.

Only three of the five that stormed through that treeline are here, including one I didn’t see and an older guy. Every single one of them looks like they want to kill me, even the older man who looks like her father. They all watch me with calculating eyes, trying to figure out why I’m here probably, and if they asked, I wouldn’t have an answer.

What could I even tell them?

During those few days I was there, Strange Girl became my sole focus, and I could not bear the idea of being away from her while she was so ill.

That the mere image of my father assaulting her as I sat there chained up and could do nothing haunts my dreams?

Somehow, the latter would not go down well, and I refused to tell them anything that happened in that room until I spoke to her and her doctor.

“They won’t tell us anything. The condition in which we brought her in is too suspicious, and they don’t want to tell us anything, only that we need to wait until she wakes up, and then she can tell them what happened to her.”

“If it’s sepsis, then you’re looking at an I and D, wound debridement, wound vac, broad-spectrum antibiotics until tests come back for what bacteria has festered has caused this, and a CVVHD, which takes about twenty-four hours,” I blurt out, going through the mental checklist from my training.

“How do you know all of this?” One of Strange Girl’s other men comes forward; the Roman Reigns lookalike barks at me. His hair is a mess from pulling at it, but if anything, it makes himlook more terrifying, and he must be 6’4. He could crush my short ass with his bare hands, and I gulp heavily, instinctively stepping back a step.

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