Chapter 20 #4
Lilith squeezed gently. “I mean it. Gideon used to make every consequence sound like something I caused by refusing him. Men like Malachi create the danger, then tell women surrender is the only way to stop it.”
“I know.”
“So did I.”
The shared understanding settled between them.
Lilith released one of Sunshine’s hands but held the other. “Knowing doesn’t silence the guilt immediately. Let us carry some of it until you can.”
Sunshine’s face crumpled for only a heartbeat before she nodded.
Mace approached from behind Lilith, all humor gone now. “We find Ruth.”
Sunshine looked at him. “Please don’t take unnecessary risks.”
He considered the request with surprising seriousness. “I’ll limit myself to necessary ones.”
Lilith elbowed him.
“I’m trying.”
“You need more practice.”
The exchange drew a quiet laugh from Sunshine, exactly what both of them intended.
The teams left through separate exits shortly after sunrise.
No motorcycles accompanied them because the engines would announce their approach miles before they reached Restoration.
Toxic and Mace used a utility truck marked with a forestry company’s logo, while Knight and Gage left in an older SUV Cipher had scrubbed from every club connection.
Autumn traveled separately to a county archive, maintaining the appearance that she had no connection to either team if anyone watched the roads.
Then the clubhouse gates closed.
Waiting began.
I hated waiting.
Medicine rewarded action. A patient arrived, I assessed the injury, chose a treatment, and measured whether it worked.
Even the most difficult trauma offered something physical to do.
Waiting for armed men to return from unknown ground provided no wound to close and no clear way to help.
It left the mind free to invent every failure before it happened.
I converted the downstairs clinic into a trauma station anyway.
Supplies were inventoried, IV fluids warmed, emergency medications checked, and two treatment tables cleared.
Melissa helped without asking why I reorganized items already arranged correctly, while Bishop coordinated radio traffic from the adjoining room.
Sunshine remained with Charlie until she woke, then brought her downstairs for breakfast. I watched from the clinic doorway as they entered the kitchen together, Charlie half asleep and holding Sunshine’s hand while Mr. Pickles dragged by one leg.
“Daddy!”
She changed direction immediately and ran toward me.
I lifted her into my arms.
“You were gone.”
“I was downstairs.”
“That’s still gone.”
“Fair.”
She pressed one hand against my cheek, studying the exhaustion I had failed to hide.
“You didn’t sleep.”
“Not yet.”
Sunshine folded her arms.
“See?”
“I’m being ambushed again.”
Charlie rested her head against my shoulder. “You need a nap.”
“I have work.”
“You always have work.”
The words echoed Bishop’s from the previous morning.
I looked toward Sunshine, who watched with a faint, knowing smile.
“I’ll sleep when the teams check in.”
Charlie frowned. “What teams?”
“Uncle Toxic and the others went to look at a place.”
“The helping place?”
Sunshine and I exchanged a glance.
“Yes,” she answered gently. “The place where Ruth might be.”
Charlie had heard the name sometime during the night, though no one had explained enough for her to understand the danger. Her brow furrowed.
“Is Ruth a kid?”
“She’s older than you,” Sunshine said. “But she was a child when I knew her.”
“Does she have a bear?”
“I don’t know.”
Charlie looked toward Mr. Pickles.
The thought forming in her face was obvious enough to make my chest ache.
“You can’t give away your bear,” I said.
“He helps.”
“I know.”
“He can help Ruth.”
Sunshine knelt beside us. “Ruth may need many things when she comes home, but Mr. Pickles should stay with you so he can help you wait.”
Charlie considered this carefully. “We can get her a new bear.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
“Yellow.”
Sunshine’s breath caught.
“Why yellow?” I asked.
“Because Sunshine likes yellow.”
Sunshine blinked against sudden tears. “Ruth did too.”
Charlie accepted that as confirmation. “Then yellow.”
Daisy, listening from the stove, quietly wrote something on a grocery list.
That was how this family responded to an abduction and a deadline.
Brothers mapped tunnels while a three-year-old planned which color bear should be waiting when Ruth came home.
Both actions mattered because rescue was not only about extracting someone from danger.
It was about preparing a place where survival could become life afterward.
Breakfast passed slowly. Charlie ate beside Sunshine while I forced down eggs and toast beneath their combined supervision. Each time a radio crackled from the adjoining room, conversation paused before resuming. No update came for nearly two hours.
Then Cipher called my name.
I left the table immediately.
The command room showed the western ridge map beside four small video windows transmitted from concealed body cameras.
Knight’s feed displayed trees and wet rock.
Gage’s showed the abandoned logging cut.
Toxic’s camera faced the river through tangled brush, while Mace’s tilted toward the underside of an old service bridge.
“What happened?” I asked.
Cipher pointed toward Knight’s feed.
“Tunnel entrance.”
The camera shifted, revealing a narrow concrete opening hidden behind fallen timber and thorned vines. Rusted metal doors had been painted to resemble weathered rock from a distance. Fresh mud around the threshold proved someone still used it.
“Movement?” Bishop asked.
“None.”
Knight’s whispered voice came through the speaker. “Airflow from inside. Faint generator vibration.”
My pulse accelerated.
“Can he see locks?” I asked.
Cipher enlarged the image. “Electronic keypad and mechanical backup.”
“Camera?”
“Two. Possibly three.”
The feed panned upward. A tiny dark dome hid beneath an overhang.
“They know the entrance is active,” Bishop said.
“They may already know Knight’s there.”
As though answering, a light above the keypad turned from red to green.
The doors opened inward.
Knight and Gage disappeared from the immediate frame, taking cover behind opposite sections of rock.
Nobody emerged.
The tunnel remained dark.
Then a speaker beside the door crackled.
A man’s voice came through the feed.
“Sunshine has until the third sunrise.”
Malachi.
Every muscle inside me tightened.
The speaker continued.
“Observation without obedience will be treated as refusal.”
The doors began closing.
Before they sealed, another sound escaped the tunnel.
Three sharp knocks.
A pause.
Then two more.
Sunshine entered the command room behind me.
Her face drained of color.
“What is it?” I asked.
She stared at the screen.
“The children used that pattern.”
“What pattern?”
“Three knocks, then two.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“It means I’m still here.”
Ruth was inside.
The room shifted into motion before the tunnel doors fully closed.
Cipher saved the audio, marked the exact location, and began calculating the underground route from the entrance to the room shown in Malachi’s video.
Bishop contacted Toxic through an encrypted channel, while Knight and Gage withdrew exactly as ordered rather than allowing urgency to pull them into a blind corridor.
Sunshine stood beside me, trembling but upright.
“She’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“She knew someone was outside.”
“Yes.”
“She answered.”
I took her hand.
Malachi had intended the message to prove control. Instead, Ruth had used the few seconds available to send something of her own.
I’m still here.
Sunshine closed her eyes, and tears slipped freely down her cheeks.
“I heard her.”
“You did.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“We’re coming,” she whispered toward the dark screen, as though Ruth might somehow hear the promise across miles of forest and concrete.
The second sunrise of Malachi’s deadline had not yet arrived.
We had found Restoration’s hidden entrance.
We had confirmed Ruth was alive.
And Brother Malachi had just made his first real mistake.
He had allowed her to answer.