At Emerson’s muffled groan, Addis jerked her neck to the side, scraping her bare skin against something sharp sticking out of the rough wall. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose to stave off the blurry vision and the wave of dizziness. ‘Em? Please be okay. Don’t leave me alone here, and I promise we’ll find a way out.’ A clap of thunder drowned out her words, but she continued the litany of lies until finally, blessedly, her best friend lifted her chin the tiniest bit, enough to assure Addis this wasn’t merely a figment of her imagination.

For several heartbeats, Emerson did nothing more than smack her lips together and run her tongue over them.

‘Ad, my head hurts, and I’m so thirsty.’

‘I know,’ she whispered.

‘Oh God, I really don’t want to die.’ Emerson struggled to breathe.

Like razor wire, her friend’s fear sliced through her. ‘We won’t. Aunt Grace probably already has the National Guard out searching for us right now.’ Addis prayed she was telling the truth.

Emerson sniffled, lowering her head enough to wipe her nose on the upper sleeve of her shirt. ‘Is it weird that I think I recognize him, like I’ve seen him before?’

‘No, it’s not weird. In fact, I thought the same thing.’ What she kept to herself was the dread that if their kidnapper knew they recognized him, he’d have no choice but to kill them. Through the sudden silence, Addis couldn’t tell if it was her own galloping heartbeat she was hearing, or Emerson’s.

When her best friend started plucking at her pants – a habit she had when she was too nervous to say what was on her mind – Addis nudged her. ‘Em, don’t shut me out. Whatever you’re thinking, you have to tell me.’ Even as she whispered the words, Addis was afraid that what Em didn’t want to say was that all of this was Addis’s fault. And she’d be right.

‘Whoever he is,’ Em finally stuttered, ‘he didn’t act alone.’ She leaned her head onto Addis’s shoulder.

Remembering how their kidnapper had discussed the cold-blooded murder of her parents with the person who’d called him sent a crushing pain rocketing through Addis, and she doubled over as she gasped for breath.

She and Emerson weren’t dealing with one murderer; they were dealing with two – one who remained faceless. One who slaughtered her father either before or after shooting her mother. A vision of their kidnapper and his unidentified accomplice doing the same thing to her and Em snapped her back to reality, spurring her into action.