Once the call was over, Jeanette went to fetch water. She bathed the boy’s lips and then forced one drop of water after another into his mouth as best she could. To her relief, Kerstin felt the temperature rising in the small child’s body, his breathing becoming deeper and slower.

“He must be famished,” Jeanette said. “But they’ll put him on a drip as soon as they arrive. It’ll be okay—we saved him.”

A small smile appeared on her face, and it was infectious. They—Kerstin and Jeanette—had done something together. They had saved the life of a small child—how would Kerstin be able to see Jeanette as an enemy after this?

Four days, she thought to herself. Didn’t they say that a fully grown adult could manage three days without water? And Erik—a little kid—had managed four. Four days of constant rain.

“If it hadn’t been raining so persistently over the last few days, he wouldn’t have made it,” she said. “The kidnapper didn’t count on all that water leaking into the root cellar. Erik was wet and cold, but he didn’t go thirsty, and that’s what kept him alive.”

Rage germinated inside her. Only now did she have the opportunity to think through what had actually happened. Someone—and she reckoned she knew who—had spirited away a three-year-old and locked him up in a cold, dark root cellar without any food or water. With the intent that he would die—of thirst and hunger. A little kid! What kind of monster were you if you subjected another person—a very small person—to something like that?

“The kidnapper?” said Jeanette.

“What do you think the purpose of undoing the bolt was?” said Kerstin.

“You mean . . . Do you actually think someone intentionally locked him in there four days ago so that he would die?” Tears began to form in Jeanette’s eyes.

“And now they came back to undo the bolt in the belief that it was all over and people would think he had wandered in there by himself,” Kerstin said with a nod.

The thought that the kidnapper hadn’t even dared to see for himself the misery he had caused—he had simply left without glancing into the cellar—left her raging. But she contained the agitated emotions within her, pursed her lips, and kneaded the boy’s body with almost manic eagerness.

“There are a few things you need to do, Jeanette. Before the ambulance gets here. And probably the police too.”

“Yes?”