Frightened, but hiding it as best she could, staying strong for Sam, Ilse nodded quickly. Then, carefully, Sam’s arm draped over her shoulder, Ilse began to move toward the stairs, allowing Samantha to limp at her own, slow, painful pace.

The scent of death lingered everywhere, leached into everything. The scent of rot, of fear.

But Ilse forced herself to take one step at a time, creating arbitrary finish lines in her mind. That piece of straw. Two steps. That discarded wrench. One step. That streak of… of grease. Three steps.

Sawyer’s footsteps creaked above as he retreated, moving hastily out to search the farm. Heading toward the farmhouse by the sound of things. Moving off on his own to find the serial killer.

Ilse wasn’t built for hunting killers. She preferred tending to those they left behind alive. And so she held Samantha tight, murmuring with each step, just as much for her benefit as her client’s. “It’s going to all be okay. I promise. You’re going to be fine.”

Samantha’s tears streaked down toward the blood, dripping past her and baptizing the stairs with dark marks against gray, like bullets.

“It’s going to be fine. It’s all okay. You’re safe now. You’re safe,” Ilse murmured. She walked up the stairs, helping Samantha move. “You’re safe. He can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let him. He can’t hurt any of you anymore…”

For a moment, her vision flickered. Memories surfaced. Ilse found her own tears creeping into her eyes.

“He can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let him. He can’t. You’re safe now,” she said. “I promise.”

Words she meant with every fiber of her being. Words she wished she’d heard, once upon a time. At least, though, she could share them with someone else.

Samantha’s posture was as lumped and shrunken in on herself as ever. But her head wasn’t so bowed anymore. Instead it lolled, just about leaning against Ilse. A sort of resigned, but trusting motion. A gesture of exhaustion, but also reliance.

For some reason, this only seemed to strengthen Ilse further and she stepped out of the darkness, moving up the final concrete step, helping Sam into the old dusty shack.

“It’s all going to be okay. You’re safe now,” she murmured.

Ilse meant every word.

She could only hope she wasn’t wrong. A killer was still out there. The man who’d murdered the rest of them in the basement. The man who’d taken Samantha…

He was still out there.

Ilse heard the flurry of footsteps, then heard Sawyer’s voice shout through the door. “Ambulance is on its way, Doc. She doing all right?”

Ilse cleared her throat. “We’re okay. For now. How long for the EMTs?”

“Ten minutes max.”

“You see anything? Any sign of him?”

Sawyer emerged back in the doorway, his long, lanky shadow stretching past him into the dark. He shook his head slowly, pressing a hand to hold his baseball cap in place. He frowned, his face dark, his countenance gloomy like the sky. “No sign. Farmhouse is abandoned. Empty. No vehicle either.”