Too late.

A single trickle of blood crept down from the corner of one eye. His body stilled.

She couldn’t find the strength to move and someone was pulling at her arm and shouting at her, but she couldn’t focus on them because she still couldn’t take her gaze away from Ethan.

The trickle of blood changed course slightly, made its way determinedly towards his cheek.

There was a ringing in her ears as if a bomb had exploded and she knew people were talking but the sounds were fuzzy and she couldn’t stop looking at that trickle of blood, now slowly making its way across his cheek and down towards his ear.

Everything. Needed. To. Stop.

Noise smacked at her.

‘We’ve got to go!’

Then Ethan’s body was moving away from her. Which was odd. How was it doing that? But she realized that her feet weren’t on the floor either and that someone had picked her up, put her over their shoulder and she was being carried out.

An air pressure bubble popped inside of her. She kicked and she screamed. They couldn’t leave Ethan there, on that dusty floor, his head lolling to one side, blood coming from his eye. It was open, staring at her as if he was still alive, accusing her. Why did you let this happen to me?

She screamed and choked and gasped and was thrown into the back of a car, knowing the thunking sound she heard were the locks clicking into place.

Time disappeared for a bit. Rage filled Thea; she’d never felt anything like it before, didn’t even know she could feel something like this: this heat of anger. She kicked out against the Plexiglas that separated the front passengers from the back, kicked hard, her feet thudding in a satisfying way again and again against the plastic, smearing it with the soles of her trainers. She slapped her hands against the windows and cursed, streams of words she’d never used before, screaming until she was hoarse, kicking and punching and yelling until, at last, the rage left her limp and sweating in the back seat.

She could see Rory and Kyle at the front, Kyle driving. Not once did Rory turn to her. The car was some sort of four-by-four – big, with monster wheels that ate up the snow without any effort. Moses pretended to sleep in the seat next to her.

The silvery edges of her vision pulsed in time to her heartbeat. Her chest heaved and she tried to get her breathing under control. Now the anger had dissipated, she tried to think. Not of Ethan. Not yet. The only way she was going to get through the next few hours was by resolutely not thinking about him and the lifeless stare that was now imprinted in her memory.

This didn’t feel like rescue anymore.