How could he know her when she didn’t know him?

Next to them were Dad and Cole. “Thank you,” her father breathed, clutching one side as if in pain; Nadia only then realized he’d been injured.

“Dad! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, though his whole body was stiff with pain. “I was able to call 911 while our new friend—what’s your name?”

“Mateo.”

Nadia turned back to him, but Mateo was already looking away from her, as if unwilling to meet her eyes. He, too, was gasping for breath; the rescue couldn’t have been much less frightening for him than the crash had been for her.

But how could he know her? Did he know her? Was she imagining things in the aftermath of the wreck?

“While Mateo helped you. We’ll—we’ll be all right.”

“What happened?” Cole sniffled. He clung to his father as if afraid he might fall in the ditch again.

Nadia scooted closer to them so she could take her little brother’s hand. “It’s okay, buddy. We’re okay. We had a wreck, that’s all.”

“Sometimes cars hydroplane during a storm.” Dad breathed in and out through his nose, hand still braced against his ribs. “That means the tires are actually on the water instead of the road. It can be dangerous. I really thought—I thought we were going slow enough to avoid that—”

“You weren’t doing anything wrong.” Nadia wished she could have told her father not to blame himself, but he could never understand what had just happened to them, or why.

She turned back to see her mysterious rescuer—Mateo—but he was gone. Peering through the rain and gloom, Nadia tried to make out where he might be. He couldn’t have gotten far. But she couldn’t find him; it was as if he’d vanished.

Her father, distracted with pain and Cole’s fear, didn’t seem to notice that Mateo had left. “We’re okay,” he kept repeating, rocking her little brother back and forth. “We’re all okay, and nothing else matters.”

In the distance, sirens wailed, and she could make out the beat of red-blue lights from a far-off police car or ambulance. Help was on the way, yet Nadia shivered from the cold and the adrenaline and the pent-up fear.

She glanced upward to see that they’d damaged a sign in the wreck. Leaning to one side, rocking back and forth in the wind of the storm, was a placard emblazoned with the words WELCOME TO CAPTIVE’S SOUND.

She’s real.

Mateo stood in the woods, his back to a tree, as he watched the police see to the family he’d just helped. An ambulance had pulled up for the father, but there didn’t seem to be any particular rush for them to get to the hospital. Nobody was hurt too badly. Good.

Despite the darkness, he could see the girl sitting in the backseat of the police car. A pale blanket had been wrapped around her shoulders. It helped to think of her warm and safe.