Simms turns to us. ‘We’re pushing it out to the media, which means there will be photos of your daughter on the breakfast shows, they’ll be talking about it on the radio and— ’ he checks his watch ‘— it’s too late for print media but it will definitely be online the moment we send out the press release, which will be any second now. I just want to prepare you. We can also organise a media liaison. The best thing for you to do now is to go home, support each other.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I can still help.’

He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at my face for a moment.

‘We will stay out of the way.’

‘Fine,’ he says.

‘I’ve got a J. Schultz in Beaconsfield Upper, 4291 Beaconsfield – Emerald Road,’ one of the other cops says.

They’ve still not made contact with Cormac or Xanthe, but if she is at that house, I wonder how they would approach it? Even if they knew July was inside, there’s no telling what Cormac might do when the police close in. As if reading my mind Simms says, ‘Let’s get a team ready to go. Nobody use the scanner. We’ll have to make do without.’

It all seems so simple, but I know it won’t be. My daughter is out there alone and terrified at gunpoint or she’s already … already what? I can’t begin down that path; it’ll sap any energy I still have and leave me a shell. I have to believe she is okay, that she will survive this. I refuse to believe that something has already happened to her, something irreversible.

Chapter Thirty-Three

THIRTY-THREE

WE’RE IN A waiting area, sitting on sticky plastic chairs near the front desks. We watch people come and go to report missing wallets or other miscellaneous crimes and outside the pink glow of dawn begins to spread. Then it begins. There’s energy in the building, raised voices. Police, I know, are at the house. Why have they not told us what’s happened? Evan hunches forward with his face in his hands. Gabe lays his arm over my shoulder pulls me against him. I can’t stop thinking about Cormac, his words are in my head, bouncing around my skull.

Finally a door opens and Simms comes through.

He draws a deep breath, and something grips my heart. ‘There’s news.’

‘What is it?’ Gabe says with urgency.

‘We’ve got her,’ Simms says. Something unlocks inside of me and relief rushes in, filling my body. I don’t cry, or let out a gasp, I just sit, watching Simms’s face.

‘She’s on her way to the hospital.’

The hospital. ‘What did they do to her?’