Page 2 of Savior

Concerned voices that did not belong to anyone I knew started trickling in. Worried faces I’d never seen before.

“Oh my God, it’s the girl,” I heard the woman tell the man driving. “The missing little girl who’s been all over the news. Oh God, look how tiny she is.”

The man driving said, “Jesus, there’s so much blood.”

A stranger sobbed at the sight of me as I stared at her expressionlessly. The man just stared at me in horror.

That was the most I’d ever recalled of the incident. Before that, I’d been operating with a complete blackout of events.

Three days of my life were simply gone.

People supplied facts where memory failed me. Police. Doctors. My parents. They could tell me how long I’d been missing, where I’d finally been found, the condition I’d been in. A name. Wade Mercer.

There were photographs I had never seen and medical reports I had never read. My parents kept them somewhere locked away, and I never asked where. I knew the broad shape of what they contained. Dehydration. Exposure. Cuts. Bruises. Marks from being bound. Blood loss. Signs of abuse. Feet that had been worn down until the bottoms were just so much raw meat.

A cut at the top of my forehead had been bleeding copiously when I was found. Even after floating down the river for some long but unmeasured length of time, I was covered in blood again soon after I stepped onto shore. It ran down my face and body, and my ruined feet left a bloody trail behind me as I took cautious steps forward.

So much blood.

The lady that found me was interviewed by the paper, and much later I would have to read about it myself: “I’ll remember that image for the rest of my life. Whatever horrible things that man did to her, he deserves to rot in prison for four lifetimes. You should have seen her. She was so tiny, and looked like some emaciated thing out of a nightmare. Her eyes were so dead. It was terrifying. She didn’t even look human anymore. That poor little girl. How do you recover from something like that? How do you go on to live a normal life? God, there was so much blood.”

Blood that belonged to me and, in one tiny sample beneath my fingernail, blood that did not.

But facts and others’ accounts weren’t memories.

Whatever had happened during those three days stayed behind that red door.

And some part of my mind seemed determined to keep it there.

I didn’t speak for days.

I was awake. I ate when someone made me. Slept eventually. Let people touch me and move me and speak around me.

But I wasn’t really there.

It was Declan who brought me out of it, calling my name and touching my face with both hands. His was the first face I saw, the first voice I heard, the first touch that penetrated my numb stupor.

“Babygirl,” he said softly, stroking my face with both hands, over and over. “Come back to us, babygirl. You survived. You made it, and now we need you to come back.”

Even then, I remember thinking how unusual it was, Declan going on and on like that, soothing words pouring out of him. It was uncharacteristic, and I think that’s part of what finally pulled me out of it.

The first thing I did was clutch him to me, bury my face in his neck, and start sobbing.

I knew how to run. I’d known that for as long as I could remember.

Coming back was different.

He taught me that.

I woke to the morning light filtering through blinds and bars. It was no different than every other morning, but that morning I was struck with it, brought back to the memory of when the first set of bars had been installed.

I’d been playing in the room with a few of the Bishop brothers, but we all stopped and watched the work being done, shamelessly eavesdropping on my dad and the men doing the work.

“Sorry it took so long,” one of the men said, his accent thick and slow, every word leisurely. Even as a child, I knew he was local. “These kinds of bars are hard to find around here. Had to have them shipped in. Not much call for them in a town like Briar. Hear they’re real popular in places like Los Angeles”—he rolled the name around like it tasted sour—“or Las Vegas.” He sounded considerably more fond of that one. “But around here, this window ought to be pretty unique.”

“That’s good to know. Could you go ahead and put in an order for me for three more sets?” My dad hovered over them, not like he didn’t trust them to do their job. It was more of a Texan thing, where he wanted to be close, in case they needed help at any second. He was handy, my dad, and took pride in it.

“Sure thing, Buck,” the man responded without looking up from what he was doing. “Same size windows?”