'Emma?' He almost choked on the girl's name, afraid to say the word, to give himself hope. 'Emma Campano?' He slammed his hand into the ceiling. 'It's the police, Emma.'
There was more scraping, the distinctive sound of rats.
'Emma?' Will reached up, tearing chunks of Sheetrock down from the low ceiling. His hands did not work fast enough, so he used the flashlight to make the opening larger. 'Emma, it's the police.' He dug his foot into the hole in the wall, propelling himself up into the attic.
Will stopped, halfway in the attic, his foot firmly supported by the lath in the wall. Hot air enveloped him, so intense that his lungs hurt from breathing it. The girl lay in a heap up against the eaves. Her skin was covered in a fine, white powder from the Sheetrock. Her eyes were open, her lips together. A large rat was inches from her hand, his retinas flashing like mirrors in the beam of the flashlight. Will pulled himself the rest of the way into the attic. Rats scrambled everywhere. One darted across the girl's arm. He saw scratch marks where the animals had dug into her skin.
'No,' Will whispered, crawling on his hands and knees across the supports. Blood congealed on her abdomen and thighs. Welts strangled her neck. Will swung the flashlight at a greedy rat, his heart aching at the sight of the girl. How could he tell Paul that this was how he had found his daughter? There was no smell of decay, no flies burrowing into her flesh. How could any of them go on knowing that only a few hours had separated the girl from life and death?
'Will?' Faith asked, though he could tell from her tone of voice that she knew what he had found.
'I'm sorry,' Will told the girl. He could not stand her blank, lifeless stare. He had not believed once during the investigation that she was dead-even when evidence had stacked up to the contrary. He had insisted that there was no way she was gone, and now, all he could think was that his hubris had made the truth that much more unbearable.
Will reached over to close her eyes, pressing his fingers into the lids, gently lowering them. 'I'm sorry,' he repeated, knowing that would never be enough.
Emma's eyes popped back open. She blinked, focusing on Will.
She was alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FAITH STOOD IN Emma Campano's hospital room, watching Abigail with her daughter. The room was dark, the only light coming from the machines that were hooked up to the girl. Fluids, antibiotics, various mixtures of chemicals designed to make her well again. Nothing could heal her spirit, though. No medical device could revive her soul.
While Faith was pregnant, she had secretly decided that the baby in her womb was a little girl. Blond hair and blue eyes, dimples in her cheeks. Faith would buy her matching pink outfits and braid ribbons into her hair while her daughter talked about school crushes and boy bands and secret wishes.
Jeremy had pretty quickly shattered that dream. Her son's feelings ran toward uncomplicated matters involving football and action heroes. His musical tastes were deplorable and hardly worth talking about. His wishes were hardly secret: toys, video games and-to Faith's horror-the slutty little redhead who lived down the street.
The past few days, Faith had let her mind go to that dark place every parent visits at one time or another: what would I do if the phone rang, the police knocked on the door, and some stranger told me that my child was dead? That was the terror that lurked in every mother's heart, that gruesome fear. It was like knocking on wood or making the sign of the cross-letting the thought come into your mind served as a talisman against the thing actually happening.
Watching Emma sleep, Faith realized there were worse things than getting that phone call. You could get your child back, but her identity-her essence-could be gone. The horrors Emma experienced were written on her body: the bruises, the scratches, the bite marks. Warren had taken his time with the girl, living out every sick fantasy that he could conjure. He had given her neither food nor water. Emma had been forced to defecate and urinate in the same room in which she slept. Her hands and feet had been tied. Repeatedly, she had been strangled to the point of passing out, then resuscitated. The girl had screamed so much that her voice was nothing more than a raw whisper.
Faith could not help herself. Her pity did not lie with the child, but with the mother. She thought about what Will had said earlier, how Evan Bernard had by all rights killed Mary Clark. There were two Emma Campanos now-the one before Warren, and the one after. That little girl Abigail had nursed and played peekaboo with, the pretty child she had taken to school in the mornings and dropped off at movie theaters and malls on the weekends was gone. All that was left was the shell of her girl, an empty vessel that would be filled with the thoughts of a stranger.
Abigail was obviously thinking of these things. She could barely touch the girl, seemed to have to force herself to hold Emma's hand. Faith herself could not even meet the mother's eyes. How could you mourn the death of your child when she was still alive?
Abigail spoke softly. 'She's awake.'
Slowly, Faith walked over. They had tried to question the girl on the way to the hospital, firing questions at her one after the other. Emma had lain on the gurney, her eyes staring blankly at the ambulance ceiling, her answers coming out in monosyllabic bites. She had gotten progressively agitated until she was cowering against the rails, the impact of her ordeal slowly sinking in. She had become so hysterical that they had sedated her so that she would not hurt herself. Her reaction was strikingly similar to her mother's.
'Hi, honey,' Faith began. 'Do you remember me?'
The girl nodded. Her eyelids were heavy, though the medication had long worn off. The clock on the heart monitor read 6:33 a.m. Light peeked out around the edges of the metal blinds over the window. The sun had risen unnoticed as she slept.
They had figured out quickly that it was the men who set her off. The male paramedics touching and prodding, even Will trying to hold her hand, had made her panic like a trapped animal. Emma could not stand the sight of any of them, could not tolerate the male doctors. Even her own father upset the girl so much that she became physically ill.
Faith asked Emma, 'You sure you want to do this?'
She nodded.
'I need to ask you some questions,' Faith told her. 'Do you think you can talk to me?'
She nodded again, wincing at the pain when she moved.
Abigail's fingertips touched her daughter's arm. 'If it's too much-'
'I want to,' Emma insisted, her voice strained, like a person much older than her few years.
'Tell me what you remember,' Faith urged, knowing that the girl had probably been doing everything she could to forget.
'It was Kayla,' she said, her tone certain. 'We heard her screaming. Adam went out in the hall, and I saw the man stab him.'
'Warren?'
She nodded.
Abigail reached for the glass of water beside the bed. 'Drink something, honey.'
'No,' she refused. 'I need to say.'
Faith was surprised at her courage, but then she remembered that twice now, Emma Campano had been written off for dead and twice the girl had fought back. 'Tell me what happened.'
'Adam told me to hide in the closet.' She paused, some of her resolve breaking. 'The next thing I remember, I was in the room, and the man was on top of me.'
Faith asked, 'Did he say anything to you?'
'He said that he loved me.' She glanced quickly at her mother. 'I told him that I did, too. He was nicer when I did.'
'That was smart,' Faith told her. 'You did what you needed to do to keep him from getting angry.'
