It was just after eight when a ding sounded from her computer. They both jumped up from the table and hurried to the desk. The page now held another nonsensical sentence.
“It’s her,” Annalise said, her voice filled with excitement. “It’s from Sadie.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Miss Annalise, I’m okay.’”
Evan pulled out the desk chair. “Ask her where she is.”
Annalise sat and quickly typed out the question.
A moment later Sadie responded. “Cabin,” Annalise said. “She says she’s in a cabin.”
“A cabin where? Is there a name of the place that she can give us? Where is it located?” Evan asked urgently. This was what they’d been waiting for. Thank God the little girl was still alive. Hopefully she could tell them where she was so Evan’s team could move in and get her out of there and away from the couple who held her.
He and Annalise stared at the computer screen, waiting for a reply. A minute went by, then another and another. “She must have had to get off the page,” Annalise finally said. “I’m just grateful she’s still alive.”
Hendrick called on Evan’s computer. Evan hurried over and answered. “She said she’s in a cabin,” he told him.
“A cabin? There must be hundreds of cabins in those mountains,” Hendrick said. “I can’t do a search without more details. At this moment we don’t even know what state they might be in.”
“Have you managed to get anything on Winslow’s phone yet?”
“Damn, Evan, you know these things take time and a lot of red tape. You’ve got to have a little patience.”
“I’m running out of patience,” Evan replied. “If they’ve put Sadie in front of a computer, then time is running out for her.”
“Then let’s hope she can get you something more to narrow down a search area,” Hendrick replied.
“I’m so scared for her, Evan,” Annalise said once the two men had hung up.
He hesitated a moment and then pulled her into his embrace and stroked her hair. The last thing he wanted to do was let her know that he was scared, too.
“QUIT SCREWING AROUND and go to the page I told you to get on,” Gretchen said to Sadie.
The girl quickly clicked off the secret page and did as Gretchen asked. The woman scared her. She’d already slapped Sadie twice, once the night before for complaining she was cold and then again this morning for dawdling over breakfast.
The slaps had been hard and when Sadie had cried, Gretchen had threatened to hit her as many times as it took for the girl to stop crying. Sadie had stopped crying on the outside, but she’d cried on the inside for a long time.
Jacob was a little bit nicer; he’d at least given her a pillow to use when she’d gone to bed on the little sofa in the room.
They had driven around on back roads for hours the day before. She’d been so scared, and she was still really scared. Jacob might be nice to her right now, but that didn’t mean anything. Gretchen wasn’t nice, and she seemed to be the boss. All she’d done since they got to the cabin was yell about how bad things had gone.
She knew they wanted her for a reason, and now she knew why. She understood what they wanted her to do was illegal, and she wasn’t even sure she could do it. Miss Annalise had never taught them how to break into places on the internet. Sadie knew if she couldn’t do it, then things were going to get bad...really, really bad.
She’d had bad things happen to her before. When she was living in an apartment with her mother before she’d come to the school, there had been many times when Sadie had believed she was going to die.
Sometimes her mother forgot to buy food, and Sadie thought she might starve to death. Other times her mother would beat her until Sadie almost wished she would die. But since being at the school, Sadie didn’t want to die. She wanted to go back to the school with her friends and the grown-ups who loved her.
The last thing she’d seen on the private page was Miss Annalise asking where she was and what the name of the cabin was, but she didn’t have the answers.
When they had left the school, they had driven to a place where they had gotten into another car and then they had driven around for a while. They had parked on a road in the middle of nowhere, and then the two grown-ups had taken naps.
She’d stayed awake, worried that a bear might come out of the woods or some other wild animal might attack the car. After they woke up, they started driving again.
Sadie had been asleep when they’d carried her into the small cabin. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, so she hadn’t even had a chance to look out.
The only way Miss Annalise and her friend would be able to come and save her was if she could somehow tell them something about the cabin.
What she was scared about was that she wouldn’t be able to get Miss Annalise the information before Jacob and Gretchen realized she might not be able to do what they wanted her to do. And once that happened...she truly believed she would be dead.
WHILE THEY WAITED for Sadie to get them more information, Evan was on the phone and checking in on all the progression of the investigation.
Nick was still conducting interviews of the kitchen and housekeeping staff from the school, and Davis and a few other men were at the compound interviewing the members of the Brotherhood of Jacob in an effort to glean more information.
He then contacted Chief Cummings to find out if the tails on Earl had reported anything during the night. So far they had nothing to report. Earl had driven straight home from the police station and hadn’t left
