The officer spoke with confidence, as if locating the Altier family was a foregone conclusion, but Colter’s shoulders slumped. They’d managed to keep Alanna hidden for so long. What if they got away again? How would Kensie survive coming so close, only to lose her sister once more?
Colter’s heart ached for her. He’d do anything he could to help her, assuming she wanted his help. But in all the time since they’d arrived, while he was worrying about how she was faring, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about one other thing.
When they’d gotten to safety, she hadn’t repeated her words from the mountain. She hadn’t repeated that she loved him.
He wanted to say the words back to her anyway. But should he? Or should he give her a clean break, let her focus on her family, on trying to make it whole again?
A shriek outside his door jolted him out of his thoughts and he realized the officers had left. Rebel jumped up at the sound, recognizing the voice, even though it didn’t sound quite normal. Kensie.
Together, they moved as quickly as they could to the door and Colter flung it open, ready to handle whatever threat faced her. Instead, he saw a different pair of officers walking down the hall, Alanna between them.
Kensie was in the hallway, too, in a hospital gown, her leg wrapped up. She limped awkwardly toward the trio, not even noticing him as she breathed, “Alanna?”
“Kensie!” the girl replied, racing toward her sister and wrapping her in a hug.
AFTER FOURTEEN LONG YEARS, Kensie was finally hugging her sister again.
It didn’t feel real. The last time she’d wrapped her arms around Alanna, she’d had to bend down to reach the five-year-old. She’d buried her head in her sister’s unruly curls, breathed in that little-kid scent of sugar and dirt that she still smelled whenever she thought of Alanna.
Now her sister was nineteen and only two inches shorter than Kensie. Her hair was thick and straight, cut in a blunt line at her shoulders, highlighting the elegant lines of her face.
Kensie pulled back, holding Alanna at arm’s length to get a good look at her.
“We still look like sisters,” Alanna whispered.
Her voice was different, too, and yet a hint of the five-year-old was still there. Tears filled Kensie’s eyes and she swiped them away, not wanting to miss a single detail of her sister’s face, all grown up.
They did look like sisters. Kensie’s hair was longer, but if they twined strands together, Kensie doubted they’d be able to tell whose was whose. Alanna’s eyes were a darker brown, closer to Flynn’s than Kensie’s, but she and her sister had the same long eyelashes, the same strong eyebrows. People would have known they were family at a single glance.
What would it have been like to grow up with Alanna? With eight years between them, they never would have been in school together, but Kensie would have wanted to be her protector. Just like she had when she was thirteen.
“I’m so sorry,” Kensie whispered back, remembering that moment in their front yard, the defining moment in her life. When she’d read a book while Alanna had run around the yard, too close to the street. When a car had sped up to their curb, slammed to a stop, and the man inside it yanked Alanna away from them.
Alanna took her hands. “It’s not your fault.”
Kensie burst into tears. It hurt her lungs and her face, which she’d only started to feel again in the past hour. Wiping her tears away with her arm so she could keep hold of her sister’s hands, Kensie gave a shaking smile. “I’ve missed you so much.”
From the corner of her eye, she spotted Colter and Rebel, standing in the doorway of a hospital room. They were sliding quietly backward, obviously trying to let her and Alanna have a private reunion.
But there’d have been no reunion at all if it weren’t for the two of them. Keeping her right hand gripped in Alanna’s, she turned her head and held out her left for Colter.
He seemed a little unsure, but Rebel limped over immediately, pushing her way in between Kensie and Alanna and making Alanna laugh.
Kensie’s heart felt so full at the sound. As her sister petted Rebel, Kensie stretched her hand out farther, silently imploring Colter.
When he stepped carefully toward her on bandaged feet and placed his hand in hers, she squeezed tight. She never wanted to let go of any of them, ever again.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there, in the hospital hallway, huddled together and smiling at each other, until Alanna suggested, “Let’s sit.”
The pain in her leg had actually been forgotten, seeing Alanna safe, but now it returned in a wave of agony. She wasn’t supposed to be standing on it yet, let alone walking.
They must have been quite a sight, limping into her hospital room. Once she was seated, Colter beside her, Alanna on the empty bed across from them and Rebel on the ground between them, Kensie asked, “What happened all these years, Alanna?”
As soon as the words were out, she wanted to call them back. What if her sister had been terribly abused? What if it hurt her too much to talk about it? Was Kensie prepared to hear what Alanna had endured?
Colter’s fingers slid through hers, squeezing gently, lending her strength, and Kensie tried to stay strong for Alanna.
But her sister shook her head. “It’s not what you’re thinking. They were...good to me.”
“Good to you? They kidnapped you, Alanna! They stole you from us for fourteen years!”
“I know. And all that time, I tried so hard not to forget you and Flynn, and Mom and Dad. I tried so hard to protect my memories. It wasn’t easy. I was five. But I still have good memories. I was one of the lucky ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw them, right? At the cabin?”
The other kids. Kensie had assumed they were the Altiers’s
