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I clamped my teeth together to keep from screaming again.

“Stop running!” The voice came from behind me, closer than before. “You won’t get far before we find you, little girl.”

I kept moving.

“You hear me? We’re going to find you!”

I heard my father’s voice in my heads.

Run, Adriana. Run.

He hadn’t said it out loud. There had been no time for that. But I had seen the command in his face as they dragged me from the room. His mouth had opened around a breath that never quite became a word.

Then the gun had fired and his body had folded. He had simply collapsed, as if someone had cut the strings holding him upright.

I had screamed his name.

One of the men had twisted my arm behind my back and forced me towards the door.

I had fought until something struck the side of my head.

Before the darkness took me, I had seen my father lying on the floor with his cheek pressed against the tiles.

His hand had been stretched towards me.

A sob broke through my chest.

I ran harder, but my knee buckled.

I hit the ground and slid through wet leaves. Mud filled my mouth. The cable tie caught on a root, wrenching my wrists apart until I thought my bones had split.

Footsteps pounded behind me.

I scrambled forward on my knees.

A beam of light swept through the trees.

“There she is.”

I threw myself behind a fallen trunk.

The torchlight moved across the ground where I had been seconds earlier.

I pressed my face into the wet earth and tried not to breathe.

My lungs refused. Each breath came sharp and loud. I swallowed them into my coat, biting the fabric to silence the sound.

The beam passed over the trunk. Stopped. Moved back.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Please.

The word formed without sound.

I didn’t know who I was begging.

The footsteps slowed. Leaves crunched on the other side of the trunk. I could hear the man breathing. He was close enough that the stale, rancid reek of cigarette smoke clung to the air between us.