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“Okay,” she said quietly.
Before I began, I said to Andrea, “Would you please go check on the girl in the next room? Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I’m done here.”
“I’m here,” a soft voice said from the doorway.
I looked over to see a too-thin girl who looked maybe fourteen or fifteen. She had light-brown skin and long black hair that would have been beautifully luxurious under better circumstances. Now it was a tangled mess. She wore a barely-there black negligee. She stood uncertainly in the doorway, her dark-brown eyes darting from me to Andrea, no doubt trying to judge whether or not we were trustworthy.
Andrea waved her in. “Come on in, darlin’. I’m Andrea, and this is Liam. Liam is a nurse, and he’s just checking out Trisha to make sure she’s okay to travel.”
“I’m Lily,” the girl said. “What do you mean to travel? Are you getting us out of here?”
“We sure are,” Andrea said.
“Where are you taking us?” Lily asked.
“To a hospital in Harrisburg,” I replied. “On the way there, we’ll call your parents to meet us there.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Really?” She put her hand over her mouth. “I thought…” Her tears fell and she crumpled in on herself. “I thought I was going to die here.”
Andrea got up and took the distraught girl in her arms. “I know, honey. We’re so glad we found you.”
I did a quick visual scan of Lily. “Andrea, are you trained in field assessment?”
“I sure am,” she replied.
“Okay. I have a feeling we’ll have to hurry things up, so could you do an assessment and let me know if she needs anything more than bandages for those wrist abrasions?”
“You got it.” She grabbed a set of clothes and a paper bag and took Lily to a chair in the corner of the room while I returned to assessing Trisha.
I had just finished bandaging Trisha’s wrists when Marco poked his head in. “Five minutes. Wrap it up.” Then he was gone.
I helped Trisha up and gave her the clothes we’d brought for her to change into—drawstring sweatpants and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that was way too big for her. I took the negligee she had been wearing, put it in a paper bag, and wrote her name on it. Andrea bandaged Lily’s wrists and gave her clothes to change into.
Samara came in with Kayla, whose left eye was swollen, and said, “I just need an ice pack for her face. That asshole hit her.”
“That’s because I scratched his ugly face,” Kayla said rather proudly. I didn’t even try to hide my smile. Kayla was already wearing the too-big sweatpants-sweatshirt combo and Samara carried a paper bag.
I pulled out a disposable icepack and handed it to Samara. After I put away the rest of my equipment and bagged the medical waste, I said, “Let’s go.” Andrea handed me the bag with Lily’s name on it as we headed down the hallway.
Deshawn was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. When Kayla saw her big brother, she cried out and threw herself into his arms, sobbing. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. The girls warily eyed the two bound and hooded men in the corner of the room. The man I assumed to be Ephraim Little was muttering under his breath and pulling at the zip ties binding his wrists and ankles to a wooden chair. The other man was eerily still. I wondered if he was in shock. I mentally shrugged. Served him right.
Michael approached us and quietly got the parents’ names and phone numbers from Trisha and Lily, promising to call them as soon as we were on the road.
Marco looked at our little group and frowned. “No shoes.”
It took me a second to realize what he was saying. Then I smacked myself on the forehead. I’d forgotten to bring shoes for the girls. “We’ll just have to carry them,” I said.
Trisha let me carry her, Andrea took Lily, and Deshawn carried his sister. As we left the house, I was surprised at how quiet a group of very large men could be. We all made our way as quickly as we could through the trees and back to the vehicles. The air had turned bitter, and Trisha was shivering in my arms by the time I got her into the SUV that would take her to the hospital. Luckily, there were blankets ready for the girls to wrap themselves in.
As Marco and I headed toward his car, I happened to look up when we hit a break in the trees. Because there were no street or city lights for miles, I could see so many stars. “Wow,” I breathed. “I really miss being able to see the stars.”
Marco stopped walking to look up. “Yeah, that’s a lot more than we can see where we live.”
“It’s one of the few things I miss about being in Lebanon.”
Marco huffed. “I’ll bet you can find a place to stargaze in New Jersey.”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
