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I stand alone in the security room.

The monitors show empty desert.

Quiet roads.

No threat within miles.

But I know better than to mistake quiet for safe.

Navarro is still out there.

Daniel Price has files on missing girls.

For the first time since Sage walked onto my property, I understand something.

Finding my daughter wasn't the end of this.

It was the beginning.

12

SAGE

Iwake up at two forty-seven in the morning.

For several minutes, I stare at a ceiling I don't recognize.

Then everything comes back.

Sean.

Hayley.

The mine.

Navarro.

Daniel Price.

Twenty-one girls.

My mother sleeping down the hall.

My father somewhere inside this house.

I pull the blanket over my head.

That doesn't help.

I count backward from one hundred.

That doesn't help either.

At three-oh-two, I give up.

There are some things sleep can't fix.

Baking usually can.