Chapter 13 - Daniel Calls
Three days after the funeral, my phone rang at 2:07 a.m.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Silence.
Then breathing.
“Hello?”
“Sarah.”
I knew his voice before my brain accepted it.
I stood so quickly the chair fell.
“Daniel?”
He started crying.
Not loudly.
The kind of crying people do when their bodies are too exhausted for anything dramatic.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Are you safe?”
“For the minute.”
I signaled Caroline, who was staying with Emma and me.
She called police from another phone.
Daniel spoke in fragments.
After sending the message from the warehouse, he heard a vehicle outside.
He believed Ryan had returned.
Daniel escaped through the maintenance tunnel.
His ankle was injured.
He walked until he reached a drainage road.
Then hid inside an unlocked landscaping shed behind a closed motel.
The motel had been abandoned for renovation.
No people.
No working office.
Daniel slept.
Lost consciousness intermittently.
Eventually he reached a service station half a mile away and asked to borrow a phone.
“Stay there,” I said.
“I am.”
“Police are coming.”
Then:
“Sarah?”
“Yes?”
“Emma?”
“She’s safe.”
May you like
He exhaled.
That was the first moment I believed I might actually get my husband back.
