Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Window
I crept to the back kitchen window, lifting the floral curtain by a fraction of an inch.
Standing near the loose cedar board in my backyard fence was a woman.
It was Elena Vance.
She looked skeletal. Her dark hair was matted into a greasy ponytail, and she was wearing an oversized men's flannel shirt that hung loosely over her sunken shoulders. Her face was pale, with dark purple rings carved beneath her hollow eyes.
She was on her hands and knees in the damp grass on her side of the fence, frantically whispering through the gap where a loose board had slipped away.
"Lily? Mia? Baby, please..." she sobbed, her voice barely louder than the wind. "Please, God, please..."
I looked at the twins. Lily was staring at me, her eyes wide with recognition. "Auntie Ellie?" she whimpered.
My heart shattered. Elena wasn't Marcus's partner in crime—she was a prisoner who had risked everything to help the girls escape.
I made a split-second decision. "Stay here," I instructed the girls firmly. "Do not move from this bench."
I hurried to my back sliding glass door, unlocked it smoothly, and slipped out onto the deck. Staying low beneath the wooden railing, I scurried across the cold lawn to the boundary fence.
"Elena!" I hissed through the gap.
The woman gasped, jerking back in sheer terror. She raised her hands defensively, trembling so hard she could barely breathe. "Please," she cried quietly. "Please don't tell him. Don't let him hurt them."
"Elena, look at me!" I said, pressing my face close to the opening. "My name is Clara. Lily and Mia are inside my house. They are safe. They are eating breakfast."
Elena froze. Her eyes went impossibly wide, and she clutched her chest as if her heart might physically burst through her ribs. "They're... they're alive? He didn't find them?"
"They're unharmed," I assured her. "I have Captain Miller from the State Police mobilizing a SWAT team right now. They're minutes away. Unmarked units. You need to get out of that house, Elena. Slip through the fence right now. Come inside with me."
For a second, hope illuminated her exhausted face. But then, a look of profound horror replaced it.
"I can't," she choked out. "The SUV... he has the keys in his pocket. He has a police scanner inside the kitchen. Clara, it just went off! He heard an encrypted alert on the county tactical channel. He knows something is wrong!"
A sudden, violent bang echoed from inside Number 412—the sound of an interior door being kicked off its hinges.
"Elena!" Marcus's roar boomed from the back porch of his house, vibrating with unhinged rage. "Where the hell are you?!"
"He knows," Elena whispered, her face draining of all color. "He's going to check the bins. He's going to realize they're in your house. Run, Clara! Hide them!"
"Elena, come through the fence!" I reached my hand through the gap, grabbing her sleeve.
"No! He’ll shoot through the wood! I'll distract him—I'll run toward the street!"
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Before I could stop her, Elena wrenched herself free and bolted toward the front driveway of Number 412, screaming at the top of her lungs: *"Marcus, they ran toward the woods! I saw them in the woods!"*
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