“Shannon?” I said. “It’s me, Peyton.”

The vacant look in her eyes didn’t seem to change as she frowned. “I don’t know you. Where is Collins? He said he would be back.”

She looked around me at the empty hallway. It seemed surprising to her that he wasn’t there. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was seeing. She was a shell of the woman who used to be my sister. Shaking my head, I took a step closer to her, but she backed away, her eyes slowly starting to focus . . . but no recognition came back. My eyes flicked to the end table where a hairbrush fashioned into a shiv was resting.

“Collins!” she screamed, looking past me.

“Shannon, he’s gone. We need to get you out of here.”

She ran to the corner of the room when I approached her again. I picked up the sharpened tool and looked her in the eyes.

“You see this? Why do you have this?” I whispered.

She shrugged, still looking frail. “It was from before, when I didn’t know any better. But I know Collins now. He loves me.”

I barked out a loud laugh. “Are you kidding me with this? He is a rapist!”

My loud tone brought Kane stumbling down the steps, his weapon raised. When Shannon saw him, her fear started once again. I backed away from her, taking Kane with me as I went. The last thing I wanted was to frighten her again. She had to be drugged. There was nothing physical that I could see wrong with her, but it was obvious that she was no longer mentally there with me. She calmed down once we backed away from her.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” I whispered to him when we were outside the room.

Kane shook his head. “I think that I know what’s going on.”

“Then do share,” I hissed. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than we need.”

We watched as Shannon started to slip away again, her fingers moving to a music that no one else could hear. She went to a small drawer and pulled out a pencil and paper before sitting at the desk. She started to draw, and I saw that she was losing herself in her artwork, just like the woman I used to know. Shannon was such an amazing artist. It was no wonder that was the last shred of sanity she was clinging to.

“She is broken, man,” said Kane. “There is no way that she is going to go with us willingly. Collins was her only link to the outside world.”

“So, you’re saying she’s got . . .” I let my voice trail off, trying to remember what it was called.

“Stockholm’s Syndrome,” offered Kane as he nodded his head. “If I had to guess, I would say so. What do you want us to do?”

“We need to get her out of here. I don’t trust that the woman upstairs was telling the truth.”

“I do,” he said softly. “Look at her. She isn’t going anywhere. She tried to yell for Collins when you first came in. She doesn’t need a guard anymore because he knows that she won’t run.”

My temper was boiling just beneath the surface, but I knew that my sister was in a delicate state. The last thing she needed was to see a man who was practically a stranger to her exploding with rage. I watched her as she started to draw, humming a tune that I didn’t recognize as she worked. There was nothing left of her but the artwork that had kept her calm over the years. I could only imagine the suffering she’d had to endure at the hands of Collins. I would find him, and I would make him suffer for what he had done to my baby sister.

“Got any suggestions for getting her out of here?” I muttered, defeated.

“Yeah, but let’s try seeing if she wants to go first. You aren’t going to like how I do it.”

“Shannon?” I said softly to her, taking a step closer since she was distracted by her art.

“Hmm?” she cooed, not looking up. “If you are here for lunch, tell Collins I don’t want anything today. I’ve been inspired.”

“Shannon, Collins told me to come and get you. We’re going to move to another location. Why don’t we go now so he doesn’t get upset?”

Her eyes shot up at me, full of anger. “You are lying. Do you think I’m an idiot? You aren’t with Collins. He told me men might come for me someday and that they would lie. He promised me we would never leave here. So, you must be here to hurt me.”

I shook my head, but it did no good. She jumped up from her chair and lunged at me. The pencil in her hand had become a deadly weapon. It nicked my neck, barely breaking the skin but showing just how far gone she really was. I jumped to the side, grabbing her arms and pinning them behind her as Kane shot forward. Before I could stop him, he plunged a syringe into her neck as she screamed like the wild woman she had become. Her resistance became weak as she continued to scream out for Collins to help her.

“What the hell was that?” I hissed at him.

He shrugged. “I knew you weren’t going to like it, but we need to get out of here. Otherwise, we might all end up buried in the back yard.”

“What did you give her, you son of a bitch?”

“Easy, man,” he muttered. “It’s just a mild sedative. I saw a car parked around back and figured we could hotwire it to get her back to the city. Did you want to stay here and keep trying it your way? Because that wasn’t looking too good for you.”

“Shut up,” I muttered. “Help me get her back upstairs.”

Kane had tried to warn me that I wasn’t going to like his way of doing it, and he was right. I didn’t like to see Shannon slumped over in my arms, but she did seem more at peace. Kane looked ashamed at what he’d done, but I couldn’t hold it against him. It was the only way we were going to get her out of there peacefully. He took her by the waist and grunted as she flopped over his shoulder. He carefully ducked under the low beams of the upstairs flooring and hauled her up the steps. I ran back into her room as an afterthought and grabbed the art supplies that I could find.

By the time I made it back upstairs, the hag from before was unconscious and tied up on the couch while the rest of my crew waited by the abandoned car outside. Kane nodded to me and I quickly jumped in the driver’s seat.

“I’ll send the boys out here for your bike. We’ll follow you back into town. Are you going to Rosa’s place?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t want her to see Shannon like this. She already blames herself for what’s happened. We will take her back to my place. At least there, we can try and get her back into one piece. I hope you planned on sticking around. I could use all the help I can get.”

Kane nodded and tossed me a set of keys. “I have to make this right. I will be there when Shannon wakes up, and I won’t leave her side until she’s all the way better, no matter how long it takes. The old lady inside had the keys on her. Guess she wasn’t gonna share that with us.”

“Thanks. Once this place is cleaned up, call the locals and get out of here. Do a drive by and make sure that Rosa is still okay.”

“You aren’t going to go out there?”

“No,” I muttered. “I need to deal with this situation and Collins before I go back to her. It’s not safe for me to be moving around all over town. For now, let’s just keep a close eye on her. Before you come back, grab us some supplies and more of whatever that drug you used on her was. I don’t like it, but we may need to use it again.”

I started the car and peeled away from the house. There was nothing more to say about the situation. In the back seat, Shannon moved in her sleep but didn’t wake. It took all of my strength to keep from breaking down. I wanted to call Rosa and tell her we’d found Shannon, but I knew she would want to see her old friend. In the state that she was in, Shannon would be a heartbreaking sight for Rosa. It was the last thing that she needed to be thinking about right now. A phone call wouldn’t hurt though.