“Take me away from here, please. I need to find my mom and dad. My sister. My friend. Please take me somewhere safe. Please. Please, I’ll do anything. They’ll pay you. I promise.” She started to cry and I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her close, patting her back awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to do, how else to comfort her, but she never said a word. Just cried on my shoulder, her tears soaking through my shirt, her painful sobs hurting me, too. My chest ached. My throat and eyes burned.
I’d never seen such an outpouring of emotion and fear. Never had someone affected me this way. I felt her sobs, muffled by my shoulder, wrack her thin, trembling body.
What had my father done to her?
I couldn’t begin to imagine.
“We’ll leave,” I whispered as I tentatively rested my hand on her hair. Anything I could do to reassure her. “Later tonight.”
She leaned away from me, the horrified expression on her face one I’d never be able to forget. “What do you mean, later?” She shook her head. “I can’t wait. I have to get out of here now.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I said firmly.
“He’ll come back,” she countered. “Ev-every time he comes back, it’s worse. I don’t know if I can—if I can stand it.”
I took a deep breath, pushing all thoughts of what he might have done to her firmly from my brain. “It can’t be helped. I have to prepare first.”
“Prepare what?” she practically shouted. She pulled out of my embrace, pressing herself against the wall, like she couldn’t stand to be near me. The chains clanked against the floor, reminding me that she was a fucking prisoner, and disgust filled my stomach, making me nauseated. It took everything within me not to turn my head and puke my guts out. “Do you have the key?”
I frowned. “Key to what?”
“To these?” She lifted up her bound wrists, then her foot, showing the tiny lock that held the chain onto her ankle. “I need these chains off.”
I shook my head, feeling unprepared. How was I going to get that damn chain off of her? “I need to find bolt cutters.”
“You need to get me out of here is what you need to do. Now.” She stressed the last word, her tears all dried up, determination written all over her face. Her blue eyes shone, still damp with tears, and I was suddenly taken with the realization of how pretty she was. “He’s going to kill me, you know.”
My mouth went dry. How could she be so composed, so calm, while she said that? “No he won’t.”
She started to laugh but it sounded crazy. Like maybe she was losing her mind. “He will. I’ve seen the look in his eyes. He’s—he put his hands around my neck, like he wanted to choke me to death.” She was crying again, though I don’t know if she realized it. “He can’t let me go. He has to kill me. I’ve seen his face. I’ve seen his everything.”
She turned away from me, pressing her face into the wall, like she couldn’t stand looking at me any longer, and I kneeled there on the disgusting mattress, feeling helpless. Hopeless. Then anger surged through me, making my blood spark with fiery heat, and I clutched my hands into fists. “I won’t let him touch you ever again.”
She didn’t bother looking at me. “Go away.”
Her words shocked me. Didn’t she want my help? Or had she already given up? “Tell me your name,” I demanded rather than asked. I wanted to tell her mine, to give us a connection.
“No.” She glared at me from over her shoulder, her hair flopping over one eye. “Leave me alone. You don’t really want to help me. You’re too scared you’ll get caught.”
I could hardly begin to comprehend what she said to me. She couldn’t mean it. Was she willing to give up everything, her entire life, so she could . . . what?
Die at the hands of my father?
Screw that. Fuck that. I refused to let that happen. I was going to save her. I had to. It was the only choice.
“I’ll be back,” I told her as I stood and brushed off the front of my jeans. She still wouldn’t look at me, her face mashed into the wall, her shoulders gently shaking, as if she was still crying.
Seeing that, hearing her quiet sobs . . . it broke my unbreakable heart.
I found her.
My pursuit of one Katherine “Katie” Watts was relentless. After watching her interview with Lisa Swanson, I spent almost a week scouring the Web for any bit of information I could unearth. Every news article I could find about the crime and her discovery, I read; some of it I’d seen before, after it first happened. Every crime documentary created about her, I watched on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix . . . all of them. Again and again. Over and over. Some I’d seen but many were new, coming out after I forced myself to let her go, pushing her and what happened between us out of my brain.
Now I was looking for a clue. A glimmer of truth, a bit of information I might’ve missed before.
It helped. After some slightly unethical searching on the Web, I discovered where she lived growing up, where she went to elementary school, and who her best friend was, the one that accompanied her the day she was taken. Her name had been withheld on the media but I scoured the court documents until I discovered it on the witness list.
Sarah Ellis was easy to find. Her Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts popped up with ease, even with all the other Sarah Ellises out there. But it didn’t look like she was in contact with Katie anymore, so there was no point in pursuing her.