Chapter 35 - Nine Minutes of Water
The rescue began at 8:47 p.m. I know because I stared at the clock so hard I could still draw it from memory.
Agent Lin's team moved along the high path as firefighters checked the station's electrical feeds. They cut the chain, then found another lock on an interior stairwell. Below them water struck the concrete walls like someone beating an enormous drum.
Camille kept her phone turned so I couldn't see every detail. I could still hear instructions and short replies from the emergency channel.
"Lower level clear?"
"Negative. One occupied room."
"Water rising."
Elias had supplied the original maintenance maps from his company's records. He pointed out an old service hatch leading to a dry stairwell above the gate chamber. It wasn't an invitation for him to charge in. The firefighters used the map to plan a safer entry, and Elias waited under guard at the command vehicle.
At 8:56, a responder reported finding a woman handcuffed to a pipe in a windowless room. I stopped breathing. At 8:58, they had cut her free. At 9:00, the team carried her up the stairs as water exploded through a lower door.
Then the radio went silent.
"Say something," I begged Camille. "Please make them say something."
A minute passed. It might have been a year.
Finally Lin's voice came through. "Rebecca is alive. She's conscious. She's going to the hospital."
I cried without making any sound. Milo startled, then settled when I pressed him close. I wanted to tell him his mother was coming. But At the hospital, Mom looked smaller than I'd ever seen her. She had a split lip, bruises along her wrists, and a blanket pulled to her chin. When she saw me, her face collapsed.
"Oh, baby," she whispered. "My brave, stubborn girl."
I ran into her arms carefully, mindful of the IV line. "I thought you forgot us."
"Never." She touched Milo's head. "Not for a second."
She thanked Greta, Camille, Sonia, and the responders. Then she looked at Elias standing in the hall with a police officer nearby.
"You told them?" she asked him.
"Everything," he said.
Mom nodded. Her eyes filled, but she didn't absolve him.
When the doctors left us alone, she gripped my hand and whispered, "June, listen carefully. Harlan wasn't trying to make me erase the records. He made me sign a confession."
May you like
She swallowed hard.
"And he says you are the only person who can prove it was true."
