Chapter Twenty-One: Alone
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She wakes up and Daddy isn't there.
Lex helps her get the juice out of the fridge. She pours it herself. She only makes a little mess.
They wait together and she doesn't cry. Daddy says she's brave. If she's brave now, it will make him happy when he comes back and she tells him.
She doesn't feel brave.
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Tony opens his eyes and Bea is sitting on the fold out couch staring at him with watery eyes. Even as he watches she shrinks back, Lex an indistinct form under her chubby arms.
"Love, what's wrong?" he asks and his voice is wrong, too far, too echoed, too hollow. He hurts, but not a physical ache. He hurts like he's being drawn apart from himself, peeled almost. Unravelled like a cheap wool. He looks down, expecting to see a thread of himself being pulled from his chest.
Fitz isn't there. For the first time in his life, he can't find her.
"It's gonna be dark soon," Bea says sadly, and whimpers.
"You're not scared of the dark," he says, looking about for his daemon with his breath catching in his throat. Panic draws his chest in tighter, drying his mouth and making his palms slick with sweat. He doesn't look at her because if he does, she'll see his fear. "You've never been scared of the dark."
"But you're gone," his daughter continues dully. "You're gone and the switch is too high." He turns and looks at her now, and her face is tortured. "It's gonna be dark."
"Get Lex to turn it on," he says, walking towards her with his arms held out. She doesn't move and she doesn't get closer, and he's unravelling more with every step. "He can be a bird. Get him to be a bird and turn the light on. I'll be home soon, I'm coming, I promise-"
She begins to cry.
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Tim follows behind Gibbs' heels as they step into the bleach-sharp scented air of the hospital.
"The chances of it being him are slim," Langer complains quietly, earning himself a blank-faced stare from Ziva that's just a shade away from being a threat. "How many of these wild-goose chases have we been on now? Shepherd daemons are common. John Does are common. We're chasing a guy who's probably relaxing on a beach somewhere better than here."
"Would you like to share your feelings with Gibbs?" Ziva asks sweetly. The gentleness to her tone is belied by Farif peeling back black-rimmed lips to snarl silently at Langer's skunk. "I could arrange for you to discuss this opinion. I am sure he will take it… pleasantly."
Tim's pretty sure Gibbs doesn't know the meaning of the word 'pleasant.'
"You lot done yammering or are we gonna stand here all day?" the man himself barks, appearing out of nowhere and glowering darkly at Langer. Langer swallows and looks at his feet.
"What room, Boss?" Tim asks, changing the subject quickly. Gibbs' eyes flicker to the nurse station and the nurse watching them.
"Not here," he says finally, and Kali closes her eyes. "Their John Doe got moved to the DICU as soon as they stabilized him."
Tim goes cold. Gibbs doesn't wait for another answer, just turns and walks off with a determined stride.
Daemoniatrics Intensive Care. It's where they send those with daemons so badly injured their human's lives hang by a thread. It's where they send those without daemons at all.
It's invariably the place they send those that are dying.
"Let us hope you are right, Langer," Ziva says after a second has passed and they've all processed that. "I think it would be best that this is not Tony."
But it is.
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Bea is gone and Fitz still isn't there.
It's two years ago and his father is angry.
"You're content to slink around from hovel to hovel like a rat to hide from this guy," he's saying, and Kiyake is chattering furiously from his cupped hand. "Draw him out! Draw him back to DC and end this!"
"And Bea?" the memory of Tony is saying coldly. Tony stares at himself, at the daemon by his side that's his but not really. His face is smooth where Tony's is lined and he's healthier, heavier, stronger in ways that he won't be in the years to come. "Do you want me to hang her on a hook like bait on a line? Ari will kill her first. Just like her mom."
"I'll take Elizabeth." With his father's words, both Tonys' breath catches. The memory of Fitz growls, ears folding back. "I'll keep her safe while you stop this. You can't raise a daughter on the run."
Tony knows what comes next. Six months was far too long a time for Senior and Junior to play nice; this moment was a long time coming. No one is surprised. "You can't raise a daughter at all," Tony says coldly, turning his back on his father. "Don't pretend to know what I'm capable of."
Tony closes his eyes to shut out the words that have followed him for the past years. A bark of cold laughter from his father, and now that he's not angry, Tony can also hear the fear and worry hidden in that laugh. "You'll be the death of her," his father says, and Tony agrees with him, now. "If anything happens to my granddaughter that you could have prevented, I'll never forgive you."
Neither will I.
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They point him to a room. Until the moment he walks in, deep down he still doesn't believe it's gonna be Tony laying in the bed.
But it is.
Gibbs stops and when he stops, everything stops with him. There's his team bickering in muted voices behind him, there's the hushed bustle of the DICU, there's the whistling beep of the machines keeping the man in front of him alive.
There's the man in front of him. And there's his daemon.
Now that Gibbs has found him, he doesn't know what to do.
Tim almost walks into him; he hasn't seen yet. Ziva is smiling behind him, catlike, probably just said something biting to Langer. Langer looks bored. None of them know yet, he's blocking the door.
Tim looks at him and his face goes white. Gibbs wonders what his own looks like.
Kali shrinks around his leg. It's only been seconds.
"Fitz," she gasps finally, and moves forward like she's the one wounded, sluggishly and painfully, her eyes locked on the bed containing the silent form of the shepherd. "Fitz?"
"Oh my god, Tony," Tim says, and pushes past. "Holy… it is him. He's alive."
Barely.
He's grey under the tubes and wires forcing his body to keep moving and Gibbs steps forward slowly, overtaking his shocked fox, picking up the chart at the end of the bed. He can't look his friend in the face because his eyes are dark smudges against that grey and his expression is hopelessly blank. He's unconscious and Gibbs is almost glad for it.
He scans the chart. Tony's fine. Ish. He'll heal anyway. Surgery went well, full recovery expected, slowly.
Fitz. The damage is all in Fitz.
Ziva breaks the spell. "He is here," she says, and Gibbs almost shouts 'no shit!' at her. "If he is here… where is his daughter?"
Tim and Gibbs turn as one to look at her.
He shoves away all of the shock, the fear (the pain), and barks, "Call Abby, now. Trace his phone, his car, whatever he has, trace it. McGee-"
"Talking to the nurse, on it Boss," McGee says, gone in a second. Langer vanishes to call Abby. Ziva is still watching him.
"Ziva," he begins, and she settles back against the wall with an ease that suggests she expects to be there a while.
"I will stay," she says, nodding slowly, and glancing at Tony. "If we have found him… others… may have too. You go."
He doesn't need to say anymore. She's part of his team now, and Tony has never stopped being part of that team either. She'll watch his back.
He calls for help because this is too important to do on his own.
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He's on the roof and Kate is standing with her back to him. He can't see Baoth.
"Kate," he calls, and reaches out a hand to brush against her shoulder. He wants her to turn and face him almost as much as he doesn't. He wants to see her face, her smile, hear her laugh, but she feels warm under his hand, alive, and it's a mockery of what she isn't anymore.
She turns and smiles sadly and it's the smile he remembers, but it's not the face.
"Elizabeth," he breathes, because it's his daughter grown with his eyes and her mother's smile combined to make something all of her own.
"Hi," she says, and turns her head just slightly against the wind and he knows what comes next but he's helpless to stop it. "Protection detail's over, Dad."
"No," he whispers and it happens anyway. The wind is against him but his face is still painted red. She falls, keeps falling, the smile still frozen on her face.
There's gold and red and a fox screaming; he's screaming too.
He's alone.
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The nurse looks almost frightened, and Tim would feel bad about that but he needs answers now.
"He was admitted with another man?" he demands. "Who? Can we speak with him?"
She shakes her head. "He died an hour after being admitted. I'm sorry. We have no records of your John Doe. No listed address, no next of kin, no nothing. There's nothing I can give you, Agent."
Think, Tim, think. He's not the same kind of cop as Tony, he never has been. He can't make the same deductive leaps, or reach the same conclusions in the same ways.
But he needs to try. Think, think… how would Tony find a guy with no digital records?
"The man who died," he says, brain whirring. Chitta is clinging so hard to his shoulder his collar is pulling tight against his throat. "Do you have records on him?"
Tony must know him. Somehow, Tony is connected to him.
She taps at her keyboard, slowly, so painfully slowly, and he twitches with the desire to grab it off of her. "Geoff Britten," she says finally. "Says here he owns a bunch of auto mechanic stores around Minneapolis. No next of kin listed either. I have an address, if that helps?"
"Yes." He grabs the slip of paper she writes off and almost forgets to say thank you in his haste to race back to the room.
Bea could be with anyone. One of Tony's girlfriends, or a neighbour, a boyfriend even. There are a thousand possibilities and each one of them is so much more likely than Tony leaving her home alone. How old is she now? Three? He wouldn't.
But working for Gibbs has taught him one thing. Always trust your daemon.
"We need to find her," Chitta says softly, and her claws bite into his shirt. "Quickly, Timothy."
He believes her.
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When he stops screaming he's in a house, five houses ago, and he's reading a book to Bea using candlelight. She keeps trying to reach for the flame and he keeps pushing it further away, finally bundling her up into his arms and mock growling into her hair as she giggles.
He doesn't giggle back this time.
He clings to her until she begins to kick angrily to get loose and he still doesn't let go.
"What are you doing?" asks Fitz from miles away, but he knows if he looks around she won't be there.
He doesn't answer.
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Ziva goes with Langer to the crime-scene, McGee taking over her watch. The police have already cleared it, having little interest in what their report refers to as 'gang violence.' They are wrong. Ziva might not know Anthony DiNozzo, but she knows Gibbs. And she doubts he would champion a man who would fall in with gangs.
"So, they got casings from two different guns," Langer says, pacing the dark patch on the cement where one or both of their victims had lain. "That means multiple shooters."
"We knew that already," Ziva says. "Tony would not have been taken down by one man."
Langer raises an eyebrow. "You know him that well do you?" he asks.
She shakes her head, eyes on Farif as he paces, his nostrils flaring. "No," she says shortly. "But Gibbs trained him. Gibbs trains the best." Farif begins to jog, chuffing back at her. He has found something.
"Blood," he says when she follows him outside into the alley. "Not Anthony's, nor Fitz's. I believe one of our shooters was injured as well."
When she turns, Langer is behind her. "Told you," she says smugly, gesturing to the splatters leading up the asphalt. "He made them bleed."
She is also sure that he will be fine. Gibbs does not train quitters.
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He's on his knees somewhere empty. There's nothing around.
Except when he looks up it's a room he knows, a familiar couch.
A hand touches his shoulder as someone crouches beside him. He's shaking. He's breaking.
He's long broken.
"Why didn't you kill Ari?" he asks the carpet, staring down, refusing to let the tears on his face show. He hurts, everywhere, but mostly in his soul and his heart. Fitz, he thinks, and knows she's dying, and he's helpless. "Why did you give up on us?"
The hand slips down his front and wraps around him, tugging him back into an awkward one armed hug. Tony lets himself fall back into that embrace, feeling a heart beating against his spine and the ghost of the man's breath on his neck.
"Never gave up on you," Gibbs says finally, brushing his lips against Tony's ear and making a noise like his heart is breaking too. "We never stopped looking. We're still looking. And we're never going to stop."
"I needed you," Tony is still saying, and he sounds plaintive. He hates himself for sounding like that.
"You've got me. I'm right here, if you'd just open your eyes."
He doesn't.
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McGee gives him an address. Gibbs goes alone.
As soon as he gets out his car and finds himself standing on the outskirts of a barely reputable mechanics garage, he's wondering what the hell he's doing here. He looks around at the stripped husks of cars and the piles of rubbish pushed up against wire fencing by the wind and he wonders what the hell Tony was doing out in the middle of the night with a man from this part of town.
But mostly he wonders just how far Tony would go to stay hidden.
The door of the office jingles when he walks in. There's a woman sitting behind the desk, her face tear-stained and thickly painted nails close to her mouth. She lowers her hand, swallowing and smiling weakly, the ends of her nails chipped by her teeth. "Britten Motors," she says with false cheer, and there's pink polish on her tooth. He stares at it as he steps up to the counter and drops a hand to his pocket, his badge. "How can I help you, sir?"
There's a drawing on the wall behind her. It's barely a drawing, just swirls of colours and lines, and pinned up proudly by a small hand. There's a name written across the bottom in neat cursive. He can't read it from here.
"NCIS," he says finally, pulling his badge, and she pales. Kali is around his feet, pacing. "Special Agent Gibbs. Your boss was killed last night, are you aware?"
She blinks, then nods slowly. "Mugged, I heard," she says, and she sounds calm enough that he believes she believes that. "This neighbourhood can be rough sometimes. Don't know what he was doing walking around at that time…"
Gibbs leans on the desk, watching her eyes flicker from his badge to his face nervously. "There was a man with him," Gibbs says. He keeps his voice cool. "Male, mid-thirties. Brown hair. German Shepherd daemon. You know him?"
He sees the exactly moment recognition hits her, overtaken seconds later by horror. "Tony!" she gasps, and his heart twists. "Oh my god, Tony; is he okay? He's not dead is he? Was he hurt?" She stands, flustered, reaching for the phone before pulling back and lifting her hand to her mouth again almost unconsciously. "He's dead, isn't he?"
"He's alive."
She closes her eyes with relief and visibly sags. "Oh thank god. Poor little Ellie, she must be so scared… do you know where she is? She must have been… oh god, was she with him?" The horror is back.
"Her location is unknown. Do you know where he would have left her? An address? A friend?" Gibbs tries to hide the sharpness to his tone, but every one of his nerves has started jangling at once, setting his teeth to buzzing.
The woman bites at her lip, and taps away at her keyboard. "No," she says slowly. "He's… he's not going to be in trouble is he? You're just here looking for Geoff's killer? Oh, you don't… you don't think it was Tony do you? He wouldn't! He's the straightest one here. I mean, not that… You've flustered me, Agent Gibbs. I'm not… not the rambling type, usually."
Gibbs takes pity on her. "He works under the table. You don't know anything about his life outside of work. He doesn't have friends or relationships that you know of, and doesn't share any personal information. No listed details. Correct?"
Another nod. "He's just a very private man," she insists loyally. "He has nothing to hide. But… well, if anyone knows anything, Rabbit might. I can… he should be here."
Gibbs stares silently and she reaches for the phone.
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There's still an arm around him, but it's different now.
He's not scared to look at her this time because they're not on a roof and she's looking at him like she loves him.
"I miss you," he tells Kate, and her mouth twists into a wry smile. She hugs him close and he holds her closer. He's not letting go this time.
"Idiot," she mutters into his chest. He feels her jabbing him with her finger, right in the spot where the first bullet slammed through his gut. "You're supposed to be the one shooting the baddies. Didn't Gibbs teach you anything?"
"Taught me how to fetch coffee," Tony says, and she slaps him across the back of the head. Ow.
He's missed that.
"You've done… Tony, you've been fantastic," Kate says, and now he knows he's hallucinating because not even a dead Kate is this nice. "Bea's grown up so smart and so pretty and you did that, on your own. And to think you thought you couldn't." She laughs and her arms tighten. He's not the only one who doesn't want to let go. "But it's time to go home, okay? Go home."
"I don't know how," he says helplessly, but he's alone again, and drifting.
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Tim balances his laptop on his knees and makes the call, Tony still silent and immobile in the room behind him. He watches the video link blur and sharpen as the connection settles.
Abby peers back out at him and she's in her lab with Ducky and Palmer hovering behind, all their faces asking the same question. Waiting for the answer he doesn't want to give them.
"It's him," he says to that unspoken question, and then as a reply to the shocked breath that rattles through his speakers, "It's bad."
"How can we help?" says Ducky, always steady Ducky, and Tim is so damn thankful for him in that moment.
"Abby," he says sternly, and sees her face switch from horrified and on the brink of tears to coolly professional, with only a glimmer of the misery still within her eyes. She's gotten used to hiding her emotions over the past few years. "We can't find Bea."
Another shocked breath and the silence over the line is painful in its oddity. Abby is so rarely silent, when she is… Tim closes his eyes and waits for noise to bring them back to normality.
"Okay," Abby says finally, and when he opens his eyes, she's tying her hair back and looking determined. "Right, let's do this Timmy. What do we know?"
Tim tells her.
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He decides that if this is just a hallucination, he's going to have some damn control over it.
So he sits on the ground made of nothing and thinks of who he loves. Bea, Fitz, Kate, Gibbs, Abby, Ducky, Tim, James, Dad…
The ground is soft and a small hand touches his. He looks at her.
"Guess if I'm dying, there's worse last faces to see," he says, and she giggles. "Don't plan on dying though. I'm coming home kiddo."
"Okay," she says loyally and pats his knee. "Story?"
He tells her favourite. "Once there was a fox, black as the night, and this fox lost his family. So he found another, made of all kinds of animals..."
"Doggie," she says, and points behind him. "And a monkey."
"And a chameleon," says Fitz, and she's closer. Tony feels the couch sink under her weight and her nose taps against his elbow. He doesn't look at her, not yet. "And a kestrel."
"That's a bird."
"That's right. That's the bravest kind of bird."
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Rabbit turns out to be a weedy, squirrelly guy with a bear daemon that stands almost shoulder high to them both.
It still cowers back from Kali's cold gaze.
Rabbit turns out to know very little of use.
"He's a good guy, just private, ya know? Him and his kid, they just like to be left alone and…" Rabbit trails off and touches his daemon's shoulder, almost comfortingly. "He's my friend and it should have been me there that night. They wouldn't have fucked with Koe. She'd 'ave kicked all their asses and..."
He swipes a hand across his nose and there's a weird moment when Gibbs realizes that maybe Tony hadn't stopped living when he'd walked out of their lives. Despite his best efforts, he'd still drawn people to him, he still has people who care… he makes his choice.
"His daughter's missing," he says, and the bear grunts and sits up suddenly, soft eyes locked on his. "We don't have much time to find her."
When he walks out of that garage with a mobile number on the notepad in his hand, Fornell is leaning on his car.
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It gets dark.
"When's daddy coming?" she asks Lex. He's eating the rest of the bread. They're hungry.
"Soon," he promises.
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Ziva finds McGee sitting in the hallway outside Tony's room with his laptop closed on his knees and his face thoughtful.
"One of Tony's attackers was injured," she tells him, Langer hovering behind with his eyes trailing on the door to Tony's room. "By bullet or fang, I do not know. But likely bad enough that there is every possibility they are in this locale at this moment."
McGee's gaze darkens and she hides a smile. It has been a very long time since she would call him 'timid'. She would not like to be on the receiving end of that anger, nor Gibbs'.
"By fang?" Langer asks incredulously. "What daemon would hurt a human?"
Ziva dislikes this man. He is a fine agent. He is a torturously dull human being. "Farif would," she says without even looking at him. "Kali would. Fitz would. If given the choice between life and death, are you saying you would not utilize every tool available to you in order to survive?"
McGee makes a noise and surges to his feet, reclosing the laptop Ziva hadn't seen him open. "There's a man in ER being stitched up for injuries caused by a 'dog attack'," he says, glancing at Langer. "Stay here, Langer. We'll go question him."
"Question him, David!" Langer calls after them. "He's gotta be in one piece when you're done!"
Ziva snorts. "If he is the man who shot Tony, I doubt he is in one piece anyway," she tells McGee, who does not smile.
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"And the dog liked the fox very much, but he had to go away with his pup and hide."
"From the snake?"
"See, you don't need me to tell you this story. You know it already. What use am I?"
"You're silly."
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Gibbs finds his team standing outside the ER. Tim looks stressed. Ziva looks pissed. Neither look surprised to see Fornell.
"We talked to a man who ran afoul of Fitz' jaws," Ziva says. "He says he did not shoot her though, and I actually believe him."
"The hell would you believe him for?" Fornell asks, staring at her.
McGee swallows and looks at Gibbs when he answers. "Albert Simmons," he says, and Gibbs memory flickers. Why is that familiar? "Tony arrested him just after Bea was born. He… he says it was a drug deal, he outed Tony as a fed. That's what got him shot, they thought it was a bust."
Gibbs remembers. Simmons. He's supposed to still be in jail, why is he out? Out and… responsible for this mess.
Kali bristles and bares short fangs at the ER door.
"Abby ran his phone records," Ziva continues, nudging Farif with her leg out of the way of a nurse. "Gibbs, he was the one who called the ambulance. If not for him, no one would have found Tony."
"He would have died," Tim finishes. "He said he remembered that Tony has a kid and he called it in anonymously before he came here. He saved Tony's life."
Gibbs turns his back on them and heads back to the room. Langer is there, alone. He hasn't been with them long enough for Gibbs to trust him alone. "Hasn't saved anyone yet," he calls back. "Tony's not outta the woods yet. And neither is Bea."
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"And the fox searched and searched, but he couldn't find the dog anywhere…"
"That's not the end. It has to have an end. All stories have ends."
"Not this one, little bug. Not yet."
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Gibbs got him a number. Tony's phone, or one of.
It's not enough. He can track it, track it plenty, but Tony hasn't been using it long enough. He's been swapping phones every few months, leaving them switched off for days at a time…
He's stonewalling them at every turn.
His laptop beeps. He's alone with Tony again. Gibbs and Fornell have gone… somewhere. Ziva and Langer are trying to track down Tony's car. It's night time, approaching midnight.
Abby calling. He answers. She's got her 'guilty' face on.
"Can I see him?" she asks, leaning close the camera. "Tony, I mean. I know you're with him. I can hear him beeping."
"He's…" Tim trails off and looks up at the bed. Chitta is on the end of the bed, hanging on the rail, watching Tony's heart monitor carefully. As Tim watches, he reaches across and climbs onto Fitz' bed, settling in in the fur of her belly and watching them both at once. "He's different, Abby. He's hurt bad, and he's been… struggling."
"I don't care," she says, her mouth settling into the stubborn line they all know and love. "Turn me, McGee. I need to tell him something. He'll hear me. Tony's always known when to listen."
He turns her and tries not to listen by closing his eyes and focusing on the rushing of blood in his head.
He forgets to stop listening after a while.
"… and now you gotta get better and come home because you have a beautiful little girl and we've waited too damn long for you, got it Tony? Too damn long. And Ziva works for us now and I know you didn't like her but I think you will, I really think you will, but you have to wake up first. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but deal's off. I'm giving them what I have. I don't think you'll mind, not this time. McGee, spin me again."
He does so. "What do you have? When did you get stuff? What do you have?"
She turns the webcam to her computer. There's a map with dark circles spanning it. "You gave me that number Gibbs gave you, and I used the numbers I already had and well, this is every tower that Tony has pinged in Minneapolis. Every one of them, but more importantly, there's also the ones he hasn't. Notably, Near North. Low income, high crime, lots of places to get lost in."
There are wide empty spaces on the map. There are also pale places, less often visited. Or maybe often visited, and just rarely turned on in... everyone makes mistakes. "Wait, the numbers you had?" Tim asks, and Abby looks down.
"No man is an island," she says sadly. "Gibbs wanted to keep Bea out the news, in case Ari saw it, but we're running out of time. He says if it hits twenty-four hours since Tony got brought in, it's going public, Ari or no Ari. I wasn't going to send this until I knew we… well, here."
A file pops up. Tim clicks accept.
Photos. Photos and photos and photos. Bea a baby. Bea a toddler. Bea a smiling preschooler holding a stuffed fox with a jaunty bow around its neck.
"You've been in contact with him all this time," Tim says.
Abby nods and still doesn't meet his gaze. "Gibbs doesn't know I still… but if we're getting an alert out, he'll need pictures. Someone has seen her. Bring her home, Tim. Both of them."
She hits the exit button before he can thank her and the feed is cut.
Tim wonders what he's going to tell Gibbs.
.
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Thirty-one hours.
Gibbs does not say anything when McGee tells him about Abby. He stares at the photos for a long time, his face impossible to understand.
Ziva takes one and examines it. Cute kid. No pictures of Tony. She is not surprised.
At one pm, they begin running the alerts.
"Missing child: Three-year-old Elizabeth Todd is believed to be alone in her home possibly located within the Near North District of Minneapolis after her father has been left in a critical condition following a shooting near Plymouth Ave North. Police are asking the assistance of the public in locating her. If you've seen this child or this man, please call the hotline number below. Please do not approach her. If you know anything, please call the hotline number below. We repeat; Three-year-old Elizabeth Todd is believed…"
"That's it," Langer says, carding his fingers through his hair. "Everything your friend has worked for; every sacrifice he's made to stay underground. Gone in an instant."
In all the months Langer has worked with them, he still has not worked out that Gibbs has ears as keen as his fox's.
"Doesn't matter, Langer," Gibbs snaps, staring at the TV screen. Outside the hospital room, police speak with the on-duty doctor. Nearby, Fornell's men stand guard. They expect Ari. Ziva is not so sure that they are wrong to expect him. "Important thing is we find her. We find her first, we keep her safe. Got it?"
"Roger that, Boss."
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Lex jumps up. He's a puppy now but bigger. More like Perte. He growls, "Someone's coming."
"Hide!" she whispers, because Daddy tells them to be careful. There are rules.
No opening the blinds.
No talking to people they don't know.
No opening the door.
And always, always hide if someone comes.
They climb under the couch, through the bars, and peek out. It's dusty. She almost sneezes but covers her mouth. Gotta be quiet when the snake comes.
They're crying. Dad, Lex mouths at her.
She wants him too.
The front door opens.