Chris's brain did the worst thing it could do.
It went quiet.
For one long, suspended second, he just stood there, hand still on the basement doorknob, staring at the tiny safe room that should have held Ariel.
Bed. Neat.
Blanket. Folded back.
Pillow. Slightly dented.
No Ariel.
His heart slammed back into motion so hard it hurt.
"No," he said aloud.
Not like a denial. Like a command.
The safe room was too small for hiding places. He checked anyway—under the bed, behind the built‑in cabinet, the corners where shadows gathered. Nothing.
"She's not here," he called, voice cracking halfway through.
Mara's footsteps pounded down the stairs. She appeared in the doorway, breath a little short, eyes already sharp.
"Chris—"
"She's gone," he said.
Mara's gaze swept the room in a quick, ruthless assessment. Empty. The narrow mattress, the console, the unmarked walls.
"Door was closed when you opened it?" she asked.
"Locked," he said. "I used Arlo's code."
"Then she didn't walk out," Mara said. "Not the normal way."
A cold prickle crawled up his spine. "Then how—"
A faint sound cut him off.
Not from the room.
From his pocket.
A soft, unfamiliar buzz.
He froze, hand diving into his jeans. His fingers closed around something small and hard he didn't remember putting there.
He pulled out a tiny, flat chip—no bigger than his fingernail, matte black, no markings. It vibrated once, then again, like it was ringing.
"What is that?" Mara demanded.
Chris's mouth went dry. "I don't—"
The chip clicked.
And then, impossibly, a voice spilled into the room.
"Easy, Ariel," a man drawled, words warped faintly by tinny compression but unmistakable.
Reed.
Chris's blood turned to ice.
Mara's eyes went wide. She reached for the chip; Chris jerked his hand back on instinct.
"Don't crush it," she hissed. "If that's a line—"
"Ariel," Chris snapped, ignoring her. "Can you hear me?"
There was a rustle, a muffled curse, then a sharp inhale in the background. Not through the walls. Through the chip.
"Chris?" Ariel's voice came, thin and distant, like she was at the end of a long tunnel. "Oh, thank God—"
The relief hit him so hard his knees almost buckled. "Where are you?" he demanded. "What did he—"
"Now, now," Reed cut in, clucking his tongue. "Let's not blow out the girl's eardrums. It's a short‑range transmitter, not a miracle."bookraid
Chris's free hand fisted at his side. "Reed," he said, putting every ounce of loathing he could into the name.
"Present," Reed said lightly. "Well. Remotely present. Ariel, sweetheart, tell them you're alive so Johnson doesn't have an aneurysm on his nice clean floor."
"I'm… okay," Ariel said.
She didn't sound okay.
Her words were slightly slurred, like the edges of her pain meds had been sharpened into something else. There was a faint echo, like she was in a space bigger than the safe room. Her breath hitched once, and Chris heard the rustle of fabric, the clink of metal.
"What did you do to her?" Mara snapped, stepping closer, eyes blazing.
"Ah, Doctor Death," Reed said. "Pleasure. Just borrowed her for a bit. Think of it as… an off‑site consultation."
"Where. Is. She." Chris bit the words out.
"Not far," Reed said cheerfully. "Close enough that your toy chip can pick us up on a direct bounce. Far enough that if Arlo tries anything dramatic without listening first, this gets very unpleasant for our girl very fast."reddit
"Reed," Ariel said, voice sharper now despite the drag in it. "Stop playing."
He chuckled. "You wanted me honest," he said. "Here it is: your safe house? Not as safe as advertised. That panic room? Great design, terrible flaw. You can open it from the outside if you know where to drill."
Mara's stomach dropped. "You came in through the walls," she said.
"Ding ding," Reed said. "Give the lady a prize. Don't feel bad, Doc. Johnson never told you about the service tunnel, did he? Always did like his little secrets."wikipedia
Chris's grip tightened on the chip until the edges bit into his skin. "You took her out through the back?" he demanded. "Past all the cameras, past—"
"Relax," Reed said. "She walked. Mostly. I gave her a little… encouragement."
There was a tiny, ugly sound, like someone sucking in breath through their teeth.
"Reed," Ariel said, anger threading through the fear now. "Tell them. Or I will."
"Bossy," he said fondly. "Fine. They're going to find out eventually."
There was a faint beep. The quality of the sound shifted, like he'd adjusted something on his end.
"You remember that lovely little surprise you pulled out of her back?" Reed asked conversationally. "Cute design. Single channel. Line‑of‑sight relay. Amateur hour."
Mara's face went pale. "You put another device in her," she said.
"Relax, Doctor," Reed said. "I'm not a monster. This one's subdermal, lower dose, different frequency. Tiny thing, almost friendly. She didn't even feel it go in. Did you, Ariel?"
There was a beat.
"No," Ariel said quietly. "I didn't know until he… called."
Chris's heart tripped. "Called?"
"Through me," she said. "The first time."
Reed sounded pleased with himself. "Think of it as a panic button in reverse," he said. "Little chip, just under the skin. It vibrates, she hears me. No one else does. Very intimate. Very efficient. Very hard to detect without the right scanner."state
Mara looked like she might be sick. "Where," she asked, voice sharp.
Ariel hesitated. "Behind my ear," she said. "Under the hairline. On the left. I thought it was… a nick from the warehouse. Or the clinic. I didn't—"
Her voice broke on the last word.
"It's not her fault," Reed said. "She's had a busy week. And in my defense, I did try to warn you people your enemies weren't playing nice."
"You are the enemy," Chris spat.
"Semantics," Reed said. "Listen, I don't have time for group therapy. Here's the situation: Ariel and I are going to take a little trip. You're going to sit tight, play nicely, and wait for instructions. If you try to trace this signal, if Johnson sends anyone sniffing around the block, if either of you do something stupid with that pretty little dish on Mara's counter… this channel goes dark. And so does she."bookraid
"There is no version of this where I let you walk away with her," Chris said, voice low and lethal.
"Christopher," Reed said, and somehow made the full name sound like both mockery and something almost affectionate. "You didn't 'let' anything. You left a panic‑attack prone, freshly stitched girl in a house you knew had more exits than doors while everyone was licking their wounds. I just… took advantage of the opening."
Chris flinched like he'd been hit.
"Don't," Ariel said quickly. "Don't listen to him. I chose to walk. I shouldn't have, but I did."
"You didn't choose the tunnel," Mara said tightly.
"No," Ariel whispered. "I didn't."
"Look on the bright side," Reed said. "I didn't drag her out of bed. I asked her to come. Didn't I, Ariel?"
There was another beat.
"Yes," she said finally. "He… said if I didn't, he'd come through the wall anyway. And someone would get hurt trying to stop him. So I… went."
Chris's vision went red around the edges. "You should have woken me," he said, the words torn out of him.
"I tried," she said. "You were… tired. And I… I thought… if I kept him talking, if I went now, maybe…"
"You thought you could fix it," Mara finished quietly. "Like you always do."uppolice
Reed made an appreciative noise. "See? This is why I like her," he said. "Has a brain. Uses it. Unlike certain men who think punching their feelings counts as a plan."
"Reed."
Arlo's voice cut through, colder than the concrete under their feet.
He stood in the doorway now, eyes on the chip in Chris's hand, jaw so tight the muscles jumped.
"Ah, there he is," Reed said, tone brightening. "The man of the hour. I was starting to think you'd let your underlings run the show."
"You have something that belongs to me," Arlo said. Each word was precise, deadly quiet.
"Oh, Arlo," Reed said. "This is why we never quite clicked. You always talk about people like they're assets. Ariel doesn't belong to you. Or to Chris. Or to Harry. Or to anyone else who thinks they can slap a label on her and call it protection."
He paused.
"That said," he added, "you're not wrong that I have her. For now."
"What do you want?" Arlo asked.
"Straight to business, as always," Reed said, sounding faintly disappointed. "I want what I told you I wanted: a fair shot at burning your buyer to the ground without getting my head blown off in the process. You refused to give me that inside your walls. So I'm taking the leverage outside."
"You think using her as a bargaining chip is going to make me more inclined to help you?" Arlo asked.
"I think," Reed said mildly, "that you care enough about her now that the threat of losing her will make you do things you otherwise wouldn't. That's what leverage is, Arlo. I learned it from watching you."jennamoreci
Ariel sucked in a breath. "Reed—"
"Relax," he said softly, some of the sharpness dropping away. "I'm not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I told you that. I meant it. But I am going to use the fact that they believe I might. That's the only language your buyer understands."
Mara stepped forward, eyes hard. "You put another device in her," she said. "You sabotaged our safe house. You ripped her out less than twelve hours after we pulled one bug from under her skin. Forgive me if I'm not moved by your moral high ground."
Reed sighed. "You're right," he said. "You're allowed to hate me. Hell, Ariel's allowed to hate me. But if we're making a list of people who turned her body into a listening post, maybe don't put me in the top three."
Chris made a harsh sound. "I swear to God—"
"Swear to her," Reed interrupted. "Because here's the game: you're going to listen. You're going to let me make contact again on my terms. And you're going to wait until I tell you where to send Arlo's pretty soldiers. If you don't, if you call in something heavy and she ends up in the crossfire…"
His voice went flat.
"Then all of this was for nothing," he finished.
The chip buzzed faintly in Chris's hand, like it was picking up the echo of Ariel's heartbeat.
"Ariel," Arlo said, ignoring Reed. "Look at me."
There was a small pause.
"I can't see you," she said. "But I'm listening."
"We're coming for you," he said. "On our terms. Not his. Do you understand?"
"You're going to… blow something up," she said, a frayed edge of humor in the words.
"Eventually," he said. "But not before we know exactly where you are. In the meantime, you do whatever you have to to stay breathing. Talk. Stall. Lie. Make him underestimate you. You're good at that."
"Flatterer," she murmured.
His throat tightened. "We don't break," he said. "You hear me? Not you. Not us."
There was a beat.
"Okay," she whispered.
Reed cleared his throat loudly. "This is all very moving," he said. "But we're on a schedule. Ariel and I have a date with a very unpleasant man and an even more unpleasant server farm. I'll be in touch."
"Reed," Chris said. "If you hurt her—"
"If I hurt her," Reed said calmly, "you will never stop hunting me. I'm aware. Lucky for both of us, I'm not suicidal."
"And if someone else hurts her because of you," Arlo added, voice like a blade, "there won't be a corner of this city you can crawl into that I won't turn inside out."
"See, that is the Johnson I know," Reed said, amused. "There might be hope for you yet. In the meantime, maybe check your walls. And your assumptions. And that dish on the counter. You're not as untouchable as you think."
The line crackled.
"Ariel," Mara said quickly. "One to ten. Pain?"
"Seven," she said faintly. "Annoyance, nine."
Mara's mouth twisted. "Good enough," she said.
"Stay alive," Chris said.
"I'm working on it," Ariel replied.
The chip clicked.
Silence dropped like a curtain.
For a second, no one moved.
Then Chris closed his hand around the chip, as if he could keep the faint warmth of her voice trapped there.
Mara exhaled shakily. "Okay," she said. "We have a kidnapped girl with two fresh surgical sites, a freelance lunatic playing double agent, and a buyer who just found out his favorite bug got evicted."
She looked at Arlo.
"Tell me you have a plan that doesn't end with everyone bleeding out in a warehouse," she said.
Arlo's eyes were ice.
"I don't yet," he said. "But I'm about to."
He took the dead tracker dish from the counter, set it next to the chip in Chris's palm—two tiny pieces of tech, one cold, one humming with recent use.
"They wanted to listen to her," he said. "They forgot we can listen back."
His gaze flicked between Chris and Mara.
"Get me everything you can out of these," he said. "Frequencies. Ranges. Any scrap of metadata. Reed thinks he's the only one who knows how to turn a body into leverage."
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
"He's wrong."
The house felt wrong without her.
Too quiet in the places where her voice had started to live. Too loud in the places where it didn't.
They had torn it apart.
Every room, every cupboard, every hidey‑hole Arlo had paid good money to have built and then forgotten about—opened, checked, crossed off. The street cameras had been scrubbed frame by frame. The system's logs had been pulled and dissected, looking for glitches, gaps, anything.
There was nothing.
One minute, Ariel on the basement feed, standing in front of the panic room door, pajama shirt hanging loose, hand reaching for the keypad.
The next, static.
Then a clean, empty field of data as if the feed had never existed.
"We're missing eight minutes," Arlo said, staring at the code waterfall on his laptop like he could bully it into giving him different numbers. "Camera cuts, comes back. No door opening. No one going in. No one coming out."
"Glitch?" Mara asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"Glitches don't erase logs," he said. "Someone got inside the system. They saw her go down. They wiped their own footprints."
They were in the small sitting room again, but the soft light from earlier had gone hard. The coffee table was buried under printouts and devices—Arlo's laptop, Mara's tablet, a scattering of USB drives like autopsy tools.
Chris paced.
He'd been pacing since they realized the safe room was empty, the bed undisturbed, the small space smelling only of metal and recycled air. Since they'd reviewed the footage and seen… nothing. A blank space where the most important eight minutes of Ariel's life should have been.
"Could she have walked out?" Mara asked, grasping at anything. "Jam the camera, make it look like—"
"She can barely stand upright on her own," Chris cut in. "She didn't jam anything. Someone did it for her."
Reed's name sat unsaid in the center of the room.
Arlo's hands stilled on the keyboard. "Front and back street feeds show a delivery van at the exact time stamp of the cut," he said. "Parked two houses down. No plates I recognize yet. Same model as one of Reed's shells."
"So he watched," Chris said hoarsely. "Waited until she was alone. Killed the cameras. Used your door."
"Our door," Arlo corrected. "He wouldn't have access without me."
That truth sank like a stone.
They'd spent the first frantic hour chasing any lead they could think of. Arlo had called every person he trusted even a little. Mara had pinged hospital contacts. Chris had swallowed his pride and reached out to a cop who owed him a favor, asking about any unmarked vans stopped in the last two hours.
Nothing.
The world outside the safe house kept turning.
Inside, time had started to stutter.
Chris stopped pacing finally, standing in the middle of the room like he'd forgotten how to move forward or back.
"She was right there," he said quietly. "Down a flight of stairs. In a box you built. And I let myself get distracted by dishes and conversation and—"
Mara stood from the couch. "Don't," she said.
His laugh was jagged. "What, blame myself?" he said. "It's the only thing I have any control over right now."
"You were ten minutes away," she said. "Not a continent. You didn't check out. You didn't run. Someone ripped her out from under all of us. That's not on you."
His hands clenched at his sides, knuckles white. "It is," he said. "I knew he was reckless. I knew Reed doesn't obey rules unless they're his. I should have—"
"You should have done what, exactly?" she demanded. "Chained her to the bed? Stood guard at every door twenty‑four seven? You can't turn her into a prisoner because other people keep trying to make her one."
His jaw worked. "I didn't save her the first time," he said. "When the car crashed. When they split us. I didn't find her in time when Harry moved her into his world. And now… now she's gone again, and I was in the kitchen telling stories about canned peaches."
His voice cracked on the last word.
Mara crossed the space between them in three quick steps.
"Chris," she said.
He shook his head once, as if trying to dislodge the images. "Every time I start to think I'm catching up," he said, "that I'm finally where I'm supposed to be—at her side, not across a street or behind a screen—someone reaches in and pulls her away. And I am always, always a step behind."
His breath hitched.
"I couldn't save my sister," he whispered, the word slipping out before he could drag it back. "Not then. Not now. Not—"
He cut off, eyes squeezing shut like he could will the confession back into his throat.
Mara's heart stuttered. She'd suspected. The way he watched Ariel, the weight of his fear didn't match a hired guard or a man paying off a debt.
She didn't say anything.
She just stepped in and wrapped her arms around him.
For a second, he stood stiff as a board, every muscle locked. Then something broke. His hands came up, fingers gripping the back of her shirt like a man trying not to go under.
"I can't do this again," he said into her shoulder. "I can't stand in another empty room and—"
"You're not in an empty room," she said firmly. "You're here. We're here. She's out there. This isn't the end of the story, Chris. It's a terrible chapter, but it's not the last one."
His chest shook against her. He didn't make a sound, but Mara felt the tremor all the way through both of them.
"Breathe," she said softly. "In. Out. You can't find her if you pass out on my floor."
He huffed a broken laugh that wasn't really a laugh. "Is this your medical advice?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "Keep the heart beating. That's step one."
Behind them, Arlo stared at the screen like it had personally betrayed him.
He didn't know what to do with the sight in front of him—his fixer, the man who could walk into gunfire without blinking, folded against Mara like someone had cut the strings holding him up.
He'd built his world on being the one others leaned on. Not the other way around.
Hope, for Arlo, had never been a strategy. It was a liability. Something that made you hesitate when you should strike. Something that made you put your hand out when you should keep it on the trigger.
He felt it now, thin and stubborn, refusing to die even as logic lined up the facts against him.
Ariel. Gone. Reed. A man who walked the same edges of morality Arlo did, but with different lines in the sand.
Reed wouldn't kill her. Not yet. Not like this.
He kept repeating that to himself, like it was an axiom and not a wish.
"He took her alive," Arlo said, voice rough. "He jammed the cameras instead of putting a bullet in them. He got close enough to use my door. That means leverage. He wants something."
"Us," Mara said, pulling back from Chris just enough to look at Arlo. "He wants us scrambling."
"Good," Arlo said. "He can have that. But he's not walking away with her."
His hands slid over the keyboard again, lines of code flashing by. He dug deeper into the system, looking for any echo of the interference, any signature Reed might have left. A calling card. A pattern.
Nothing.
Hope frayed.
His mind did what it always did under pressure: generated contingencies. If Reed was acting alone. If Reed was working for the buyer. If the buyer had given the order. If this was about Ariel's information. If this was about Ariel, full stop.
For the first time in a long, bloody career, Arlo realized there was a scenario on the list he could not contemplate without feeling something crack.
If we don't get her back.
Mara's hand slipped from Chris's back to his shoulder, anchoring them both.
"We'll find her," she said.
"You can't promise that," Chris rasped.
"I can promise we'll burn a lot of things down trying," she said. "And that we won't stop until we've exhausted every option."
"Every option isn't enough," he said. "Not with him."
He didn't say Reed's name. He didn't have to.
Arlo opened his mouth to answer—to lay out what they did have, the routes, the contacts, the favors he could still call in—when something under the coffee table buzzed.
A low, insect‑like hum that wasn't any of their phones.
All three of them went still.
The sound came again. A tiny vibration against metal.
Mara's eyes snapped to the source.
The steel dish.
The dead tracker inside it was glowing faintly now, a tiny red pulse in the dim room.
"That's not possible," Mara whispered. "I cut it out. It was offline. Once these hit air, they—"
"Short out," Arlo finished. "I know."
The buzzing grew louder, more insistent. Like a phone on silent, trapped in a drawer.
Then, beneath it, faint at first, a distorted sound emerged.
A breath.
A hitch.
A muffled, choked—
Scream.
Ariel's voice.
All three moved at once.
Mara snatched the dish up, fingers steady even as her face blanched. Arlo grabbed the small receiver unit from the pile on the table—the one he'd brought up to examine the device's specs earlier—and snapped it on, sliding the tracker into its dock.
The room filled with sound.
Not clear. Compressed, tinny, like listening through a wall underwater.
But unmistakable.
"Ari," Chris breathed.
She was sobbing.
Not the quiet, leaking tears she'd let slip in the dark.
This was ripped from somewhere deep—ugly, stunned, broken on edges of pain they couldn't see.
"Please," her voice cracked through the static. "Please—stop—"
Chris lurched forward like he'd been shot.
"Where are you?" he shouted, as if she could hear him through the device. "Ariel! Ari—"
"Careful," Mara barked, gripping his wrist before he could knock the receiver out of Arlo's hands.
Another sound came through, cutting across Ariel's.
A low chuckle. Slow, amused.
Reed.
"Tik tok, Chris," his voice drawled, distorted but gleeful. "Do whatever you can do. Your sister is in pain, and it feels amazing torturing the only thing Arlo Johnson ever loved."
The words landed like a bomb.
Chris went white.
"He knows," he whispered.
Arlo's grip tightened on the receiver until the plastic creaked. "Reed," he said, voice dropping into something cold and lethal. "If you've hurt—"
"Relax," Reed interrupted, that awful cheer in his tone. "She's alive. For now. I'm not stupid enough to kill your leverage on move one. But this isn't your board anymore, boss. You should have told her the truth when you had the chance."
Static crackled.
Then Reed's voice again, closer this time, as if he'd leaned into whatever device he was using.
"Hey, sunshine," he said, clearly talking to Ariel now, not them. "Want to know something fun about your favorite bodyguard?"
"No," Chris whispered. "Don't—"
"He's not just some hired ghost," Reed went on. "He's family. Blood. Big brother, lost and found and too cowardly to say it to your face."
A sharp, wet inhale from Ariel. "You're lying," she choked.
"Ask him," Reed said. "Next time you see him. If you see him. In the meantime—" The smirk bled back into his voice. "You've got, oh… let's say forty‑eight hours to entertain me. Track me, trap me, whatever game you want to play. But every hour you disappoint me, she screams again."
"Reed—" Arlo began.
The line cut.
Silence slammed into the room, thick and ringing.
The little tracker went dark.
Mara stared at it like she could will it back on. "That shouldn't be possible," she said again, more to herself now. "It was out. It was out."
"Another chip," Arlo said numbly. "He said contact from another one before. Backup. Insurance."
Chris stood very still.
"Sister," he said.
Mara's head snapped toward him. "Chris—"
"He knows," Chris said, voice hollow. "He knows. And now she does too. Or thinks she does. From him."
His knees buckled.
Mara caught him again, arms wrapping around his shoulders as he sank onto the couch. This time, he didn't hesitate. He folded, hands over his face, breath coming in ragged pulls.
"I should have told her," he said, the words torn raw. "She heard it from him. From that—"
"You were trying to protect her," Mara said. "From more weight. More hurt."
"And now it's worse," he said. "Now it's a weapon. He's going to use it. Twist it."
Arlo set the dead tracker back in the dish with slow care, as if it might bite. His face had gone carved, all the softness from earlier collapsed behind hard edges.
"We're not playing his game," he said.
"You already are," Mara said, not unkindly. "Forty‑eight hours. Screams on a timer. That's a game."
"Then we cheat," Arlo said. "I am not dancing to Reed's clock while he uses her voice as a metronome."
He met Chris's eyes, those words from earlier echoing in his head—I couldn't save my sister—and the new fracture Reed had driven straight through them.
"Listen to me," Arlo said. "He took her because she matters. Because you matter. Because he thinks he can use that. He's counting on you breaking. On you freezing. On you drowning in what‑ifs while he moves."
Chris dragged his hands down his face, leaving red marks on his skin.
"What if he's right?" he asked. "What if the next time she looks at me, all she sees is a liar?"
"Good," Arlo said.
Both Chris and Mara stared at him.
"You want her alive," Arlo went on, voice steady. "You want her angry. Suspicious. Hurt. All of that means she's still there. Feeling. Thinking. If she's screaming, she's breathing. If she's calling you a liar, she hasn't given up. We deal with the fallout later. Right now, we use everything he just handed us."
"He handed us a ticking clock," Mara said.
"And a target," Arlo replied. "He wants us to find him. He lit a signal flare with that transmission. He had to bounce it off something. That's traceable. Maybe not through the usual channels, but there are others."
His world, for so long, had been built on knowing exactly how far he could push people before they broke.
This time, someone else was playing that game with them.
He straightened, reaching for his phone, already scrolling through a mental list of names—people who owed him favors, people who hated him less than they loved the money he could offer, people who specialized in finding signals that didn't want to be found.
He would burn every contact he had.
Every secret.
Every line he'd drawn to keep certain parts of his operation separate from others.
Because for the first time, the metric had shifted.
It wasn't about winning.
It was about deserving.
"Get up," he said to Chris, not unkindly. "You can fall apart later. When she's here to yell at you properly. Right now, we work. We find every place Reed could possibly take her. Every van he's ever used. Every safe house, every hole in the ground. You want to save your sister?" His voice softened on the word. "This is how we start."
Chris's eyes were rimmed red, but a spark lit there—faint, fragile, but real.
He took a breath.
Then another.
Then he stood.
Mara's hand squeezed his shoulder once before she let go.
"Forty‑eight hours," she said quietly. "We're not giving him that long."
"No," Arlo agreed. "We're not."
The little, dead tracker sat between them on the table—a reminder of how close Ariel had been, how easily she'd been taken, and how clever their enemy was.
But it was also proof of something else:
She was still alive.
She screamed.
She pushed back.
She demanded they be better men than they'd been.
Reed wanted to use that as a weapon.
Arlo, Chris, and Mara—broken, furious, terrified—would have to turn it into their fuel.
Outside, the city hummed, oblivious.
Inside, three people who had never been good at hope clung to the only one that mattered:
They had not heard Ariel's last scream.
And they had forty‑eight hours to make sure that when they heard her voice again, it would be saying something very different.