Page 115 of Missing Justice
“Move,” Matt said, shoving her sideways. He poked at the door, pointing at Izzy. “Back up. I’m gonna kick it in.”
Izzy did as she was told, taking cover beside the door and Matt lifted his foot—boom!The full-length glass shattered, sending shards of tiny plastic ice picks flying inward and leaving a giant opening for them to step through.
Or for her sister to step out of.
Izzy, too skinny and dressed in torn jeans and a ratty, stained T-shirt, flew through the opening and drew up short as Taylor stared in disbelief. “TayTay?”
Hearing Isabel’s voice, the familiar childhood nickname on her tongue, was bittersweet. Taylor’s knees went weak for a second, and then she swept Isabel up in a bear hug.
They’d found her.
Finally!
The relief was almost too much.
Taylor had solved another cold case. The biggest of her career.
As two police cars arrived on the scene, sirens and lights going, Isabel returned the hug with force as the two sisters cried out loud. Then Taylor drew Isabel away, allowing Matt and the police officers to invade the house.
On the sidewalk, Taylor held Isabel at arms’ length to look her over. “My God, I can’t believe it’s you. Are you all right, Iz?”
Isabel’s response was to hug her again and Taylor laughed through her tears as her sister said, “Never better.”
They stayed like that for a long couple of minutes. As the sounds of Isabel’s captor being arrested echoed from the house, Taylor pulled her sister farther from the house.
There was so much to say. Too much. Where should she start?
Mostly, she had to keep staring at Isabel, touching her, afraid she might disappear on her again. Isabel didn’t seem to mind, keeping her own hands locked on Taylor’s arm as well.
Izzy’s captor, Gordon Mullins, was escorted from the house as an ambulance arrived and Izzy huddled behind Taylor. Hiding. “That’s him. He was drunk and passed out. I was watching TV. He lets me watch soap operas. That’s it. But there was a special news report and they cut to you talking at the microphone.”
“The press conference.”
Izzy shrugged. “I guess.”
Could her fully-grown sister not know what a press conference was? The weight of that, the knowledge that Taylor had gone on with her education, with her life, while her sister…what? She gazed up at the rundown house, imagined the atrocities. Imagined her sister stuck in time and not experiencing school, dating, and falling in love. A wave of guilt cinched Taylor’s lungs.
“I snuck his cell phone into a bedroom closet and called the FBI. A woman patched me through to your voicemail, but it wouldn’t let me leave a message. I looked up Matt. He has his cell number on his office website.”
And thank goodness he did.
“Izzy,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ma’am,” one of the EMTs said to Izzy, “we need to get a look at you.”
“Ma’am?” Izzy repeated. “No one has ever called me that.”
Taylor turned Izzy over to the EMTs, watching her until Matt came out and motioned her toward him.
Isabel was hardly a model patient, arguing with the female EMT trying to take her blood pressure and ordering the male paramedic to move out of her line of sight—she didn’t want to lose Taylor in the crowd.
Matt told Taylor to stay with her while he answered the lead officer’s questions. Isabel sat wrapped in a blue blanket inside an ambulance, the whirling red and blue lights of police cruisers blocking the residential street in front of Mullins’ house not more than five miles from their childhood home. A haunted look chased through her eyes as Taylor sat close and Isabel told her what had happened.
“I saw you on the news before today,” Izzy said softly, after explaining what her life with Mullins had been like. “I thought it was you, but until today, I just… I didn’t have the courage to call. My brain is…a mess. I wasn’t sure anymore if the memories I had of us as kids were even real.”
Taylor reached across the expanse between them and patted Izzy’s hand. Her sister had been held captive for a long time, and according to what she told Taylor, Mullins had brainwashed her into believing she was his child. He’d homeschooled her, moved her to six different places over the course of the past nineteen years, and had never let her out of the house. Even as an adult, she’d been a prisoner in the man’s delusional life.
Until today.
