Chapter 6

The dog lovers who had been acting so arrogantly earlier fell silent. Dad gazed at a small silver button on my car's dashboard—an emergency distress switch he'd had installed. Ever since I was kidnapped as a child, he'd secretly built these lifelines into everything I owned. Amid the struggle earlier, my elbow must have hit the button. That was how he received the precise signal of my whereabouts and arrived out of the sky with the helicopter. Nancy clung to Isaac's sleeve and said in a panic, "I-I was just concerned about Rocky. A dog's life matters, too." Dad walked up to me, took a sterile wipe, and gently cleaned the blood from my face. Then, he lifted a bottle of water to my lips. When he saw the dog's bite mark on my arm, his eyes reddened. "Don't worry. I'm here." Dad smoothed my messy hair and rubbed my back gently. "Benjamin is going to be fine. Tell me if you feel any pain." Wrapped in the safety of his familiar presence, the bone-deep ache running through my body