Devin knew they were being careless going about the small town in broad daylight but they had no choice. They were running out of food and were getting sick of canned goods.

The day after they watched Samantha go home with her parents, they decided to go to a diner. Breakfast hours were over and there were only two other customers when they walked in.

Devin and Hope went straight to the counter and sat down looking at the menu.

Hope had on sunglasses and had colored her hair blonde. Devin thought she looked even paler she could pass up as a ghost anywhere, but it was better than to keep her dark locks.

Her skin was a big flushed, still getting used to direct sunlight.

She could use some more weight because her cheeks were almost hollow. And he was bound to help her get the right nourishment.

In a diner with greasy food, right, he thought with sarcasm.

“What do you want?” he asked her.

“Ticket to paradise,” she answered.

Devin chuckled. It was good that she could at least find the time for humor.

“Just order what you think is good,” she finally said, giving up on the menu. Her head went to the television over them.

They had been trying to keep track of the news and so far, nothing came up about Samantha having been found. It meant the child had kept her promise. Devin just hoped she’d get professional help to help her get any kind of normalcy because nothing would ever be the same again.

As to Carl, there was not a word on the papers and even on TV.

To Devin, it could mean a lot of things. Carl’s body might still be rotting in that garage, unfound and untouched. Or he might already be buried six feet under.

There was only one way to find out.

*****

They decided to go right ahead while the sun was still up and everyone was still out working, getting busy with their normal lives.

Hope’s stomach clenched as they neared the place that had been her prison for more than ten years. It looked like every other houses they passed by. It camouflaged perfectly. Only that it was entirely unlike the other houses with normal families. Families who had their own normal troubles such as their teenage children, the burden of bills, the unkempt lawns they could not afford, and other domestic problems.

Carl’s home was unlike any others. It was designed to house the most horrifying things any of the neighbors could imagine their daughters to go through.

She swallowed the fear and willed her shaking hands to keep still.

He’s gone. He’s dead. He can’t touch you again.

It was her new mantra.

If ever there was anyone else out there who wanted her for reasons, she’d die fighting. She had survived Carl for years. She could very well face ten more like him.

Devin slowed the car across the street from Carl’s home.

They had been silent the whole ride, both probably thinking it was a stupid thing to do.

But they were out of resources as of now.

Devin climbed out of the car first and Hope followed.

They crossed the street and walked past Carl’s home with Hope avoiding looking up at her old room, that four-corner space that had been her only world for ten years.

Devin looked around. She did the same.

They walked directly to his apartment.

He tried the knob. It was locked.

Hope pushed the sunglasses higher up her nose as Devin walked around to check on the window. When he came back, his face was grim.

“Gone?” she asked.

He nodded. “Everything’s gone.”

“You expected them to clean up,” she quietly said.

“I know, but for what reason? To help keep me safe after they find me or to make sure I never get found?”

“That’s why we came here. To look for answers,” she said, walking back to Carl’s front door. “Let’s get this over with.”

The door was locked and so was the garage. Just as they had left them.

What was inside was still a mystery though and they intended to find out. They circled around to the backdoor.

Devin checked the window he broke when he rescued her three nights ago.

“What is it?” Hope asked impatiently.

“It’s clean.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of giving an answer, he climbed through the window and into the darkness of the kitchen. The smell was overwhelming and he almost gagged.

He went to the door and opened it by covering his hand with his shirt. If his enemies were behind this and they intended to clean after themselves, he’d not be an ass as to leave a single print. Hope walked in as soon as he swung the door open and her face crunched up at the smell. She took off her sunglasses and looked around.

Devin flicked on the lights with a cloth. He met her gaze and they turned toward the direction of the garage. The boxes were still at the right places, he noted. Carl’s bedroom door was still hanging open when Hope walked out of there that night they escaped.

They expected the same thing when they reached the garage. And sure enough, Carl’s body was still there, hanging in the air, still as a statue. His skin had turned dark and the smell was even stronger that Devin could actually feel the greasy food from the diner slowly climb up his throat.

He turned around and ran to the kitchen to throw up. Hope was standing by the staircase when he returned, not looking good but not nearly sick enough to run to the sink.

“You okay?” she asked, her lips pursed.

Devin ran his wet hands over his face and nodded. “Let’s go upstairs.”

What they found there almost threw them off their feet.

*****

There was not a single evidence of the rooms having been occupied.

Patty’s and Samantha’s old room was bare.

So was hers.

Her heart hammered against her chest when her old bed was gone. The floor was as dirty as before, but there was nothing else there. The wall did not have any signs of a metal plate with chains having been attached to it. Her wing chair was missing and so was the TV. Her eyes went to that one corner of the room where the camera had been. That, too, was gone. She didn’t have to check her old bathroom to see if her toothbrush was still there.

“Someone returned after we left.” The realization almost made her limp.

Devin was studying the wooden floor closely. “Fresh scratches,” he said, pointing at the white trail from inside the room to the hallway.

“Does this mean that they are after me after all?” she whispered, as if expecting someone to be hiding somewhere.

“My place has been cleaned too.” His brows were furrowed in concentration.

“But why leave Carl’s body?”

“To make it look like he killed himself.”

“This is giving us more confusion than answers.” Hope wanted to scream in frustration. They came here for nothing. They risked getting tracked for nothing.

She suddenly felt dizzy. It must be the foul smell.

Sooner or later the neighbors would start to notice it too. They might have already and anyone could be coming up to check on it. “We have to leave now,” she told Devin.  

But he was just starting his own investigation. He entered her old room, looking around for any clues. “If we get an idea of what tools they could have used, anything they might have left behind for a lead…” he was saying to himself.

“Devin, let’s just go,” Hope said, following him inside the room.

“We’re here. We better make the most out of it. I did not throw up a one-dollar meal for nothing.”

“There’s nothing here!” Hope almost shouted.

“Then let’s check downstairs. There are boxes of things down there. If Carl had an accomplice who betrayed him, or people he had contact with that he shouldn’t have, we’ll find them. Scan this room again. You know it better than I do and if you find anything—any scratch that was not there before—you call me.” He left her standing in the middle of her now empty room and climbed back downstairs.

Hope looked around in disbelief. How could he act so cool? But he was right. They had to take whatever they could find here. She started to scan the room and before she knew it, she started to calm down. It was weird to find herself suddenly comfortable being in that room. Maybe because it was the only type of solace she had known for years. It was where she had experienced Carl’s evil and it was where she recovered every time.

But Hope vowed that this would be the last time she’d step into the room that had both been her hell and haven for so long.

*****

Devin pulled the neckline of his shirt over his nose and continued his search.

He didn’t know what he was looking for, but having spent a lot of years as a defense attorney had taught him a few tricks on how to find evidence to either present in court or bury for life to save his clients. And right now, he was looking for anything that would save him and Hope. Or even just something to work with so they would know what to do next because if he couldn’t find anything here, he didn’t know if there was anywhere else to go. The two of them had been prisoners in different ways, but it still boiled down to one thing: they never really had more than one place to leave behind anything. For Hope, it was this house. For him, it was himself.

He went inside Carl’s room and started searching inside the box Hope had been looking into when they escaped. There was nothing but useless receipts paid in cash, photos of children he didn’t know, and more trash. For a second, the key he had hidden inside his sugar container back in his place flashed in his mind. Should he get it and bring it with him? He shook his head. It was safer there than with him. For now.

He bent down to pick another potentially useless box when his eyes caught something. He frowned.

There was a noticeable gap between two floorboards. It was just a few centimeters off, but it was enough for eyes that had been ruled by paranoia to notice.

His heart started to hammer as he took out a Swiss knife from the back pocket of his jeans and worked on the gap with a blade. It popped out of place in an instant and Devin almost shot to his feet in triumph, a man who had just discovered his first chest of treasures.

The treasure chest was made of tin, a rectangular tin cookie box with rusty edges. Devin checked for more items under the floor but there was none. It was just that one box. He straightened to full height and walked to the desk.

It took two attempts to open the box and when he did, his eyes widened.

*****

She didn’t discover anything else. There were a lot of things missing for her to discover anything else. No particular scratches she didn’t know. No secret messages left by whoever cleaned the place up. There was nothing.

She stopped when her eyes landed on her window, the one she had been working on before her escape, she smiled bitterly.

She had worked on those grills for nothing.

Her feet slowly walked to the direction of the window, taking the same steps she used to, as if the camera was still there watching her every move. She smiled to herself and shook her head as she reached out to touch one iron grill she managed to break.

Her eyes went down on the ground below. She had originally planned on tying all cloths she had inside the room to make a rope and make her escape down there. She and Patty. For a moment she thought of what would have happened if that plan worked. Would they have survived? Would Patty still be alive?

When she heard Devin’s noise downstairs, her mind reeled back to what was urgent. They had to go. Someone might be lurking somewhere in the house or outside.

As she thought of that, she looked beyond her window and across to Devin’s old room and her heart leaped and stopped.

Someone was standing at the exact same spot Devin used to stand on and he was looking straight at her.