A grinding jolt of recognition.
"Brock ... is it really you?"
Slowly, he pivoted around to face a diminutive, dark-haired female who was paused in the driveway, just off the steps of the porch. He hadn't noticed her when he'd passed her a moment ago. Good Christ, he wasn't sure he would have recognized her if she'd come right up to him in the street.
But he knew her voice.
Beneath the grime of her captivity and the neglect that had made her cheeks sallow, her alabaster skin marred with dirt and scratches, he realized that he did, in fact, know her face, as well.
"Oh, my God." He felt winded, as if someone had kicked all the air out of his lungs. "Corinne?"
"It is you," she whispered. "I never thought I'd see you again."
Her face crumpled, and then she was sobbing. She ran to him, throwing her thin arms around his waist and weeping hard into his chest.
He held her, unsure what to do.
Unsure what to even think.
"You were dead," he murmured. "You vanished without a trace, and then they pulled your body from the river. I saw it. You were dead, Corinne."
"No." She vigorously shook her head, still sobbing, her small body heaving with soul-racking gasps. "They took me away."
Fury flared in him, burning through the shock and disbelief. "Who took you?"
She hiccuped, drawing in a shaky breath. "I don't know. They took me away and they kept me prisoner all this time. They did ... things to me. They did horrible things, Brock."
She buried herself in his embrace, clinging to him like she never wanted to let go. Brock held her, struck stupid by all he was hearing.
He didn't know what to tell her. He had no idea how what she was saying could possibly be true.
But it was.
She was alive.
After many long years--decade after decade of blaming himself for her death--Corinne was suddenly living and breathing, wrapped in his arms.
Jenna climbed the cellar stairs behind the last of the captives. She could hardly believe it was over, that she and Renata, Dylan, and Alex had actually located the women and managed to set them free.
Her heart was still pounding hard in her chest, her pulse still racing with adrenaline and a profound sense of accomplishment--of relief, that the ordeal for these nearly twenty helpless women was finally ended. She guided her last charge around the slain Minions in the parlor and led her outside to the veranda. Dusk was gathering now, washing over the crowded yard in placid shades of blue.
Jenna breathed in the crisp, twilight air as she stepped onto the porch behind the shuffling Breedmate. She glanced over toward the driveway, where Renata and Niko were helping some of the females into the Rover.
Rio and Dylan, Kade and Alex were busy on the snowy front lawn, walking still more released women into another of the Order's SUVs.
But it was the sight of Brock that made her freeze in place where she stood.
Her feet simply stopped moving, her heart cracking open as she saw him locked in a tender embrace with a petite, dark-haired female.
Jenna didn't need to see her face to know that it would match the sketch Claire had provided. Or that the fragile beauty wrapped so gently in Brock's strong arms was the same young woman in the photograph he'd kept with him all the years after he'd thought her dead.
Corinne.
By some miracle of fate, Brock's past love had been returned to him.
Jenna choked back her bittersweet sob, realizing that he'd just been granted the impossible: the gift of love resurrected.
As much as it tore at her own heart to witness it, she couldn't help but be moved by their tender reunion.
And she couldn't bear to interrupt it, no matter how desperately she yearned to be the one in his sheltering arms at that moment.
Steeling herself, she took a quiet step off the porch and headed past them to continue the evacuation of the other freed captives.
Chapter Thirty-two
Brock glanced up and saw Jenna walking away from him, toward the ongoing activity in the driveway.
She was safe.
Thank God.
His heart leapt in his chest, jolting with such relief to see her, he thought it might burst out of his rib cage.
"Jenna!"
She pivoted slowly toward him and the relief he'd felt a moment ago drained into his heels. Her face was stricken and pale. The front of her coat was torn in places and stained a garish, deep scarlet.
"Oh, Jesus." He broke away from Corinne and raced over to where Jenna had now paused. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he took her in from head to toe, his Breed senses overwhelmed at the presence of so much coppery spilled blood. "Ah, Christ ... Jenna, what happened to you?"
Her face pinched a bit as she shook her head and drew away from him. "I'm okay. The blood isn't mine. One of the Minions came at me in the cellar. I shot him."
Brock hissed, racked with worry even though she was standing in front of him now, assuring him that she wasn't harmed. "When I heard something had gone wrong here--" His voice choked off on a dark curse.
"Jenna, I was so damned scared that you might be hurt."
She shook her head, her hazel eyes seeming sad but steady. "I'm fine."
"And Corinne," he blurted, glancing across the way to where she still stood, looking small and forlorn, a dim shadow of the vibrant girl who'd vanished from Detroit all those decades ago. "She's alive, Jenna. She was being held here with the others."
Jenna nodded. "I know."
"You do?" He stared at her, confused now.
"One of the new sketches Claire Reichen had provided," she explained. "I only saw it as we arrived here, but I recognized Corinne's face from the picture you have of her back in your quarters."