Chapter 48

To my surprise, hunched in a ball and breathing through his nostrils, Tal was conscious. I hurried to remove him from the shed and its many branding rods. He was somewhat dead weight in my arms and hardly the emaciated frame I believed he would have turned into while being kept as a prisoner inside the shed. I placed him on the ground, opposite Dunny, removed the gag from his mouth, the blindfold, and used a pocketknife to cut away the zip ties that were fastened around his ankles and wrists.

Tal looked as white as parchment paper, sickly in his cheeks, and weak. His arms and legs were limp and his lips were cracked and dry. He kept his eyes semi-closed, perhaps blinded by the afternoon light, and leaned into me. I saw a tear fall out of his right eye as he started to shiver, and then he said something that just about blew my world apart. He gargled, “You found me, Joe. No one has ever wanted to find me.”

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