Screaming. They were screaming. Why wasn’t anyone helping them? Someone needed to help them.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t even feel my own body.

Then I could feel it, and I wished I couldn’t.

That’s when I realized that I was the one who was screaming.

Screaming about how much I hurt. Screaming for help. Screaming for someone to stop him.

Stop him.

He was going to kill her.

Stab her. Leave her bleeding.

No. He’d already done that. He’d killed her, and I’d seen her.

Wait, not her. Her.

I watched as he grabbed her hair when she tried to run. He yanked her back, and her feet slipped in all that blood. She started to scream, and his blade moved across her throat, opening flesh and spilling blood.

The heavy scent and taste of iron and copper flooded my nose, my mouth. It coated my tongue, and I gagged. A fresh wave of pain tore through me.

I screamed…

And jerked awake.

My hand went to my chest automatically, then to my side. I sat up and caught my breath as a burning pain shot down my spine and then the back of my leg.

“Fuck.” I forced myself to swing my legs over the side of the bed and stood, grimacing at the pain.

I raised my arms over my head, then twisted, bent, stretching out the tight muscles in my back and side. As I moved, the pain didn’t fade, but I knew it would take time. When my father had cut me from sternum to spine, he’d miraculously missed major organs, but my nerves and muscles hadn’t completely healed, at least not back to the way they were originally. Every couple months or so, I’d get a muscle spasm that would pinch a nerve, and this would happen.

Sometimes, it was almost like a memory of the pain I’d been in that day, a ghost. And it wasn’t the only ghost that hovered around my subconscious, as my nightmare had reminded me.

Not that I’d ever really forgotten.

My hand automatically went to my chest. Like Jenna, I wore some of my reminders on my skin.

I limped into the bathroom and turned on the light. I would have to take things slow today, at least until my muscles relaxed and my nerves calmed down. It was a good thing Jalen and I hadn’t made plans for tonight, because the way I was feeling right now, I doubted I could’ve handled another night like last night.

I smiled through the pain as I showered, letting the hot water ease my muscles. Sex with Jalen was like an athletic event. I’d been less sore after various FBI training exercises.

I needed to stop thinking about sex with Jalen, or I’d never get any work done. I picked up my bottle of shampoo. Then again, I did have some time now to think things over…

I was already feeling better by the time I got out of the shower. I dressed and headed to the kitchen to find a quick breakfast. Since it was down to only me, Burkart Investigations would be open only while I was there. I could be late without getting in trouble, but I could also possibly lose business if I didn’t open on time.

I’d just washed my breakfast dishes and left them in the rack to dry when it hit me that I should probably hire someone to answer the phone and take down appointments when I wasn’t there. It was either that, or whenever I was working a case that required me to actually leave the office, I’d have to lock up. Somehow, I didn’t think that would be the best way to run a business.

My phone rang as I reached for the door. “Hello?”

“Are you back in Colorado?”

I blinked at the familiar voice. “Jenna?”

“Don’t you look at your caller ID before you answer your phone?” I could hear the faint smile in her voice.

“Apparently not.”

There was a moment of silence before she continued, more business-like now, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I’m back in Colorado. I’m heading in to work right now, but once I get things settled, I’ll call you and tell you how things went with Jalen.”

“Just with Jalen?” she asked softly, and I could hear the compassion in her voice. “You don’t want to tell me about the trial?”

I chuckled. “You’re telling me that you weren’t following it all week online?”

“I was. Congratulations.”

I didn’t know many people who’d have that as their response to a friend helping put her father back in prison. “I’ll call you back in a little bit.”

“I wasn’t calling about Jalen.”

I scowled as I stepped outside, but it had more to do with the gust of cold wind that nearly ripped the doorknob out of my hand than it did with Jenna staying on the phone. “Something else then?”

“Come by the house. I have something to discuss with you.”

“I’ve been making a list of leads to follow on your case,” I said as I dug for my keys.

“That’s great, but I have a new case for you,” she said, her voice growing grim, a bit strained. “That group of assholes you got arrested a couple weeks ago. Well, it looks like someone’s taken over.”

I stopped. “Taken over?”

“Yeah. Want to come by now?”

I didn’t even need to think about it. “I’m on my way.”

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” I said as I put my now-empty cup down on the table. “Less than a month after the Feds made tons of arrests, nothing’s changed.”

Jenna shrugged. “That’s generally how these things go. Cut off one head, another one grows in its place.”

“I thought that was seven more, not one.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s not Hydra.”

I would’ve smiled at the comment, but I was too depressed over what she was telling me. “I can’t believe that it didn’t make any difference.”

She leaned forward, her gray eyes intense. “It made a huge difference. You kept six girls from the sort of torture and abuse that you don’t even want to think about.” Shadows flickered across her face. “The time it’s taken for someone else to get established here, you saved all of the kids they would’ve taken.”

I ran my hand over my hair. “Is this how it always goes? Close one group down, but they never actually go away?”

Jenna leaned back in her chair. Her gaze fell on her arm, and she ran her fingers over the scar there. “If you listen to the cops or the FBI, they’ll tell you that it’s about keeping focused on the big picture, staying true to the course, all that sort of shit. But I can’t look at it that way. I can’t look at the big picture, or I’ll go crazy.”

She looked up at me, but her fingers still kept tracing the scar she had once told me came from a suicide attempt when she was only eight-years-old. The haunted look on her face made my stomach twist.

“I have to look at each life saved. Each person who will never have to go through what I went through. Each person who is rescued from that hell and given a chance at a better life. I know there are all these organizations that talk about eradicating slavery, but I don’t know if that will ever be a possibility. I do know that I can save one person, two people, a group. And that’s enough to keep me sane and working.”

The moment hung heavy between us, and then she pushed back from the table and refilled our coffee.

“Anyway, I didn’t bring you here just to tell you all of this,” she said as she set down the mug again. “I wanted to know if you would like to help.”

“Help?” I reached for the mug automatically, but I wasn’t really even paying attention to it outside the warmth it would provide my cold fingers.

“I know you’re working on my case, and you need to take other cases too,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you to risk Adare’s business. I just want to know how you’d feel about me possibly contacting you with some footwork for cases. I used to do all that myself, but with my kids…” She shrugged again.

I met her steady gaze. “I’d love to help out in any way I can. Just tell me what you want me to do.”