HAPTER 15
Senora was sitting by the girl, rubbing a cool cloth over her face and brushing her hair back onto the pillow behind her head. Ty had come to check on her a few times, bringing fresh water to dribble over the girl’s parched lips, and this last time, returning with a plate of simple foods that he placed by the bedside.
“You need to eat,” he said to Senora. “If she wakes up and she’s able to eat, I’ll bring more. But I can’t have you weak and off your game right now.”
Senora was about to protest, but she knew he was right. She hadn’t left the exhausted girl’s side since they’d brought her into the cabin and laid her on the bed. Senora had skipped breakfast, sitting with the girl instead as she went over the files from Robin’s office.
And that’s where she’d been for the past two hours, sitting quietly beside the teenager, waiting for the girl to wake up and tell them who she was and who had been chasing her.
Senora had her suspicions.
Grabbing a peach from the plate, she took a bite and closed her eyes. There was nothing like a summer peach, and these were freshly picked from the small orchard the pack kept behind the acres of cleared land in the middle of the woods that served as their home. They had everything they needed where they were, and even though Ty admitted to taking frequent trips into town to get what they didn’t grow or catch themselves, the village was almost completely self-sufficient.
The girl stirred, and Senora immediately turned her attention to the girl. Unlike the other times, the girl’s eyes were fluttering and she was trying to open them. When she finally did, she looked at the ceiling, furrowed her brow in confusion, then her eyes went wide and she shot straight up in bed, shrieking in fear.
Senora grabbed the girl by the shoulders, but that only made her fight harder, and she started clawing at Senora, trying to get out of bed and run away.
Ty appeared out of nowhere, scooping the girl out of the bed and holding her at arm’s length, hands held firmly at her sides.
The girl screamed in frustration, trying to head-butt Ty and lashing out with her feet, but she was too weak and fell back onto the bed. Ty guided her down and held her so she could sit upright, still holding her arms at her sides and waiting her to calm down so he could talk to her.
Senora was amazed by his restraint when the girl’s foot caught him in the shin and he grunted but otherwise didn’t acknowledge the blow. Senora moved in then, getting as close as she dared and trying to get the girl’s attention.
“You’re safe,” she said repeatedly. “Whoever was chasing you can’t get to you here.”
Her words fell on deaf ears, so she repeated herself again and again until her words finally penetrated and the girl stopped fighting.
“You’re not working for him?” she asked, wild-eyed and looking suspicious.
“No,” Senora said. “I don’t know who he is, but we’re not working for anyone.”
“The Sheriff. He kidnapped me, and he-” her voice broke, and she started crying, burying her face in her hands and trembling violently. “I trusted him.”
Senora turned and looked at Ty over the girl’s head.
“Kidnapped?” she mouthed, and he shrugged.
The more information that came out about the Sheriff and this little town, the more confused Senora got. Did the Sheriff kidnap this girl and Addie? It didn’t seem likely. This girl couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen, and Addie was in her twenties. They were a different body type and build, and there were a lot of other differences that didn’t point to the same unsub as the perpetrator of both crimes. The victims were nothing alike, and if there was something that every monster she’d ever caught had in common, it was that they had a definite type. This girl’s disappearance might explain why the Sheriff had been acting weird since Senora showed up, but she likely had nothing to do with Addie’s disappearance.
“The Sheriff kidnapped you?” Senora asked gently.
The girl nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Hannah. Hannah Wise.”
“And how old are you?” Senora asked.
“Sixteen. Please don’t let him find me. He was going to sell me.”
“Sell you?” Senora’s stomach dropped.
All at once, things started to make sense. The secrecy, the suspicious way the men had spoken to her. The way they’d watched her like hawks as she worked. Senora shook her head in disgust. She’d assumed that they were embezzling from the city, or at the very least laundering money from bribes and kickbacks. It never occurred to her that the Sheriff was running a small time human trafficking ring.
But with all the open space, the seclusion of the city and the steady stream of tourists, it was no surprise that the Sheriff had seen an opportunity and used the resources he had to his advantage.
He was a sick man, and sadly, there were many more people just like him doing exactly what he was doing. Human trafficking was the silent epidemic, and it was something Senora dealt with more than she ever imagined she would.
“He said something about an auction,” Hannah continued, then swallowed hard and breathed out. “I’m thirsty,” she croaked. “Can I have some water, please?”
Senora nodded and was about to get up when Ty appeared beside her with a small cup. When he handed it to Senora, he stepped back, apparently keeping his distance to help Hannah feel safe. For his effort, Hannah seemed unbothered by his presence even though she’d obviously been through hell.
Senora helped Hannah drink the water a little at a time, then offered the girl a few pieces of cut fruit, which she ate greedily.
Senora and Ty listened as Hannah recounted the moment that she’d been informed that her father was brain dead and the Sheriff would be driving her to Fort Worth to give them permission to pull the plug and donate his organs.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my father,” Hannah said between bites. “His memory isn’t right, and he had a stroke. He forgets that I was in his room if I go to the bathroom while I’m visiting him. I’ll come out, and he’ll look surprised to see me. He won’t ever realize that I’m missing, and even if he does, there’s no way he’s going to know how long it’s been since I’ve been there to visit. He gets his days mixed up, and he can’t keep track of the order of the months.”
“That made you a really easy target,” Senora confirmed. “Which is probably why you were chosen.”
“I’m just so mad. I can’t believe that Mark set me up like that. He’s always so nice, but I know he had to be involved. He’s the one that called me to the rehab center.”
Senora perked up.
“Mark?” she said, then described the man she’d spoken to about the disappearance of Addie a few days before.
“Yes, that’s him. He’s the one that called me out to the center. I told my boss my dad was dying, and he told me to call him when I was ready to come back to work. If I hadn’t gotten away, it would have taken them at least a week to realize I wasn’t coming back.”
Her voice broke again, the gravity of the situation she’d escaped sinking in.
But Senora was focused on Mark. Both Addie and Hannah had known him enough to form an opinion about how trustworthy he was, and it said a lot that both Addie and Hannah had obviously trusted him.
Was he involved in both disappearances, or just Hannah’s? Had Addie found out what the Sheriff was involved in and threatened to go to the media? Or was Addie another victim meant to be auctioned off even though she didn’t fit into the typical mold of this ring? Or was there some other piece of this epic puzzle they were missing?
Senora reached out and squeezed Hannah’s hands to reassure her, then interrupted her thoughts with more questions to keep Hannah from getting trapped in the ‘what ifs.’ She was going to have a hard enough time recovering from this experience; there was no need for her to go down the rabbit hole just yet. Too much thinking about what she’d endured would only make her more hysterical, and Senora could see that the poor girl was barely holding it together as it was. Yes, she was brave. But six hours of running and hiding in the wilderness and the exhaustion that followed would make the most stoic of people a sobbing mess. Senora needed her calm and collected so she could get all the information out of her.
Hannah kept talking, describing the drive and what she saw when she woke up at the barn. Her descriptions were thorough and vivid, showing an eye for detail most people twice her age didn’t have. She was the perfect witness, and Senora had no doubt that she would be instrumental in bringing the Sheriff and his cohorts to justice.
If there were more girls than just Addie and Hannah --which Senora was sure there were – this had the potential to be a huge case that dragged on for years. Senora hoped that Hannah was strong enough to endure so much, and if she was, this bust might very well save the lives of dozens of young girls just like Hannah.
Something Hannah said tugged at the back of Senora’s mind. She tried to ignore it, letting her subconscious stew on it for a few minutes in hopes that it would come to the forefront on its own. Her tactic worked, and all at once, she stood, her excitement barely contained as she rushed to grab the file.
“Did you say you were tied in a horse stall?” Senora asked, flipping through the pages until she found the one that had caught her attention. “Was it bedded with fresh stall, but there was no sign that horses had occupied it recently?”
“Yes,” Hannah said.
Senora read further, deciphering the notes and relaying the information to Hannah.
“Yes!” the girl said, almost excited that the information Senora had was exactly what she’d experienced. “There were guards all around, and there were a lot of stalls. It was a really big barn, and I didn’t hear any road sounds or any signs that there were neighbors while I was there.”
“Were there other girls in the stalls?” Senora asked.
“I didn’t see any,” she said. “But I was drugged, and I was so foggy that I didn’t look.” Hannah frowned, and her eyes started to well up. “I hope I didn’t leave anyone trapped in that barn,” she said, then covered her mouth and fought the tears that spilled out. “Oh no, what if I left someone there to die? What if that’s who they shot?”
“They shot someone?”
“I think they did. When I was in the woods, I heard gunfire in the distance. Just one shot, but I was sure it came from the barn. I heard four-wheelers later, but they never came my way, and I took the trail that looked the least traveled every time it split.”
“Why?” Senora asked.
“I didn’t want them to think I went that way and find me faster. I didn’t have a watch or my phone, and I didn’t know how far I was ahead of them. But even with a big head start, they had four-wheelers and were much faster. I couldn’t outrun them, so the only way to survive was to outsmart them.”
“You definitely did that,” Ty offered. “You said it was midnight right before you got away?”
She nodded.
“You didn’t run into Senora until right around six. So, you were in the woods alone for six hours, and you not only managed to evade the Sheriff, but you also avoided getting eaten by a mountain lion. That’s pretty impressive.”
Senora shot him a look, but Ty just shrugged. She would talk to him later about things that were best left unsaid, though it should have been common sense not to tell someone as young as Hannah how close they likely came to being food for some wild animal in the night.
Senora decided to take a chance and sat down next to Hannah on the bed.
“Does anything else in here make sense to you?” she asked.
Hannah took the file and laid it on the bed in front of her. She read the first page and set it aside, and did that two more times before something grabbed her attention.
“This,” she said, pointing. “This has to be stall numbers and the occupants. There were twelve stalls; I’m sure of it. And that, that’s the height and weight of everyone in the stall. BL means blonde and BR means brown. These are other victims.”
She handed the paper back to Senora, and Senora looked where Hannah had been reading. Sure enough, she saw what Hannah saw, and she knew that the girl was right.
But how did Robin get that information? And why was it in Addie’s file?
“You didn’t see or hear anyone else?” she asked Hannah, trying to keep her tone light so that Hannah’s already guilty conscience didn’t think that Senora was blaming her for being the only one to escape.
“I heard nothing, but I don’t think the barn is for holding people long. I heard the Sheriff talking, and they were going to take pictures of me and list me on the auction site by four in the morning. I think the barn is just a holding place until the victims are sold.”
Hannah shuddered, and Senora waited for her to continue.
“The way they were talking, they have regular customers and a lot of them. Senora, what are they doing with all the girls that the Sheriff and his men kidnap?”
Senora shook her head.
“We can’t really know,” she lied.
Senora knew all too well what happened to people like Hannah that weren’t lucky enough to get away, but Hannah had been through enough.
Senora smiled then, patting Hannah’s hand again.
“You need to get some rest. We need you to help us find this barn, but you can’t go out there like this.”
“We don’t have time for me to sleep,” Hannah argued.
“You’re no good to us exhausted like you are,” Ty interjected. “Eat some more, then take a short nap. We’ll wake you up when it’s time.”
“Time?”
“I have a chopper. If I take you up, do you think you can point out the barn that you were in?”
Hannah nodded.
“Good. It’s going to take me a bit to get it ready to go. I’ll come get you then.”
Hannah nodded again, then she looked at Senora, her eyes frightened.
“Please don’t leave me here alone,” she said.
“I won’t. I’ll be right here,” Senora said. “I’m going to talk to Ty for just a second outside the door, then I’ll come sit with you, okay?”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “I’m just afraid I’m going to wake up and be back in the barn. What if this is all a dream and I didn’t get away?”
“You did get away,” Senora told her. “And you are amazing and brave and so very strong. You rest, and Ty will come get us when he’s ready. I won’t leave your side.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” she said.
Hannah snuggled down into the blankets and closed her eyes. Before they were out the door, Hannah was asleep.
Senora followed Ty out and stopped him on the front porch.
“You have a chopper?”
“It’s not my chopper; it’s the pack’s chopper.”
“It would have been nice to know that before.”
“Why? Did you need a helicopter?”
His tone was teasing, and Senora was not in the mood.
“Don’t play coy with me, Cowboy. Beneath that slick smile and that sexy drawl, you know damn well that knowing you have access to a helicopter is something I should have been told before this.”
Ty shrugged, unbothered by her indignation.
“Do you need a list of everything I can do as well, or just a list of machinery at my disposal?”
“I would like to know about any special skills you have, especially considering that you just became a damn werewolf without warning yesterday. I’m over surprises, so yes, I would like to know about any more exceptional skills or talents you have that could affect my life.”
“Any talent I have?” he asked.
Senora stared at him, and then his meaning sunk in.
“Do you ever act serious?” she asked angrily.
“Who’s acting? This is who I am one hundred percent of the time. Don’t pretend that you don’t like it. I’ve seen how you look at me when you think I’m not looking. Don’t act like I bother you that much.”
Senora’s face colored, and she turned away.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Don’t worry; when this is over, we can explore this need you have together.”
“Please,” she scoffed. “There’s no need to pat yourself on the back just yet. Just because I looked when you were parading around the forest naked doesn’t mean anything.”
“If you say so,” he countered, then laughed. “Now, as much as I hate walking away so you can ogle my backside, I have to gas up the chopper and make sure the engine is working. We can’t save the world if we fall out of the sky.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Who’s joking?”
Before she could respond, he leaned in quickly and kissed her on the cheek, then turned and jogged away before she could react. Her hand went to her cheek as she watched him jog away. He turned and looked over his shoulder, catching her as she watched him. He winked at her, then turned forward again and disappeared around the corner on the footpath that ran between the cabins.
By the time Senora was back at Hannah’s side, she was blushing furiously. Luckily, Hannah was still asleep, and Senora was left alone with her thoughts. She was embarrassed that Ty had noticed her noticing him, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. They could hold it together until the investigation was over, and then she would be back in D.C. and she would never see Ty again.
She sat back, trying to take comfort in that thought, but she didn’t feel any better. Ty wasn’t a man you walked away from and simply forgot.