I sucked in a breath and jolted upright, eyes wide, and my mind brutally, and finally, clear.

I was awake. Really, truly awake, and information inundated every one of my senses in an almost overwhelming flood.

I was in a hospital. The beeping that had made its way into my subconscious made sense now. Based on the quality of the sheets I felt under my palms and the fact that I appeared to be in a private room. I had an IV in my hand and one of those clip things on my finger. I was still sore, which meant I hadn’t been out that long, though I didn’t know specifics about when or where I was.

Or if I was safe.

A private room in a hospital didn’t necessarily mean that I’d been somehow rescued. Until I saw proof that I wasn’t still a prisoner, I needed to keep my wits about me. Who knew–

“Rona, thank God you’re awake.”

I turned toward the door, half hoping that I was mistaken and that I would see Jalen. Instead, I saw the person I second most wanted to see. “Clay.”

He crossed the room quickly, the relief obvious on his face. “I was so worried.”

I was glad to see him, I really was, but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that Jalen wasn’t there. I wasn’t surprised though. He had a baby to think of now, after all. I refused to be sad. Clay was there, and I was alive. Not only alive, but free.

He crushed me in a hug, then cursed when I made a pained sound. He immediately released me but didn’t move away. He wrapped his hands around mine, mindful of the IV.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“Sunday,” he said, his eyes moving over my body, as if he was reassuring himself that I was real.

I knew the feeling.

“I’ve only been gone for three days?” I frowned. “It seemed like more.”

He shook his head. “You were missing for eight days, and you’ve been here since Friday night.”

A memory battled through the drug-induced fog of my time away.

“What about the others?” I looked around even though I’d already seen that I was alone.

“The others?”

“The other girls,” I said impatiently. “Are they okay?” More memories prompted more questions. “What about Serge and Yerik and the other men who took me? And those bastards at the auction? Did you get them all?”

The baffled expression on Clay’s face was the first indication that something was off.

“Clay,” I spoke slowly, unsure if I really wanted an answer, “what happened while I was gone?”

He sat down in a chair I hadn’t noticed before, pulling it closer so he could reach for my hand again. I was tempted to pull away until he explained whatever it was that had him looking like he’d been hit by a two-by-four, but I needed the comfort of a familiar touch.

“I tried calling you on Friday morning to ask you about one of the cases you were looking into for Jenna.” He looked down at our hands. “When you didn’t answer, I texted you. By noon, I knew something was wrong, so I went to see Jalen at work.”

I braced myself for whatever Jalen had told Clay about the last time we’d been together.

“He wasn’t there.”

A flash of pain went through me. Jalen had probably been busy with Elise. Doctor appointments. Shopping for baby stuff. Working out living arrangements.

“I finally got one of his employees to tell me where he was.” Clay’s eyes flicked up to my face, then fell again. “He was with Jenna.”

I frowned. Jenna?

“I went over and found the two of them in front of computers, looking like they hadn’t slept in a day and a half. They hadn’t been able to get ahold of you either.”

They’d noticed. All three of them had noticed that I was gone. Even as busy as they were with their families and jobs, they’d missed me. A lump formed in my throat.

“Jalen and I went to the police to file a missing person’s report,” Clay continued. “I wanted something official in the system when I petitioned the FBI to let me use our resources to find you, but they wouldn’t help. First, they said that it hadn’t been long enough. Then it was because of what happened between you and Jalen the last time he saw you. He said you two hadn’t broken up, but they clearly didn’t believe it.”

Based on his tone, I suspected that the cops weren’t the only ones who hadn’t believed it. I didn’t press it though. I wanted to know more and getting us off-track by talking about my relationship with Jalen wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“Then they asked if you had a history of leaving and not telling anyone, of cutting off contact without warning.” His eyes finally met mine. “I had no way of knowing if this time was different than when you bolted from Virginia.”

I kept my lips pressed together to keep me from saying something that I’d regret. He knew damn well this wasn’t the same. Jalen and I were in a relationship. I never would’ve just left without talking to him at least. In Virginia, I’d been lost, reeling from being expelled, my future suddenly empty. Here, I had a business. A home. Friends. Without the FBI, the only thing I’d had in Virginia had been him. And what we’d had never would have been enough to hold me, no matter how much he wanted to believe it.

“What happened next?” I asked, my voice as stiff as I felt. I rubbed my fingers, both of us pretending that was the reason I’d pulled my hand away.

“I went to the office and made some calls,” he said. “I spoke to the warden in Indiana and had your father’s correspondence checked. I got a list of his visitors, the calls he’d made and received. I had the warden talk to other prisoners and to your father.”

My dad? My forehead furrowed as I frowned. He was a lot of things, many of them horrible, but he wasn’t a human trafficker. He’d tried to kill me, sure, but he’d never sell me. And he sure as hell didn’t have the resources to pull off something like that auction, even if he’d suddenly decided to go into business.

“While I was doing that, Jenna was digging on her own and Jalen was out on foot,” Clay continued. “He retraced your steps over and over, starting where he’d last seen you and going through all sorts of possibilities. Saturday afternoon, he called me, but I was busy and didn’t pick up. That evening, I got a call from Jenna, but I didn’t answer that one either. I figured if anyone was going to find you, it would be me.”

Clay hadn’t found me. The realization stunned me. I’d been certain that my rescue had been the result of an FBI raid he’d led. Now, I had no idea what’d happened.

He ran his hand through his hair, then rubbed his jaw. “I kept ignoring them, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. If I’d only listened…” He shook his head, his expression haunted. “The reason they’d been calling me was that Jalen had found your phone in a ditch near his house, and Jenna had dug deep into activity around your father. The two of them were convinced that you’d been taken by someone not connected to your dad, but when they finally talked to me on Monday morning, I told them they were wrong.”

Monday morning. Jalen and Jenna had known by Monday morning that I’d been kidnapped, but I’d spent four more days in my cell. Even though I hadn’t yet heard the end of the story, I couldn’t help but blame Clay.

“I didn’t talk to them again until Friday night when Jenna called to tell me you were here.” He stretched out his hand again but stopped short of touching me. “That’s when I found out what Jalen had done.”

My blood ran cold at the way Clay delivered that single statement. “What did he do?” The question barely made it past my numb lips.

“Jenna monitors the dark web for any chatter about human trafficking. Sometime on Wednesday, she heard about an auction in Wellington.”

I knew the name and that it was about twenty minutes north of Fort Collins. My knowledge of it ended there.

“She said her gut told her to check it out, and when she did, she found a…catalog of people for sale. Male and female, all under the age of twenty-five. She recognized a couple of them as college students who’d been reported missing over the last few months.”

My stomach lurched, and I twisted my fingers together, but I didn’t ask him to stop.

“It’s my fault,” Clay said. “She tried to tell me, but I ignored her. She called Raymond, but I’d told him that I needed his help to find you, and Jenna was on the wrong track. She tried to do things the right way, but I was too stubborn and arrogant to listen. Jalen listened though.”

The memory hit me then, clearer than the experience itself had been.

A familiar scent crept through the odors of fear and pain. A familiar arm wrapped around my waist, and a familiar voice spoke.

“Just keep walking.”

I knew that voice, that smell. I’d been dreaming about them, praying that I’d find them again. Now, he was here with me, and I didn’t want to believe it.

“Just keep walking.”

“What did you let him do?” I whispered.

“I didn’t let Jalen do anything,” Clay said. He hesitated, then added, “But I didn’t listen to him and Jenna either.”

“Clay.”

“He went undercover at the auction and bought you.”

Everything stopped with that sentence. “He did what?”

Clay repeated his statement, but it didn’t make it any less bizarre. I now knew that Jalen had been the one who’d saved me, the one who’d taken me from the auction and brought me to the hospital, but it wasn’t until that exact moment that I understood how he’d done it. He hadn’t worked with the FBI to take down a trafficking ring. He hadn’t made sure that trained agents had his back while he did something insanely stupid.

He’d pretended to be one of those sleazy assholes and bought me.

Oh hell no.