Sonya Harrison. In the flesh.

Sonya Harrison. My mother.

Sonya Harrison, who I hadn’t seen in so many years that she was almost a stranger.

Almost because even though her face had more lines and her hair was more gray, even though her skin had that thin papery quality that only came with age, her eyes were still the same.

They were my eyes.

“Mom?” I asked. Questions pounded the inside of my skull. Or maybe that was the headache from whatever I’d been hit with.

I tried to push to my feet but found I couldn’t. My hands were bound behind my back, my ankles tied together. What the hell was going on?

“Where’s Allie?” I asked, head spinning as I tried to search for my daughter. I was no longer on the trail. Instead I was inside a dark room, just able to see the outline of several windows and a door from the cracks of light shining in through their perimeters.

Brighter sunshine. So it was later than when I’d been on the trail. But how much later? How long had I been gone?

Someone snorted, and a light flicked on.

I blinked against the brightness, and when my eyes settled, I decided that I liked the room better dark.

“Where’s my daughter?”

“As I said earlier,” my mother replied drolly, “that was my question. Though I guess I should have said I was wondering where my daughters were.” Her gaze slid to Celeste’s and went disapproving. “You know Cal doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Celeste’s face clouded. “I don’t give a fuck what Cal wants.” She turned to me, and I think I would have been terrified by the malice in her expression if I weren’t still processing the daughters comment.

Did she have Kelly? What about the babies? If they hurt her—

Celeste lifted the gun, and I cringed back.

My movement didn’t matter. She aimed. Shot.

I screamed as the bullet tore through the skin and muscle above my knee.

Sweat broke out on my forehead, tears streamed down my cheeks. My wrist and feet, which had both been throbbing before barely registered a peep as a burning pain consumed me.

“You idiot,” my mother screamed. “We need her! If she dies, we won’t have a way to get the money.”

“Kelly,” I murmured.

“That’s right,” Sonya said. “We need Kelly.” Firm hands pressed on my thigh, and I screamed again as something was wrapped around my leg and yanked tight. “Hush now. Cal will be annoyed enough without you carrying on.”

“Take this.” A slap across my cheek had me opening my eyes to a glaring Celeste. She held a little baggie of white powder in front of my face.

I shook my head. Drugs were a no and besides that, how was I supposed to take it? My wrists were still bound.

“Take it!” she screamed, hands grabbing for my mouth, no doubt to force it down my throat.

I’d heard of drugs being laced with fentanyl, knew that it had killed people. Aside from the fact that I’d never taken an illegal substance before, I definitely wasn’t going to willingly consume whatever white powder was in that bag.

I could barely handle a half of oxycodone. Who knew what a bag of drugs would do to me?

“Stop.”

The voice this time was different. And male. And—

I struggled to not empty the contents of my stomach on the floor as my mother squealed, launched herself into the man’s arms, and latched onto his mouth.

This must be my mom’s new flavor of the month.

The man, Cal I assumed, tolerated my mother’s attention for all of ten seconds before he roughly shoved her away.

He was tall, probably several inches over six feet and built. His skin was tanned, almost weathered, as though he’d seen many days on the back of a horse. He reminded me of the ranch hands Kel hired to help out with the horses.

“Enough,” he said and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “You can blow me later. We’ve got things to do.”

“You can always just do me, Cally-bear,” my mother said, blinking coquettishly up at him.

I threw up a little in my mouth. Really, it was all so gross.

“Stop with the nickname,” he ground out. “It’s Cal. And we need to move with this.” His eyes flicked to mine. “This her?”

My mother nodded. “My oldest.” A snicker. “Though not the prettiest.” She glanced across the room, and my stare frantically followed hers. Had I missed something? Was Kel here?

But Sonya’s eyes didn’t stop on my sister.

Or at least not on one I recognized. They came to a rest on Celeste.

Daughters.

Kelly wasn’t here.

Daughters.

“Holy shit,” I muttered.

Celeste smirked. “She’s kind of slow isn’t she?”

“Not the prettiest. Not the smartest,” my mother confirmed.

I studied Celeste, tried to find some similarity, because could it really be? And if it was true, how could it be?

But as I looked more closely, mentally erased the full face of makeup, the crimson lips and smoky eyes, I saw that there was indeed a resemblance between her and my mother.

She had Sonya’s mouth, the angle of her jaw. Celeste had Kelly’s cheekbones, the same color of hair.

Son of a sinking soufflé, she was my sister.

“This isn’t really happening,” I said. “This can’t be happening. This—this isn’t—I can’t. I’ve—” My voice gave out, the words stifling. My heart was pounding, my skin was clammy, and whether from the shock of the news or the gunshot wound, I very nearly passed out.

“Hey.” A gentle hand touched my cheek. Cal was staring at me. “Your other sister isn’t here. Neither is your daughter. This was a ploy to get you, you understand?”

His face had somehow softened despite the hard lines etched into the skin around his eyes and mouth. This was a dangerous man. An evil man. I could feel with every fiber of my being that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.

And yet his caress on my face was tender. His voice soft.

It was absolutely terrifying.

“Do you understand me?”

Allie was safe. Kelly was safe. That was all that really mattered.

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.” He swung me up into his arms.

I decided I didn’t like the trunks of cars.

I also decided that if I didn’t get out of this trunk, I was probably going to die.

It was cramped, dark, and disgusting. Something was sticky against my cheek and I didn’t want to think about what kind of bodily fluids were currently inches from my mouth.

But I’d discovered that I could almost get my hands below my feet and around to the front. The trouble was they kept catching on the heels of Kel’s boots. So I was trying to wriggle the boots off and get my hands around, but the cable tie around my ankles and the flipping gunshot wound in my leg meant that it was a lesson in agony by inches.

Finally, I felt one of the boots begin to slide free. Slowly, slowly it slipped off and I was able to pull my foot loose and use it to toe off the other. Without the boots on, the cable tie was loose and I—

“Come on,” I muttered through gritted teeth as I tried to yank my unhurt leg free. “Yes! Finally.”

Now I just needed to get my arms around to the front.

Carefully, I bent my knees to my chest, my injured leg screaming at the movement. I had contorted myself into a pretzel many times over for a yoga class. This wasn’t any different.

Plus, my pain in this moment didn’t matter.

Not if I wanted to live.

I had just inched my bound wrists past my butt when the car hit a bump. I cried out in pain as I was bounced around the unpadded space, but the jarring movement did what I probably wouldn’t have been able to do on my own.

It freed my arms.

Well, they were still tied together, but they were in front of my body, and that meant I could finally do something.

I crammed them into my boot and pulled out my phone.

It had been buzzing against my leg consistently for the last ten minutes, and I hoped to God that meant that somebody knew I was missing.

My bound hands were too wide to reach my cell, so I turned the boot upside down then spent a good thirty seconds chasing the phone around the trunk when the car took a sharp turn and it slid away from me.

But then it was in my hands, and I pressed the button to light up the home screen.

There were over one hundred missed calls and more texts than I could scroll through.

I ignored them all and called Rob.

“Miss?” he answered before the call completed its first ring.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Thank God.” He sighed. “Are you okay? Where are you? The barn. The sign—”

I slid across the trunk as the car made another sharp turn, whimpering when I banged my leg against something sharp.

It was a screwdriver and I quickly stuffed it into the waistband of my underwear.

“Miss? What is it?”

The car started to slow, and I knew I was running out of time.

“Listen, okay?” I said. “Don’t interrupt.” I paused and when he didn’t speak, I hurried to get out as much information as possible. “My mom is behind everything. Her new boyfriend is named Cal. I don’t know if he’s a drug dealer or what, but he’s dangerous. And there were drugs in the room and Celeste is here. She’s my—” The air caught in my lungs. “Well, you won’t believe it, but she’s my sister, and she said she had Allie. I went to the barn, saw Mr. Tails. I thought they had her.” I dropped my chin to my chest, my voice broke. “It was stupid. I know that now because they have me, and they’re probably going to—”

They were probably going to kill me. I was going to fight like hell to prevent that. But I didn’t hold any false hope.

There weren’t too many scenarios where I got out of this.

“Melissa,” Rob said. “I’m going to find you.”

“Of course you are.” My words were filled with a confidence I didn’t feel as the car pulled to a stop. “I love you,” I said and hung up the phone.

Because I was afraid.

Because I wanted the last thing my husband heard me say not to be a scream of terror or pain, but a declaration.

Of love.