Chapter 3
I’ve hauled a lot of precious cargo, but Jade in my passenger seat feels like the single most important thing I’ve ever been responsible for.
I glance at her for the hundredth time.
Every fucking glance, I get a punch to the gut.
Jesus, how can she do that to me?
She’s out cold. Cheek pressed to the seatbelt strap, lips parted, the bruise on her face darkening by the minute.
Even wrecked, she’s the most arresting thing I’ve ever seen.
I push through a yellow light without slowing. I don’t even consider stopping. Not with her in the car. Not with that edgy feeling sitting along my spine.
We’ve got eyes on us. It’s a feeling I know well.
I caught the first sign three miles back.
The black SUV is sitting two cars behind us in the left lane. Could be nothing. My intuition disagrees.
So I watch.
After another minute, the consistency of the spacing confirms my suspicion. The way the driver holds distance without drifting isn’t normal. He doesn’t vary his speed or spacing at all.
No front plate. Tinted windows too.
My hand is already on my weapon. Has been since the last intersection.
Jade stirs beside me, probably disturbed by the energy snapping around me. Her eyes open, still foggy, but she’s quick to sit up.
“You look like you’re about to hurt someone.”
“Could happen at any time, but right now, I’m just driving.”
She’s not buying it. Her gaze drops to my hand on the gun, then back to my face. The grogginess evaporates from her expression.
My phone rings a team ringtone and I hit accept without taking my eyes off the road.
“Ryker here. Talk.”
Mako, our company sleuth, doesn’t waste time. “You alone?”
“No. Jade’s here. You’re on speaker.”
There’s a brief pause as he adjusts what he was going to say for public ears. “I ran that plate.”
His pause sharpens my focus.
“It’s dirty,” he says. “Shell company. Not a single registered owner and that vehicle has been flagged before.”
Jade sits up more in her seat, pulling the seatbelt away from her neck like it’s choking her.
“For what?” I urge him on when I know he’s trying to determine how much to share with Jade listening.
“Hit and run and another confirmed assault. Nobody sticks around long enough to take down. The company registration is buried under three layers, but the address traces back to a PO box in east Texas.”
Texas. Where Jade came from.
My gaze flicks to the mirror again.
Still there. Same distance. Same lane.
“Numbers match exactly?” I ask.
“Yep,” he replies. “You didn’t just interrupt some random situation.”
No. I didn’t.
“Copy,” I say, my mind working over the murky facts.
Jade shifts beside me, her attention locked on every word.
“Ryker...” she starts. “You don’t have to---“
I lift my hand slightly. “Give me a second.”
Mako’s voice drops, more serious now. “You need to assume they’re not done. You got eyes on you?”
“Maybe.”
“Define maybe,” he prompts.
“Similar vehicle’s been behind us for the last few miles. No front tag.”
Silence, just long enough to confirm what we both already know.
“I assume you’re not going straight to the house.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Call me when you’re clear.”
“Copy.”
I end the call, watching the mirrors and the road. Methodical in my actions. Ready for what may come.
In a different vehicle, with more power under the hood, I’d accelerate and test the gap. Force a reaction. But this tired Chevy sedan isn’t that car. It has a shimmy in the front end and an engine that sounds like it’s coughing up a lung.
“Are they following us?” Jade asks.
I don’t soften my reply. “Possibly.”
Looking around, her fingers tighten on the seatbelt. “Oh my god.”
“Hey.” I finally glance at her, just long enough to pull her focus. “Look at me.”
She does, her eyes wide, lip trembling.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I say with conviction. “You’re safe with me.”
Her throat moves as she swallows. “That’s almost too good to be true.”
“We’re going to lose them. It might get a little rough.”
“In this car?” She shrieks.
Good point. But it’s what we’ve got. The laundry list of issues includes a wobble in one of the tires and a tachometer doesn’t work. And the brakes are questionable.
“I’ve done it in worse. Now I need you to be ready, no matter which way I turn, or if I brake hard. Brace yourself with your feet, and hold on to the bar.”
She grabs the handle, bracing her feet wide on the floor.
“Good girl. Here we go.”
I drop a gear and take a sharp right without signaling. The old car shudders, but holds the road. Nothing falls off and I throw out a silent, thank you.
The SUV follows.
It’s her attacker.
My senses open up the way they do when a mission goes hot. The edges of my vision sharpen. Sounds amplify around me—the rattle of the dash, Jade’s breathing, the whine of the transmission protesting the gear I’m holding it in.
“Okay,” I mutter to him. “Let’s see how committed you are.”
“What are you doing?” she asks, panic raising her tone.
“Testing them.”
I take another turn, tighter this time, just enough to force a decision behind us. The sedan leans hard, tires barking against the pavement. Jade’s hand shoots to the dash.
At the next intersection, I push through without slowing. Horns blare as we steal the right-of-way.
The SUV hesitates. Just a fraction. Then it turns behind us. Still there.
“Yeah,” I say under my breath. “Thought so.”
“What does that mean?” she asks, her voice tight.
“It means they’re willing to work for it.”
I cut left again, then turn right, tightening the pattern. Running a mental map of the blocks around us. Looking for the right scenario.
A gas station appears up ahead.
“See that gas station? It has two entrances. The far exit dumps onto a parallel road that curves away behind a row of buildings. If I hit it fast enough, they’ll overshoot the first entrance and lose visual.”
“Oh my goodness,” she wheezes.
“Listen to me,” I use a calm, firm tone. “If I tell you to get down, you get down. No hesitation.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” she tells me, and there’s no hesitation in her voice. Scared as hell, but she trusts me.
“Going right!”
Working the wheel with one hand, the shifter with the other, I turn hard. Swing the car into the gas station lot, threading between the pumps, then out the far exit without braking.
Jade’s neck bobbles and her elbow smacks the window, making me curse.
In the mirror, the SUV overshoots the entrance. It keeps going in the stream of traffic.
I don’t let up. I take the next right, then another left, putting two more turns between us and the last place they saw us. Only when I’ve run a full counter-surveillance pattern, do I allow myself to exhale.
“Looking good,” I report as I flex my hands on the wheel, loosening my hold.
She’s still hanging on.
“We’re good,” I tell her, reaching over and gripping her thigh for a second, before resting my hand on the shifter.
Jade finally takes a big, cleansing breath. “You were so relaxed.”
“Letting myself get emotional only puts you in more danger.”
For a few seconds she looks at me, before her whole body seems to relax.
“You okay?” I ask, suddenly husky.
“Just processing. I don’t know why he would bother following us. Trevor made his point when he hit me.”
“What point was that exactly?” I keep my voice carefully controlled, even though what I want to do is turn this car around and find that Mercedes.
“That I need to mind my own business.” She shakes her head, angry that she’s in this position at all.
I reach over, settling my hand at the back of her neck, hoping to keep her grounded when it feels like the world is spinning out of control.
“I’m right here,” I say, “but I need you to tell me what he’s after.”
She looks at me. Long enough that I know she’s deciding something.
“I want to show you something, but we’ll have to wait until I can get into my email. I sent it to myself on a secret email account.”
Every instinct I have comes to full attention. “Where did you get this information you’re going to show me?”
“Could this car be wired?”
I glance at her. “Yeah. It could.”
“Then...” She shivers. “It should wait.”
Smart. Careful. Brave enough to steal whatever she stole, smart enough to know the walls might have ears.
This woman isn’t just a victim. She’s been running an operation of her own.
I take an exit without warning and she grabs the handle. A few seconds later I’m pulling into a quiet residential street, houses lined along both sides, tall oaks throwing shade across the road.
I come around to her door, open it, extend a hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Oh.”
“Leave your phone here.”
“Of course.”
She pushes her small pocketbook under the passenger seat.
We don’t go far. Just far enough that I’m confident anything in that car can’t pick us up. I position us on the sidewalk with a clear view in both directions and turn her to face me.
“Tell me,” I urge. My eyes don’t settle though. They keep watching for trouble while I listen.
“I didn’t go looking for anything,” she says, keeping her voice quiet so no one else could hear. “I used to clean the sheriff’s office sometimes for extra money. My dad would leave me there after hours. He’s the Sheriff by the way.”
“The jail is somewhere else?” I ask because the thought of her cleaning the jail alone at night makes me want to punch someone’s face.
“Next building over. But I was at the office at night, and my father’s computer was still on. I wasn’t paying attention at first. I was wiping down his desk and the screen lit up like it had just come out of sleep mode.”
Her fingers curl in her jeans pockets as she gets lost in the memory for a second.
“There was a case file open for a missing person. A girl from a county over. I remember because I’d seen her face online—people were sharing it, trying to find her.”
This already sounds bad.
“But the file said inactive. Closed,” she says, shaking her head.
“You don’t think it should have been closed?”
“They said she was a runaway,” she whispers. “That’s what it said. But she wasn’t. Everyone knew she wasn’t.”
I process, glance down at her, a dark anger rising inside of me.
“And then...” She shakes herself. “Another night. A document on the printer. Forgotten, I guess. But it wasn’t official. There was a list of names. Ages. Dates. Like some kind of schedule.”
Watching her spiral makes me want to comfort her. She flinches at first when I glide my hand up her arm, to her shoulder.
Kneading those tight muscles, I ask, “Could you tell anything else?”
“There were words I didn’t understand. Confirmed. And placement.”
Fuck. My mind is already drawing bad conclusions.
“I didn’t know what I was looking at,” she says quickly. “I told myself it was nothing. That I misunderstood. But then I started noticing things. Other cases seemingly written off too fast.”
“Men or women?”
“Both. Always young, under forty. Trevor was always gone a lot during those times, too.”
The picture she’s painting is getting more and more dangerous. This screams human trafficking.
“Did you ask Trevor about those times?”
“Not directly. But he knew.”
Cold fury tightens the muscles along my spine as I think about that monster hitting this small, vulnerable woman.
“Is that when he hit you for the first time?”
“Yes.” She presses her lips together. “But he doesn’t know what I saw at the office.”
“What exactly do you think you saw, Jade?”
When she hesitates, I loop an arm around her, pulling her close. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
“I think...” Her voice is reedy, hard to catch. “Those people aren’t missing.”
“Fucking hell,” I rumble.
I scan the area, my pulse thumping too hard for someone who is standing still. Especially when she adds, “My guess is someone’s taking them. And I think my father is covering it up.”