Chapter 18 #2
He lunged toward the sound.
She was half-buried beneath a fallen branch, covered in dust, blood on her temple, but conscious. Alive. Her rifle was gone, buried or blown, but she was already pulling a sidearm free.
“Easy,” he said, crouching. “You hurt?”
She shook her head, winced. “No breaks. Just rattled.” Her eyes flicked upward. “Where’s the team?”
He didn’t answer because he didn’t know.
He depressed his comm. “Bear to Joker. What is your status?” Nothing but static. Bear looked around. “The rock is interfering,” he said. No signal could get through. He prayed his brothers were all right, but with no comms, no light from behind, the only way forward was deeper.
Bear reached down and pulled her up. She swayed once, then steadied. Flint took point automatically, scanning the tunnel ahead.
They were alone. Cut off. Underground, and heading into the dark.
Bear exhaled and sighted through his NVGs. The green made everything as easy to see as day. Rock walls stretched around them in uneven angles, a natural cave, with evidence of carving. Old symbols. Etched stone.
Bailee moved close, voice low. “They were using this as a base.”
He nodded once. “Let’s see how far this goes.”
They advanced, slow and careful, Flint sniffing every corner, every drop of blood. The farther they moved, the colder the air became. Bear caught faint traces of burned oil, metal, urine.
Then…
Voices.
Low. Guttural. Not English.
Bear motioned for silence.
Flint halted.
Bailee leaned in, breath hot against his ear. “Smells like people. Close.”
Then he saw it, a glow ahead. Orange, flickering. Firelight. He pushed up his NVGs and gave the silent count with his fingers. Three. Two. One.
They edged forward.
The tunnel opened into a hollowed-out chamber, broad, uneven, and wrong.
Chains hung from overhead struts. There were makeshift beds. Metal crates, and on the far side of the chamber sat Mara Duran and Ethan Voss. Both alive. Both bloodied and bound.
Bear’s breath caught. He moved toward them just as a man stepped from the shadows behind them, gun raised and grabbed Bailee.
The moment the gun left its holster, Bear moved.
But not fast enough.
The trafficker grabbed Bailee by the collar, yanked her back against his chest, and disappeared into the side tunnel with a roar.
Bear surged forward, only to halt as movement exploded behind him. He turned his rifle up and hot.
“Clear! Friendly!” Zorro’s voice snapped through the tunnel like a whip. Light swept in behind it, and laser dots skimmed the walls.
“Bear, status!”
“Two hostages alive, Mara and Voss. One armed contact just took Bailee.”
Joker dropped to Mara’s side, cutting her restraints. Blitz covered the exit.
Boots echoed from their right. “Contact! Contact!” Buck yelled.
Joker met Bear’s eyes, voice clipped and low. “Go. We’ve got this.”
That was all Bear needed. Even though he hated to leave his guys in a firefight without him, Bailee’s life was on the line. He turned, whistled sharply. “Flint…track!”
The dog launched ahead, low and fast, into the pitch-dark tunnel.
Bear dropped his NODs into place. The world snapped into green fire, stone glowing in detail, footprints clear, the heat of recent movement shimmering ahead.
Bailee was fighting, he could hear it in the scuffle, the sharp, echoing drag of boots on rock as he followed the tunnel and the fresh humid air up, breaking out into the green of the jungle
The trafficker was panicking. Running blind. His light danced in front of him as he ran. That was his mistake.
Bear moved like water, silent, lethal, his rifle tight to his chest, his partner a dark, dangerous shadow just ahead, pulling the leash, eager for the chase.
He caught up just as the trafficker stumbled, tried to turn, gun pressed to Bailee’s head. Too late. Flint launched. The dog sank teeth into the man’s wrist, the weapon skittered to the floor, and Bear closed the distance.
The trafficker tried to draw a blade. Bear didn’t give him the chance. His rifle barked and the man dropped.
Flint backed off, panting.
Bailee braced her hands on her knees, breath ragged, but standing.
Bear stepped in, caught her shoulders, pulled her upright. “You good?”
She nodded once. “Thanks for not hesitating.”
“I was never going to let him take you.” Those three words burned in his chest. “No goddamned way.”
He looked down at the body. “The team is in a firefight. Let’s go.” A sound echoed from behind them. Not footfall. Conversation. Bear’s head snapped up. Voices. Soft. Rhythmic. Familiar.
Lakota.
Bailee froze beside him, the shock on her face when she looked at him mirrored his own. Here in the , someone was speaking their language.
Drawn forward, they moved toward the sound. At the edge of flickering firelight stood a man, barefoot, painted, bow still in hand. He didn’t raise it. He just nodded once.
Behind him, deeper in the trees just beyond the cave’s outer ring, a village shimmered into view.
Then the voice came again. Female. Lakota. His heart jumped into his throat and his breath caught.
Bailee whispered, “Did you hear that?”
He didn’t answer. He was already moving toward it.
The night air stirred. Smoke curled upward from the small fire in the center of the gathering space, the scent of crushed leaf and dried bark thick in Ayla’s lungs.
She sat cross-legged in the dirt, her knees dusted with ash, hands resting on her thighs, her teacher’s words flowing like low river-water in Lakota beside her. They loved her language.
Ayla listened. Her teacher had so much to teach her, and she’d soaked it up like a sponge.
The fire popped.
Her teacher paused mid-sentence, blinking, her lined face going still. Then she turned and looked past Ayla’s shoulder, toward the trees.
Ayla turned, too, and froze.
A man stood just past the fire’s edge, rifle lowered, dressed in camo, one of those floppy hats on his head, some kind of goggles covering his eyes. A stunningly beautiful woman stood next to him. They were painted with dust and war and rain.
He turned toward her, flipped up the goggles.
Her knees went weak, her heart beat so hard, it was like a drum.
Dakota.
Her brother.
Her throat closed. Her hands went cold.
He was older now. Harder. But still him. The set of his jaw. The shape of his mouth. The scar at his temple from when he fell off the fence. She hadn’t seen him in three long years.
For a heartbeat, the world around her dissolved. The fire. The jungle. Even the breath in her lungs. Gone. The last time she’d seen Dakota… She was fifteen and she was being taken.
It was supposed to be a short walk. She’d gone down to the river with her sketchbook, headphones in, that sun-faded hoodie tied around her waist. The light through the cottonwoods had made patterns she wanted to draw.
She never heard them coming.
One minute she was crouched on a rock, pencil in hand. The next, rough arms grabbed her, a sharp zip tie. A scream that never left her throat. The stench of breath and sweat and something oily pressed against her skin.
They moved fast. She fought, bit, bled. But they had a van waiting. After that…the world turned dark and endless.
She remembered being thrown inside, metal walls, cold floor, and so many girls inside, just as frightened as she was, but there was another girl there, sitting upright, bold and seemingly fearless.
Older by a few years with scraped knuckles, bruises blooming under her skin, and eyes fierce even through the terror.
When their gazes met for the first time in that van, her eyes said, We’re in this together.
Just two stolen girls breathing the same stale air. Ayla didn’t know her name yet. Only that she wasn’t alone in that moment when everything inside her cracked.
The engine roared. The doors slammed. Darkness swallowed them both.
Hours blurred into days. Two girls taken on different nights, from different reservations, thrown into the same pipeline. They didn’t speak at first. Didn’t dare. But whenever the van hit a bump, their shoulders knocked together, and neither pulled away.
When they reached the jungle, they dragged Ayla out first. Metal walls. Being shoved into a cold room. Other girls crying. Men talking like she wasn’t there.
She pretended to be sick when they looked at her the way men did when they wanted something sacred. Something she wasn’t going to give up to the likes of them. The travel was endless until the jungle.
Inside rough sacred caves, they painted her face. Made her wear white. Told her to walk the forest paths at night and not make a sound. Said it was her turn to be a ghost. She already felt like one and wished with all her might to go invisible.
If she didn’t comply? They’d kill the girl chained to the post at the edge of the cave.
The same girl from the van.
Taryn Thunderhawk. Her last name sounded like a warrior’s, and the girl was nothing but a fighter.
They locked her to the same post the next night. Still painted white. Barefoot. Meant to haunt the jungle paths like spirits.
The older girl had been nothing but encouraging the whole trip. She watched Ayla with eyes like bruised thunderclouds, face still puffy from whatever they'd done to her before.
But her words weren’t angry. They were whispered. Fierce. “You don’t look like a ghost. You look like someone who’s going to survive this.”
Ayla blinked. Taryn was her lifeline.
She took Ayla’s hand, a tether. A vow. Ayla held on, and that was the moment she stopped drowning.
They planned in whispers. At night, when the jungle swallowed sound. When guards drank too much or fell asleep in shifts. When the paint dried on their faces and the bruises were no longer fresh.
Taryn had memorized the guard rotations. Knew which ones were sloppy. Knew where they kept the stolen knives. She taught Ayla where to step, how to breathe in time with the rustling leaves, how to let the jungle hide her.