Chapter 10
ten
Greta hadn’t slept well.
She hadn’t slept well in four days, if she was being honest, not since Glenhaven, not since her shop had been gutted and she’d fought with Bear on his porch over a situation she had no business sticking her nose in.
What did it matter if Bear was willing to drop everything, risk everything to help Lila?
It didn’t.
Shouldn’t.
But it did.
She lay on her back in the dark, Atlas’s weight across her shins, and stared at the ceiling and let herself be honest for one goddamn second.
It mattered. It mattered because Bear had looked at Lila Garrison and seen someone who needed him, and he’d gone.
Just gone. Dropped Greta in the lobby of the sheriff’s office like a package he’d meant to deliver but forgot, and walked out the back door with Lila like that was the only thing that counted.
Okay, yes, so she had told him to go.
But, still.
She rolled onto her side. The pillow was too hot. She flipped it.
She’d seen the way Lila looked at him like he was her savior.
And she’d hated it.
Not Lila. Lila was fine. Lila was a good woman who’d been dealt a shit hand and was playing it as well as anyone could. Greta didn’t hate Lila. But she hated the fact that Bear had a whole life on his side of the street that didn’t involve her.
Which was stupid. Of course, he had a life beyond her. Especially since he’d done his damndest to avoid her since that fight on his porch.
By morning, she was exhausted.
She swung her legs off the bed, dislodging Atlas, who groaned in protest and resettled with his head on her abandoned pillow.
The floor was cold under her bare feet. She didn’t turn the light on.
She didn’t need to. She knew the path to the bathroom by muscle memory — three steps, turn right, two more steps, hand on the doorframe to avoid the corner of the dresser she’d been meaning to move for six months.
The face in the mirror was not pretty. Dark circles under both eyes, hair flat on one side where she’d slept on it wrong, a crease from the pillowcase running diagonally across her left cheek.
She turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face, not caring that it soaked the neck of her t-shirt. The cold helped. Not enough, but some.
She needed coffee. She needed a plan. But mostly, she needed Bear to stop avoiding her.
The kitchen was the same mess it had been when she’d gone up to bed, but she ignored it all and went to the coffee pot that still had yesterday’s brew sitting in it.
She poured it into a mug and took a sniff.
Smelled okay, and she didn’t want to wait for a new pot to brew.
She dumped some sugar in it and stuck it in the microwave to reheat.
The knock came at her front door, followed immediately by the sound of the key in the lock. There was only one person in life who had a key and walked in without waiting for an answer.
Naomi.
Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders.
Perfect timing. Her best friend would know exactly what to do about Bear.
After all, Naomi had fallen for Owen “Ghost” Booker—the one man at Valor Ridge who genuinely terrified people—and somehow made him as devoted as a puppy.
Surely she’d have advice on how to tame a bear.
Greta pulled the mug from the microwave and turned, ready to launch into it, and the words died on her tongue.
Naomi stood in the kitchen doorway with a manila folder tucked under one arm and two coffees from Nessie’s in a cardboard carrier.
She was dressed in her usual—dark vest over a long-sleeved shirt, her braids pulled back, the MMIW pin on her collar the only splash of color on her outfit.
But her face was wrong. Not upset, exactly.
Set. The way it got when she had something to say that she’d rather not.
Greta set the mug down. “You look like you came to tell me somebody died.”
“Not died.” She crossed to the kitchen table and set the coffees down, then the folder. She pulled out the chair opposite Greta’s usual spot and sat. “Sit down.”
Greta didn’t like being told to sit. She sat anyway, because Naomi’s voice had the weight it carried when she was doing the job and not the friendship, and Greta had learned a long time ago to hear the difference.
Naomi slid one of the coffees across the table. “Drink that. It’s fresh.”
“You’re bossy this morning.” She accepted the cup and pulled the lid off. The steam hit her face, and underneath the coffee smell was cinnamon and ginger. She took a sip and couldn’t help but groan. “So much better than yesterday’s leftovers.”
A small smile pulled at the corner of Naomi’s mouth. “I don’t know how you drink that swill.”
“It’s called efficiency.”
“It’s called self-harm, and we should stage an intervention.”
“Hey, if intervention means you’ll bring me Nessie’s coffee every morning, I’m okay with that.”
Naomi pulled the folder toward her but didn’t open it. She sat with both hands flat on top of it, the way she did when she was buying time.
Greta’s stomach lurched. She set the coffee down. “Okay, Nomi, you’re starting to freak me out. What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been sitting on something for six months,” she said after a beat. “I want you to hear me out before you react.”
Shit, this wasn’t going to be good. “I’m listening.”
Naomi took a breath before speaking again. “Last fall, when those traffickers took me, I got two girls out. Tariah and Angel.”
Greta nodded. “I remember.” After their rescue, Tariah and Angel were moved into a local shelter for abused women. She had planned to teach wilderness survival classes to the women there, but never got the chance because Haven House had burned down a few months ago.
“Before we escaped,” Naomi continued, “they told me about a woman named Ashley. Tariah said she was approached at the Spokane bus station. Angel said she was taken out for ice cream the day before she was loaded into a van. Both of them described the same woman. Late twenties or early thirties. Strawberry blonde.”
All the air seemed to leave the room. “You think it’s Alice.”
Naomi’s face tightened. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. The description fits a thousand women. I didn’t want to put it in your head without more proof.”
“But now you have more proof.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, flat and distant.
Naomi nodded slowly. “You remember Corbin Brandt?”
“The US Marshal who helped Nessie hide from her ex?”
“Yes. I’ve been working with him to track down the players in the trafficking ring, and he pulled a still from a Spokane Greyhound terminal camera six weeks ago. It matches Tariah’s and Angel’s descriptions exactly.”
Her mouth went dry, and she reached for her coffee again, taking a long drink. It was too hot, but she welcomed the burn. In fact, she wanted it to burn more and wished for her flask.
But, no. She’d been trying to cut back since the engagement party, when Bear pointed out how much she’d been drinking. “Show me.”
Naomi hesitated, then reached into the folder and pulled out a printout. She set it on the table between them, but kept her fingers on one corner.
Greta stared at it.
The image was grainy, taken from a security camera at an awkward angle.
A woman sat on a bench inside what looked like a bus terminal, her back three-quarters to the camera.
Strawberry blonde hair fell past her shoulders.
The build was lean, athletic. One hand rested on the bench beside a young girl, slim fingers topped with dagger-tipped nails.
Greta’s breath caught.
She couldn’t tell. She should just… know her twin, right? Like on an instinctive cellular level. But she couldn’t tell.
The woman could be Alice. The hair was the right color—that particular shade of strawberry blonde that went copper in the sun, same as hers.
The build was right, or at least similar enough to hers to give her pause.
The hand on the bench beside the girl could be Alice’s hand.
The dramatic nail shape and color were something she’d pick for herself.
But she could also be a complete stranger.
The angle was wrong, the resolution too poor, the face turned just enough away from the camera to make certainty impossible.
“Is it her?” Naomi asked quietly.
“I want to say yes, but…” She shook her head and swallowed back the lump rising in her throat. “I don’t know.”
She picked up the photo, studying it as if she might find a detail that would confirm or deny her worst fear. The woman’s posture was relaxed, confident. Not the posture of someone who’d been abducted fifteen years ago, but of someone who belonged in that moment, in that place, with that girl.
Her stomach turned.
She’d known all along that human trafficking was a possibility.
Alice had been sixteen when she disappeared—young, pretty, vulnerable.
They’d come from a broken home with parents who didn’t pay enough attention, and while that never bothered Greta—she preferred dogs and the wilderness to people most days, anyway—Alice had been desperate for someone to love her.
Someone to see her. Greta’s love alone had never been enough.
And that was exactly vulnerability traffickers looked for.
“What if she’s been with them this whole time?” The words came out before she could stop them, and once they were out, she couldn’t call them back. “What if she’s—” She couldn’t finish. Her throat closed around the rest of it.
“What if she became one of them?” Naomi finished for her.
Her chest caved. She couldn’t breathe, and her hand trembled so badly that she had to set the photo down. “Is that—does that happen?”
“Yes, it happens. It’s how those rings stay alive. They break them down, build them back up, make them believe they’re part of it. The victim becomes the recruiter. It’s not—” Naomi paused, choosing her words carefully. “It’s not a choice the way we think of choices. It’s survival.”