Chapter 7 #2
Another panic attack, Tyler was used to them by now. He helped me up and guided me into the passenger seat of the car, while his hand sat firmly at the back of my neck. I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually he moved around to the driver’s seat of the car.
One second, I’m staring out the passenger window at the dark road ahead.
Next my chest is locking up.
Air catches in my throat.
My hands curl into fists.
The streetlights blur together.
Too many memories.
Too many faces.
Too many things I’ve spent two years trying not to think about.
I suck in a breath.
It doesn’t feel like enough, so I try to gulp in another breath, still not enough.
“Cassidy.”
Tyler’s voice parts through the haze.
I don’t answer.
My focus shrinks to a single point, everything else fading into a blur.
The inside of the car suddenly feels too confined.
“Hey.”
His hand finds my thigh.
I force my gaze in his direction.
One quick look is all it takes for him to notice.
The concern on his face only makes my chest tighten further.
“Look at me.”
I try but my breathing is coming too fast now.
Too shallow.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
His voice stays calm because he’s done this before.
He already knows exactly where my mind is trying to transport me.
“Five things you can see.”
I shake my head.
Tyler squeezes my leg gently.
“Come on, baby. Five things.”
I force myself to look around.
“The dashboard.”
“Good.”
“The steering wheel.”
“That’s two.”
“The gas station.”
“The traffic light.”
My voice sounds thin.
Far away.
“And?”
I swallow.
“The road.”
“Good.”
His hand never leaves my leg.
“Four things you can feel.”
“My seatbelt.”
“Good.”
“The seat.”
“That’s two.”
I take a shaky breath.
“The air conditioning.”
“Three.”
“Your hand.”
“Good girl.”
Something in my chest loosens.
“Three things you can hear.”
I focus.
“The engine.”
“Okay.”
“A motorcycle.”
“Good.”
“The turn signal.”
“Perfect.”
My breathing stutters but doesn’t spiral further.
Tyler glances at me again.
“Two things you can smell.”
I inhale.
“The coffee you spilled earlier.”
A faint smile touches his mouth.
“Fair.”
“The ocean.”
“We’re close enough.”
I almost laughed.
“One thing you can taste.”
I think.
“My toothpaste.”
“There you go.”
The tightness in my chest eases another fraction.
The world begins to settle back into place.
The road becomes the road again.
Not a memory.
Not a nightmare.
Just a road.
Tyler threads his fingers through mine and brings my hand to his lips for a brief kiss.
“That’s it.”
I stare at our joined hands.
My breathing finally begins to slow.
“You with me?”
I nod.
“Yeah.”
His thumb brushes across my knuckles.
“Good.”
The city lights glow in the distance ahead of us.
Home and my vision began clearing.
And for the rest of the drive, Tyler doesn’t let go.
By the time we arrived home, and I could finally form a sentence everything flew out of me.
Tyler listened to every word, every detail, without interruption or false reassurance.
When I finished, and the disappearance of Marie and Sofie sank into reality between us, something locked into place. There was no hesitation, only purpose.
I never went back to the hotel, and we didn’t go back to seeking any type of normalcy.
We started looking.
I drag myself back to the present.
The dark web isn’t chaos; it’s structured, layered, intricate like a web spun with intention. Each thread leading somewhere, each connection feeding into something bigger and harder to reach.
The outer layers are easy, disposable, but the deeper you go, the more encrypted it becomes.
Tyler works from the outside in, searching out the smaller players, the ones new to the network. He creates identities that hold up under pressure and slithers into conversations as if he belongs there, tactfully feeding into their egos, which gets them talking.
It’s too easy because they want to be seen and, more importantly, admired.
It makes what comes next easier.
Once they open up, Tyler gets into their systems, their files, and their lives.
He extracts everything he can, names, locations, financial trails, and patterns.
Anything that leads deeper into the web.
Then we raid their operations.
After we finish the job, Tyler drains their cryptocurrency wallets that are meant to make them untraceable.
We don’t keep it; it goes to our foundation. We established it the same week Marie and Sofie disappeared. It’s a safe house, a place for the ones we are able to save. It provides therapy, security, and provides them with a chance to rebuild something that was taken from them, their lives.
The people running the foundation are not just staff. They are our extraction team, or as we refer to them, our rescue crew.
Whenever we do a raid, we notify them first in case there are victims on site, and we move fast to get them out.
Some of the women and girls we find have the same story.
They were coerced into thinking a better life awaited them here.
Most of them are from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, or Colombia.
They are given visas or work permits and brought here under the pretext of legitimate employment, with hotels being the easiest.
When they arrive, they are already in debt. A debt they never agreed to. Their documents are confiscated, and their freedom is stripped away.
Then they are sold and forced into brothels, into rooms, into lives they never chose.
Passed along from one man to the next like they’re nothing.