20. Hazel
Hazel
The secondary location isn't the logging camp.
It's a clearing I've never seen before, higher up, tucked into a fold of the mountain where the road dead-ends against a rock face.
Two shipping containers sit side by side on a gravel pad.
A flatbed truck is backed up to one of them.
Three men I don't recognize are loading crates from the container onto the truck bed while Dale barks directions from beside the sedan.
He pulls me out of the car by my arm and walks me toward the second container. Alice follows three steps behind, her face blank, her role apparently finished now that she's delivered the package. The driver stays with the sedan, engine idling.
Dale stops at the container door. It's held shut by a heavy padlock and a steel latch. He produces a key, works the lock, and hauls the door open. The interior is dark, the air inside stale and metallic. He shoves me forward.
"Sit down. Shut up. You'll be moving with the next load.
" He looks at me the way someone looks at an item on a manifest. "Your article cost me the logging camp.
The weapons cache. Four men. And eight products I spent three months acquiring.
" He says products and my stomach turns to ice.
"You're going to help offset that loss. There are buyers who'll pay premium for a journalist. Especially one stupid enough to publish her real name. "
The door slams. The lock clicks. Darkness.
I stand in the black for five seconds while my eyes adjust. Thin lines of light bleed around the door edges and through two rust holes near the ceiling.
It's enough to see shapes. The container is about forty feet long and twelve wide.
No crates inside this one. Just bare corrugated metal walls, a concrete floor with drainage grates, and in the far corner, huddled together, six women.
Not the same women from Storage Building Three.
Those were rescued this morning. These are different.
A second group. Held somewhere else, moved here while the raid was happening at the camp.
Dale had a backup. Of course he did. A man who's operated for four years without an indictment doesn't keep all his inventory in one location.
The women stare at me. Most of them are young.
Early twenties, maybe younger. Their clothes are dirty and mismatched.
Two are huddled under a single blanket that looks like it came from a truck cab.
One has a bruise along her jawline that's yellowing at the edges, a few days old. None of them speaks.
I crouch slowly, making myself smaller, less threatening. "My name is Hazel. I'm a journalist. People are looking for me right now. Federal marshals. They know about Dale and they know about this operation. Help is coming."
A woman with short dark hair and hollow cheeks speaks first. Her English is accented but clear. "They always say help is coming. No one ever comes."
The words hit me in the chest. I don't argue with her. I don't promise something I can't guarantee. Instead I tell her what I can guarantee.
"This morning, federal agents raided a logging camp in these mountains and rescued eight women who were being held in a storage building.
All eight are alive and safe. That happened because of information I helped uncover.
The same people who ran that raid are searching for me right now.
" I pull out my phone and show them the screen.
No signal. The SOS icon is grayed out, which means the broadcast stopped when we lost coverage.
But the activation log is visible. "I triggered an emergency alert before they brought me here.
The marshals have the route we drove. They know the direction. They're coming."
The woman with the bruised jaw looks at the phone, then at me. "How long?"
"I don't know. But Dale said we're moving with the next load. That means the flatbed outside. If they finish loading the other container before help arrives, we're on that truck and the signal trail goes cold." I stand and look around the container. "So we don't wait. We prepare."
I walk the perimeter, running my hands along the walls.
The corrugated metal is cold and solid. No give.
The door is the only exit and it's locked from outside with a padlock I can't reach.
The floor is concrete, poured flat, with two drainage grates about eighteen inches square.
I crouch and grip one. It's heavy but not bolted.
I pull. It shifts. Underneath is a drainage channel, maybe eight inches deep, running under the container wall and out through a gap where the base meets the gravel pad.
Too small for a person. But not too small for a signal.
"Does anyone have a phone?" I ask. "Anything electronic. A watch with GPS. Anything."
Silence. Then the woman with the hollow cheeks reaches into her boot and pulls out a cheap prepaid phone, the kind you buy at a gas station. "They didn't find it when they searched me. Battery is almost dead. No minutes left."
"I don't need minutes. I need the phone to be on and broadcasting a signal.
" I take it and check the screen. Four percent battery.
No service inside the container, but outside, in the clearing, there might be enough tower coverage for a ping.
If I can slide the phone through the drainage gap and get it outside the metal walls of the container, the signal might reach far enough for the cell towers to register a location.
I wrap the phone in the corner of the blanket the two women were sharing, creating a small padded bundle, and push it down through the drainage grate into the channel.
The channel angles toward the exterior wall.
I reach in, arm extended to the shoulder, and shove the bundle as far as I can.
My fingers feel cold air at the far end. The gap opens to the outside.
"That's our beacon," I say, pulling my arm back. "If it picks up even a whisper of signal, the towers will register a location ping. It's not GPS accuracy, but it's enough to put rescuers within a quarter mile of this clearing."
The woman with the bruised jaw looks at me with something that isn't quite hope yet but isn't emptiness anymore either. "What else?"
"The door." I move to the entrance and study the latch mechanism through the gap where the door meets the frame.
The padlock is on the outside, but the latch itself is a simple slide bolt.
If I can access the bolt through the gap, I can work it open from inside.
"I need something thin and strong. A piece of wire.
A hairpin. Anything I can bend into a hook. "
One of the younger women pulls a bobby pin from her hair without a word and holds it out.
I take it, bend it into an L-shape, and slide it through the gap between the door and the frame.
The bolt is about six inches above my reach point.
I angle the pin upward, feeling for the mechanism.
The metal is slick with condensation. My fingers are numb from the cold.
The pin slips twice and I have to pull it back and rebend it.
Outside I can hear the men loading the flatbed. Dale's voice, giving orders. The clang of crates being stacked. They're almost done with the first container.
"When they finish loading that truck," I say, keeping my voice low, "they're coming for us. We have maybe fifteen minutes."
I work the pin against the bolt. The angle is wrong. I try from lower on the gap, pressing my face against the cold metal to see through the crack. The bolt is right there. I can see its edge. I hook the pin under it and pull.
It moves. A quarter inch. Maybe less.
I pull again. Another fraction. The bolt is sliding, millimeter by millimeter, against rust and gravity. My wrist aches from the angle. My fingers are cramping around the tiny piece of bent metal.
"Someone talk to me," I whisper. "Keep me focused."
The woman with the hollow cheeks moves closer.
"My name is Katya. I was taken from a rest stop outside of Billings four weeks ago.
" Her voice is quiet and matter-of-fact, the tone of someone who has processed the horror enough to speak about it without breaking.
"There were more of us. Some were moved south last week. I don't know where."
"When we get out of here, I'm going to need you to tell me everything you remember," I say, still working the pin. "Names. Places. Vehicle descriptions. Anything. The federal investigation is active and every detail matters."
"I remember everything," she says.
The bolt slides another eighth of an inch. I can feel it loosening, the rust giving way to sustained pressure. My arm is shaking from holding the angle.
Outside, the loading sounds change. The clang of crates stops. I hear the flatbed's tailgate slam shut. Voices move closer to our container.
"They're coming," Megan whispers from the back.
I pull the pin one more time. The bolt slides free with a soft metallic scrape. The latch releases. The door isn't locked anymore.
But the padlock is still in place. The latch is open but the padlock's shackle is threaded through the hasp. The door won't swing until the padlock is removed, and I can't reach the padlock from inside.
Footsteps on gravel. Getting closer.
"Change of plan," I whisper. "When they open that door, the latch is already free. The second they pull the padlock and swing the door, we move. Not one at a time. All of us. At once. They're expecting cargo. They're not expecting a fight."
I look at the women. Six faces. Scared. Exhausted. Angry. The anger is what I need.