Chapter 28 #2
We finished shopping, loaded bags into the Jeep with the kind of efficiency that came from practice, and headed back toward the ranch. The drive was peaceful, the afternoon sun warm through the windshield, my anxiety from this morning almost forgotten.
Almost.
We were about thirty minutes from the ranch, on the winding two-lane road that cut through forest and open fields where civilization felt miles away, when something appeared in the road ahead.
Not something. Someone.
A woman stumbled out of the tree line like she'd been thrown by an invisible hand, lurching into the middle of the road, her arms waving frantically.
“Jesus—” Jaxon hit the brakes hard, the Jeep's tires squealing on asphalt in a sound that made my teeth hurt. The grocery bags in the back seat slid forward with the sudden stop.
Through the windshield, I could see her clearly now.
She was young, probably in her twenties with dark hair matted and tangled around her face like she'd been living in the woods for weeks.
Her clothes were torn and dirty, hanging off a frame that was far too thin, skeletal almost. Her face was bruised, one eye swollen and dark purple, her lip split and freshly bleeding.
She looked like she'd been through hell and barely escaped with her life.
“Stay in the car,” Jaxon ordered, already unbuckling his seatbelt with military efficiency. His hand went to the glove compartment where I knew he kept his gun. “Harper, I mean it. Stay in the car until I make sure it's safe.”
But the woman was stumbling toward the Jeep on legs that barely held her weight, her hands raised in a gesture that was clearly pleading, tears streaming down her battered face and mixing with dirt and blood.
“Please,” she called out, her voice raw and desperate and broken in a way that made my chest ache. “Please help me. Please, I'm not—I won't hurt you, I just need—please—”
She collapsed to her knees in the middle of the road, sobbing with her whole body, and something in my chest cracked wide open.
“Jaxon, she needs help.” I was already unbuckling my own seatbelt. “Look at her.”
“It could be a trap. Harper, think about it. A woman appears in the middle of nowhere, exactly where we'd be driving, exactly when—”
“She's hurt and clearly terrified.” I reached for the door handle. “I can't just leave her there in the road. What if it was me? What if I needed help and everyone just drove past?”
Jaxon's jaw clenched, but he nodded sharply. “Fine. But stay behind me. And if anything feels wrong you run back to the Jeep. Got it?”
“Yes.”
We climbed out of the Jeep, Jaxon positioning himself slightly in front of me like a human shield, his hand near his weapon but not drawing it yet.
The woman looked up at us with eyes that held more fear than I'd ever seen in another human being, like she'd seen things that had broken something fundamental inside her.
“Please,” she whispered again, her voice breaking. “Please don't leave me here. He'll find me. He'll—” Her voice dissolved into sobs that shook her entire frame.
I moved around Jaxon before he could stop me.
Stupid, maybe, but I couldn't just stand there, so I dropped to my knees in front of her without thinking about the dirt or the danger.
Up close, the damage was even worse, making my stomach turn.
Bruises in various stages of healing covered her visible skin, a rainbow of yellow, blue and green.
Her wrists were raw and bloody, like she'd been restrained with rope or zip ties and fought against them until her skin tore.
Her clothes smelled like sweat, dirt, and something else I couldn't, or more specifically didn’t want to identify.
Finger-shaped bruises marked her throat in a pattern that made it clear someone had choked her. Burns that looked like cigarettes dotted her arms in deliberate patterns. This wasn't just abuse. This was systematic torture, the kind of cruelty that required planning.
“Hey, it's okay. You're safe now.” I kept my voice soft, gentle, like I was approaching a wounded animal that might bolt. “What's your name?”
“Emma.” The word came out shaky, like she wasn't sure she was allowed to say it, like her name was something that could be taken away. “My name is Emma.”
“Emma, I'm Harper. This is Jaxon. We're going to help you, okay? Are you hurt? Do you need a hospital?”
“No hospital.” The panic in her voice was immediate, visceral, her eyes going wide with terror that made my heart hurt. “No police. Please, they'll find me if you call. He has connections, he'll know, he'll—”
“Who will know?” Jaxon asked, his voice careful but firm, crouching down to our level. “Emma, who are you running from?”
She looked up at him, then at me, her eyes wild with fear and something that looked almost like recognition.
“You're her,” she whispered, staring at me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. “You're Harper. I've seen your picture. He has pictures of you. So many pictures. He talks about you all the time.”
Ice flooded my veins, every hair on my body stood up like I'd been hit with static electricity.
“Who has pictures of me?”
“Silas.” The name came out like a curse, dripping with hatred and terror in equal measure.
“Silas has pictures of you everywhere. You and Connor.
Your boutique. Your apartment. Everything.
He's obsessed with—” She stopped, swaying slightly, and I realized she was on the verge of collapse.
“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have—he'll kill me if he knows I—”
She tried to stand, stumbled, and Jaxon caught her before she hit the pavement. The moment his hands touched her, she flinched violently, a whimper escaping before she could stop it.
“Easy. You're okay. I'm not going to hurt you.” Jaxon's voice was gentle in a way I rarely heard from him, the voice he probably used with traumatized soldiers. “Harper, get in the Jeep. We're taking her back to the ranch.”
“But—”
“Now. We need to get off this road. If she escaped from Silas, he might be looking for her.” His eyes met mine over Emma's head, and I saw the fear there, the same fear flooding my own system. “We're too exposed out here.”
The thought of Silas nearby, of him finding us on this isolated road with nowhere to run, no witnesses, no help, made my decision easy.
I climbed back into the Jeep while Jaxon helped Emma into the back seat with careful hands.
She moved like every touch hurt, like her body had been through so much trauma it expected pain from any contact.
What the fuck did they do to her?
Jaxon drove fast but controlled, his eyes constantly checking the rearview mirror like he expected to see pursuit, scanning the road ahead for threats. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
I twisted in my seat to look at Emma, who had curled into herself in the corner of the back seat, making her body as small as possible like she was trying to disappear into the upholstery.
Her arms were wrapped around her knees, her face pressed against them, her whole frame shaking with silent sobs.
“Emma?” I kept my voice as gentle as possible, like she was made of glass that might shatter. “How long were you with Silas?”
She shook her head and licked her lips before answering.
“Three months I think.” Her voice was hollow, dead, like she'd left part of herself back wherever she'd escaped from.
“He brought me here from Nevada. From Las Vegas. There were others. Women he uses for—” She stopped, her whole body shuddered so violently I thought she might be sick.
“You don't have to tell us now,” I said quickly. “Emma, you're safe. You don't have to—”
“Sex trafficking.” The words came out flat, clinical, the only way to say something so horrific without breaking completely.
“Silas works for a cartel. They traffic women. Bring them to different locations for their clients. I was—” Her voice cracked.
“I was taken from a club in Vegas. Drugged.
Woke up in a van with two other women I'd never seen before.”
The horror of it settled over the Jeep like a physical weight, making it hard to breathe.
My hand moved unconsciously to my stomach, to the baby growing there, and I felt sick thinking about what Emma had endured, what could have been my fate if things had gone differently, if I'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“He brought me here,” Emma continued, her voice still that terrible monotone like she was reading from a script someone else had written.
“To Wyoming. Kept me at a house, I don't know where, he always blindfolded me during transport so I couldn't see landmarks or anything.
But it's outside town. Isolated. No neighbors for miles with a soundproofed basement where he—where they—”
She stopped, gagging, and Jaxon quickly lowered the window to give her air.
“You don't have to say more,” Jaxon said, his voice rough with barely controlled rage. “Emma, you're safe now. We're taking you somewhere secure.”
“No one's safe.” Emma's laugh was bitter, broken, the sound of someone who'd lost hope entirely. “Not as long as they're out there. Not as long as Morgan—”
“Morgan?” My voice came out sharper than intended, almost a yelp. “Morgan Ashford? She's involved?”
“She's insane.” Emma looked up at me, and the pity in her eyes made my blood run cold.
“She comes to the house where Silas kept me.
Screams at him and Armand about plans and failures and how you took everything from her.
Silas and Armand are criminals, but they're rational.
They do this for money, for business. Morgan is past rational.
She's completely unhinged. Like actually psychotic.”