Beau Read online

  “Sure,” she said, “but I don’t think we have much time. We need to get these women out of here.”

  Beau nodded. “I agree.”

  Just then Asher joined them. He took one look at the women cowering in the cab of the van, and quietly he and Beau went to the back and opened it. At least another dozen women were here, many of them scantily clothed and in different states of panic. He moved amongst them quietly cutting the ties that bit into their skin. As he worked he called out in a gentle voice, “We’ve helped you get away from the compound. We’ll shut this door for now, while we drive to Anchorage.”

  At that, several of the women looked up. “Anchorage, Alaska?”

  Asher’s voice was grim when he said, “Yes, that’s where you are right now. We have a team coming in to take out the compound and to deal with those who kidnapped you, but we want to get you a long way away from here first.”

  They nodded.

  One woman said, “It’s really uncomfortable here.”

  “I know,” Asher said, “and it’ll get worse because we’ll have to move some other women back here too.”

  “Other women?”

  “We intercepted two vans,” Beau said. He looked at Asher. “Do you want to drive?”

  He nodded. “Why don’t you bring Danica and a group of the women from the front seat so that there’s more room in the cab?” he asked. “Then we can get out of here as fast as possible.”

  With that, they quickly shifted some of the women from the cab into the back of the van, along with Danica and himself. That meant, if somebody was coming after them, at least Beau would have some warning, since he still had his communication device to speak with Asher.

  Once they were back on the road, he sat at the front corner with his weapons at the ready. Danica cuddled close. He hoped seeing her with him would help the other women relax. He tried to talk to a few of them. “Where are you from?”

  One huddled in tighter, curled up against the woman at her side, and the other one glared at him. Danica finally got the women to relax. “I was one of the first known victims,” she said. “At least I was one of the victims from about a week ago. I woke up in this nasty little dirt cell with a grate to the sky above. I escaped, and, while I was trying to get out of the compound, I found these men. They were here to find me. Since then we helped another group of women escape earlier this morning, and they have already headed out in Asher’s truck to Anchorage, but then we saw you guys arriving at the compound, so we stopped to help you too.”

  “Why are they doing this?” asked another young woman.

  Beau studied the girl who had spoken—and she was definitely more girl than woman. He doubted she was even seventeen. “I think,” he said, “you were destined for the sex trade, probably in Asia. But I don’t know that for sure.”

  The women and the girls hung on to each other, most still staring at him with distrust.

  “And some of us may have been preordered,” Danica said, brutally honest. “We’re not sure if the clients were requesting dark hair or blond hair or putting in requests for certain sizes and heights,” she said. “Anything nasty you can think of is what we were heading for.”

  “How did you get out?” asked one of the women sitting and glaring at the two of them, as if including Danica with the kidnappers. “And how do we know that you’re telling the truth?”

  “A week ago I was at the University of Oregon,” she said. “I was late to class and walking across campus. Somebody asked me for directions, and, while I spoke to him, a hood was pulled over my head. I was picked up and thrown into a vehicle. I remember getting a beating at the time, and then I lost consciousness. I don’t know how long it took, but I went from Oregon to Alaska, so I was out for a while. When I woke up, I was in that nasty underground hellhole.”

  “Why you?” asked the same woman.

  “I don’t know,” Danica said. “My father is wealthy, and I thought maybe it was a ransom thing, but I don’t know if he’s received a ransom note or not.”

  The woman’s gaze switched to Beau. “But he’s your partner, isn’t he?”

  “If you mean, did he know me before this?” Danica shook her head.

  Beau stared steadily at the woman. “We didn’t know each other at all. Her father contacted military friends who he knew in high places and said that something had happened to Danica. We got word a few days ago of a sighting around this area. My partner and I came in to do an early reconnaissance and to see what we could find, but what we found was Danica here already escaping out of the hole in the ground that she’d been placed in, and, after that, all hell broke loose.”

  “Are more men coming?”

  “You mean, more law enforcement?” When the woman nodded, Beau added, “Yes, they should be here in about forty-five minutes, but we’re not waiting for them. We want to get you well away from here. Let me ask you guys a question. Did you recognize any of the men who picked you up?” Every single woman shook her head. “Do you all have different stories as to how you were taken?”

  The young girl who didn’t look like she was even seventeen pointed at Danica and said, “Same for me, except I was coming home from high school. I was almost at my house when a vehicle pulled up to the side, a hood was thrown over my head, and I was thrown into the vehicle.” Tears filled her eyes. “My mom will be so worried.”

  “Well, your mom might have been worried,” Beau said, “but she’ll be ecstatic when she finds out that you’re safe.”

  “Are we safe?” asked the first, more belligerent woman. “I still can’t believe that you just happened upon the compound.”

  “It wasn’t anything that happened on the compound that brought us here,” he said, his own voice desperately trying to stay soft and gentle, knowing that the women would take any aggressive tone in the wrong light. “We did a lot of satellite work and a lot of reconnaissance to find out what was going on here. There appears to be over sixty people in that compound, most of them well equipped with heavy military firepower.”

  Her brows drew together. “Sixty?”

  “It’s a cult,” he said. “There are some men, but mostly women, and I found an entire building full of children.”

  “Oh, my God,” one of the women said. “Those poor children.”

  He nodded. “We don’t know what’s happening to them. We also don’t know if they’re being abused or if they’re being groomed for sale into the sex trade, along with you guys.”

  The women shuddered. As a group, they were mostly in torn or very old clothing. Some even had bloodstains, while others just showed the wear and tear of traveling for several days. He glanced around and asked, “Did any of you get supplies—water, food, anything like that?”

  “We got water,” one of the women said. “Just a few bottles so we had to share.”

  “That’ll be the first thing that we get you then,” he said. “You’ll all be checked over once we get you to the hospital.”

  “But you haven’t set that up though, have you? You can’t tell us that you’ve already got this all laid out.”

  He twisted so that she could see the earpiece he wore. “All of this is being taped, and, at the moment, it’s being transmitted to the driver, whose name is Asher. I’m Beau, by the way, and this info is then shared with our team. They’re in communication with the local team of authorities coming out of Anchorage.”

  “I’ve never been to Alaska before,” somebody said.

  Beau grinned. “And I’m sure, after this, you probably won’t ever want to come back again either.”

  “You can say that for sure,” the woman said. “They took my purse, my phone, my jacket, and they even took my shoes.”

  He realized that they were all barefoot.

  “It makes sense on their part,” he said, “to take away your outer clothing because it’s much harder for you to escape that way.”

  “Well, they left us enough clothing to keep us covered,” one woman answered. “But just barely.
Some of the women had their shirts taken off too.”

  He looked around and saw several with their arms across their chest. They appeared to have bras on, but not a whole lot else.

  “Again, it’s to make you fearful and cower,” he said. “It gives them more psychological control and makes you more of a victim. Once you’re in a victim state,” he said gently, “it’s much harder for you mentally to fight back.”

  “Men are assholes,” one of the women said.

  “How can they do this to us?”

  “Because they don’t know who you are,” Danica said suddenly. “We aren’t anybody special to those animals. They don’t know I’m Danica. They also don’t know I’m a college student with dreams and hopes and wishes. They don’t know that I’m twenty-nine years old and that I worked ten years in the workforce to save enough money to get back to school. My father didn’t believe in paving the way. And, because they don’t know, they don’t care. I’m just another name, number, paycheck to them. I fit whatever parameters they’re looking for, and that’s all that was required.”

  “Do you think everybody in the cult is involved?” somebody asked.

  “It’s hard to say,” Beau said. “The adults will be complicit, at least for seeing it all happening. Whether they’re actively involved, I can’t say. There were huge gardens in the compound, and I’m sure a lot of the adults are out there working with animals or working in the gardens and not necessarily being very proactive in the selling of women, but you have to also consider that they know about it, and that’s what’s keeping them in food over the winter.”

  “And quite possibly they’re too scared to do anything about their circumstances either,” another woman said.

  That’s when Danica told the other women about Nania. They just stared at her in horror and shuddered a little more.

  “How much longer do we have to drive?” one of the women asked softly. “I really need to use a bathroom.”

  Beau tapped his communication device and said, “Asher, what time frame?”

  “We’re coming up on one of the first rendezvous spots,” he said. “It’s about four miles up.”

  “Some of the women need a bathroom break,” Beau said.

  “I’m sure they do,” Asher said. “If they can wait until we get to the gas station,” he said, “we will meet some of the military trucks there.”

  “Do we have an ambulance on scene?” Beau asked.

  “No, but we have a medic truck and a couple doctors coming.”

  He looked at the woman and asked, “Can you make it another four or five miles? We’ll stop at a gas station with a washroom.”

  Relief whispered across her face, and she nodded. “That I can do.”

  “Good,” he said. “Does anybody need any medical attention?”

  At that, he noticed one of the women was in a stupor on the floor. He looked at the others and asked, “Anybody know what’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s a diabetic,” one of the women said. “I don’t know if it’s panic or whatever, but she’s almost comatose.”

  He quickly tapped forward to Asher and told him about the one woman. “Anybody else need medical attention?” he asked, his voice sharp. “We’ll be meeting up with a couple doctors, so we need to have those most severely injured helped first.”

  “No, we’re more or less okay,” one of the women said. “Some of us are banged up and bruised with cuts and scrapes, and I’m not sure that I don’t have a broken rib, but I’m ambulatory and not bleeding to death.”

  He appreciated the difference. “Hopefully the medics and the military have met up with the other truck of escapees already,” he said. “One of those women had a really bad gash on her leg.”

  “Those were the first ones who you rescued?”

  He nodded. “Yes, and they didn’t want to hang around. They took off in a vehicle heading for Anchorage themselves. We’ll track them down, if not by now, very soon.”

  One of the women nodded. “I don’t blame them for running,” she said. “I just can’t imagine it because I probably would have bolted in the first direction I was pointed and kept on going until I dropped from exhaustion.”

  “And that probably would have been what would kill you,” he said. “You’re in the wilderness up here. There are not a whole lot of places to go. Follow the roads or get lost.”

  “It’s so much country you’d never get found again,” said the one woman who had been more belligerent at first, but now her tone was kinder. “And we’ll wait and see if your story is true or not.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “What’s to make it true or not?”

  “Depends if the military is at the gas station and whether we will stop there,” she said. “Or if there is just another group of men wanting to abuse women.”

  “You have every right to consider such options,” Danica said immediately, “but I can tell you that Beau’s done everything he could to keep me and you safe.”

  “Sure, but you’re probably giving him a blow job to save your life,” the same woman said.

  Danica stared at her for a long moment, long enough that the woman visibly lost some of her bravado. “I get that you’re in a difficult position and that you’re coming from a sense of distrust and probably want everybody around you to be the same so you don’t have to deal with the fact that you need to move on and to move past this, but you don’t have to treat Beau and Asher that way. These guys saved your ass. They are not like your kidnappers, not like the men back at the compound, ready to sell us to the highest bidder.”

  Beau reached over, squeezed her fingers, and said, “She keeps defending me, and I don’t need it. She doesn’t have to do anything to stay safe in my world. But it’s fine. If you don’t want anything to do with me, I’m okay with that.” He looked down at Danica, smiled, and said, “A couple miles longer. That’s it.”

  She smiled and settled back, dropping her head on his shoulder. “Wake me up when we get there.”

  “Oh, you’ll know,” he said, chuckling. “You’ll know.”

  Chapter 12

  He was correct—she certainly knew when they had arrived. Not only did the truck slow down from a fast rate of speed to an almost complete stop but they were all shifted and cried out as they tumbled slightly. But it wasn’t long before the big double rear doors opened up, and there was Asher, grinning at them. “We’ve got doctors. We’ve got coffee. We’ve got washroom breaks,” he said, “and we have quite a few military men here to help us out.”

  But none of the women moved. Beau hopped down, and Danica reached out and asked, “Give me a hand, will you?” Instead, he picked her up by the waist and set her down gently, her feet still wrapped up in rags topped off by towels.

  He looked at her bloody bindings and said, “You need to get those looked at.”

  She shrugged. “I can get them looked at all I want,” she said. “I still need to get off them on a more permanent basis.”

  The belligerent woman stood, stopping the other women from coming off the truck. She looked at Danica’s feet. “What happened to you?”

  “What happened,” Danica said in exasperation, as if fed up with the woman’s attitude, “is that I’ve been running the skin off the bottom of them trying to save about thirty women from being trafficked, including you.” And, with that smart remark, she turned and limped to the gas station. She was stopped by a group of men who wanted to know her name and address.

  Beau called to one man and said, “She’s the one we found first.”

  Immediately she was motioned toward one of the medical vehicles, where she sat down, and one of the doctors unbound her feet. He took one look and whispered, “I already know what hamburger meat looks like.”

  Danica added, “I imagine this looks like a hamburger that’s been ground into a garden, then picked back up again to see if it was edible or not.”

  The doctor couldn’t have been more than forty-five, a young forty-five at that. He flashed h
er a bright grin, making the freckles on his face crinkle up. “That’s a pretty good analogy,” he said. “These will have to be cleaned and soaked, and you can’t walk on them for a bit.”

  “Then you should have let me go to the bathroom first,” she said, “because I still have to do that.”

  “Got it,” he said. “But some things have to happen in the right order.”

  “Well, I’ve still got to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll pee right here.”

  He looked at her, studied her feet again, and winced.

  “Never mind,” Beau said. “I’ve got her.” He bent to pick her up and glared at her. While the doctor had been kind and compassionate, Beau was ready to snap at her for damaging her feet so badly.

  She glared back at him. “Don’t bother telling me off,” she said. “You know there wasn’t anything else I could do. If I hadn’t escaped, then you know all kinds of shit would have gone down a whole different way.”

  He nodded and strode to the gas station. The bathrooms were accessible from the outside, but only one person at a time. When it was her turn, he stepped inside, but she held up her hand. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re not.”

  “I have to stand on them one way or another,” she said. “So just step back outside and let me do my business, and then you can carry me back.” He didn’t like it and was still hesitating when she pushed at him gently. “I’ll be fine. Honest.”

  “It’s not the time to worry about modesty,” he said, clearly unwilling to leave her alone.

  “No,” she said, “it isn’t. But, if I want to cry, damn it, I want to cry alone and in peace.”

  At that, his face softened, and he nodded. “Fine, but, if you don’t call for me in a few minutes,” he said, “I’ll come back in, whether you are ready or not.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  He looked at her and said, “Don’t lock it,” and he slammed the door closed.

  She chuckled and then cried as soon as she put weight on her feet. Under her breath, she whispered, “Oh, dear God, this is way worse.” But she desperately had to go to the bathroom. She dropped her pants, sat on the toilet to relieve herself, and immediately lifted her feet again. The relief was unbelievable. It didn’t necessarily stop the pain, but, with the pressure no longer on the swollen and ripped-up soles, it helped a tremendous amount. When she was done, she slowly put her weight back on her feet, flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and then called out to him. Immediately the door opened, and he stepped inside.