“You keep saying ‘they’ when talking about your abductors. How many are there? Are they all Indigenous, too?”
Tariah let out a groan, and Angel shot a furtive look at her, then curled in on herself without answering.
Shit. So close to answers for Leelee’s family and all the other families missing one of their daughters. Maybe she was even close to finally finding out what happened to her cousin all those years ago—closer than she’d even been before—but she’d pressed Angel too hard, too fast, and now the girl was clamming up.
Naomi eased back and reigned in her impatience. “That’s okay. We don’t have to talk about them right now. You’re safe with me. I’m going to get us all out of here. You believe me?”
Angel’s gaze slid sideways. “People say a lot of things.”
Naomi let out a breath. “Yeah, but I don’t bother with promises I can’t keep.” Her wrists ached. She flexed her hands behind her back, felt the cord bite into skin. She flexed again, harder. Got maybe a millimeter of slack and a flash of pain up her forearm.
Angel watched her, all hollowed-out eyes and splotchy cheeks. The kid looked like she hadn’t slept in a month. She flinched at every sound. The air in here vibrated with dread, the kind that crawled under your skin and nested there.
Naomi shifted against the wall, bracing her back and drawing her knees up to her chest. She scanned the room, every inch. No cameras that she could see, but that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes on them. The stalls were separated by plywood that ran floor to ceiling, the boards new enough that the splinters caughtthe weak light. At the far end, the big barn doors were chained shut with a heavy lock.
She kept her voice low. “You said there was a woman here before. Ashley. How long ago?”
Angel shook her head. “I don’t know. She was here when I woke up. Then she was gone. Sometimes I hear trucks, like maybe they drive people away, but I don’t know if she left or if they… if they…”
Yeah. Naomi knew how that ended. Sometimes they found the girls. Sometimes they didn’t.
She forced her mouth into a smile. “We are going to get out of here, okay?”
Angel’s lips barely moved. “Okay.”
Tariah hadn’t budged. Naomi watched her for a sign, anything—a twitch, a flinch, a flicker of awareness. Nothing. Her chest rose and fell, slow and shallow, but her eyes were not tracking a damn thing.
“What did they do to her?”
Angel’s voice trembled. “Shot something into her arm. And her neck. She tried to run last night and bit the man’s hand. He hit her with a stick.”
Naomi clenched her jaw against the urge to pepper her with questions. She wanted details. She wanted names, faces, anything. But she’d scare the kid again if she pushed too hard, so she dialed it back.
“Angel, if I’m going to stop them and get us out of here, I need your help. This is important. The man who took you. Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“Big. Not tall, but… wide.” Angel closed her eyes, reaching for the memory. “Short hair. Black. Sometimes he wore a hat, sometimes not. He smelled like smoke.”
“What about the others? Anyone else?”
A hesitation. “There’s one other. I hear him sometimes outside, yelling. He doesn’t come in much. Only the first man comes in, but I think the other one might be Mexican or something. He kind of has that accent.”
All right. Two men. Maybe more, but two for sure. Naomi filed the details away, keeping her face blank. She flexed her hands again, the cord grinding over her wrist bones.
She tested her ankles. Tape, not cord. Cheap. Probably the same stuff the hardware store in town stocked by the truckload. She could work with that.
“Have they said what they want from you?”
Angel hesitated, picking at the duct tape around her ankles. “No.”
Nothing else.
Naomi tried again. “Do they talk about money? Ransom?”
Angel shook her head, eyes locked on her socked toes. “I think… sometimes I hear the older one on the phone. Last time he said, ‘Don’t mess up the product, asshole, just keep her quiet.’ Like we’re not even people. Just stuff to move around.”
A bitter taste crawled up Naomi’s throat. “Have they sexually assaulted you?”
It came out too flat, clinical. She hated herself for phrasing it like that, but Angel didn’t flinch.
