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“Daria?”
She opened her eyes and erased all her conflicting ruminations away. She braced her body and nodded.
“I’m ready.”
That was the only signal he needed as he took the first step away from their landing spot. She followed. Somewhere along the way, they switched places as she became more familiar with the feel and began leading. At the same time, he lurked in the background, darting in and out of sight. She felt his scrutiny of their surroundings and sensed him tensing now and then. Charlie tirelessly inspected their environment without a word, his readiness like a humming in between them. The companionable silence was a security blanket, embracing her once more as they trudged along what she deduced was an isolated part of the mountain.
It felt good to be away from the city, a freeing that she basked in. Then it wasn’t as an odd sense crept its way into her system, so subtle that she didn’t realize it until she was halfway out of a clearing. She jumped towards the trees and climbed one, her shoulders snapping with awareness. Charlie took a longer time, but when he leaped beside her, he was already speaking.
“There’s someone out there. Or a group of them, to the north. We have to circle and find another way.”
“Or we can check who it is.”
Disbelief radiated from him, and she waited for the protest. Instead, he sighed.
“Stay beside me no matter what. Run when I tell you to.”
“We have been through this before. I can kick asses even without your help, bud.”
The lack of an answer told her that he knew this, too. She jumped down and started walking, then waited a bit until he was in sync with her. While the earlier walk had been companionable, this one was tenser as the more they approached, the more she sensed the telltale signs of strangers: small animals and insects no longer making sounds, a line of path smoothed with occasional steps. Voices, a murmur in the distance, told her these folks were confident in their security and aloneness.
There was a tap on her shoulder, asking her to slow down. She did. She didn’t miss Charlie’s further tensing before he abruptly stopped in his tracks and inhaled sharply. A hiss came out next, low and outraged, before he became so subdued that nerves flitted in. She tapped him in turn.Charlie?
Silence.
“It’s a ring.”
“What?”
“A trafficking ring, I think.”
Her stomach dropped. “Describe it to me.”
“There are cages in a bigger clearing…containers probably assembled here. There are figures inside some cages. They are either sleeping or dead. Some are awake and still. There’s no one outside. No tents, no campfire, no vehicles. I don’t sense any presence.”
They remained quiet, unsure of what to do with the information. When he took her hand, Daria went with him and let him lead her closer to the area where she began to smell even more scents: urine, blood, and a floral fragrance that masked it all. Coincidental or deliberate? She felt the desperation and weariness swirling in the air and clenched her belly tight. Belatedly, it registered that the emotions were fading and that Charlie was not leading her to the area but circling it. Incredulity had her digging her feet into the ground.
“Wait.”
“It could be a trap,” he said, already understanding where her mind went.
“Then we find the trap, disable it, and free them. It’s what we always do.”
She sensed his desire to do so, a trait that was so typical of him…of them. It baffled her that he even considered leaving until a suspicion rose.
“Either we free them and go back or we don’t free them and go up. It’s your call.”
“We free them,” was her prompt reply. “I’m indignant that you would even think I would consider otherwise.”
“Your goal matters.”
“Not more than their lives.” But there was no denying that her heart broke a little bit, anyway, at the idea of going back so fast—of losing what she hadn’t quite grasped in her hands yet. “How many prisoners?”
“I estimate around ten.”
Ten lives trapped. She stepped closer. “Charlie, please. We can’t leave them.”
“I know we can’t,” he bit out, the struggle clear in his voice. “I can only fly one more time. Then it’s over.”
