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“I’ll be back,” I say again. “This isn’t me leaving you. I’ll be back.”
“But…” he eyes Travis, his bottom lip quivering.
“He won’t leave until Nathan leaves with him,” Carter promises. “We won’t be alone with Nathan. They’ll leave together, at the same time, and then it’ll just be us. Right?”
Travis frowns, clearly not happy with this turn of events, but Carter shoots him a look that gets him agreeing very quickly. So whipped. “Right.”
Casey relaxes a little, which is… something, I guess. “Okay…”
“Oh.” Travis lifts his phone. “He just texted. Said to give him 5.”
“This is your burner phone, Carter,” I add, handing him the small black phone. It’s for him and Casey to use to contact us if they need anything while we’re in Mexico - or to contact Maison if there’s an emergency and they can’t wait for us - but it works for this too. “That’s what he’s going to call you on. You can never call him though, understood? Only text.”
“Okay.” Carter fiddles with the phone in his hands, suddenly looking nervous.
After we all - minus Casey - exchange some awkward, tense looks, Travis tilts his head toward the door. I follow him out despite the way my entire body seems to be begging me to stay by Casey. My protective instincts are on high alert.
He’ll be better with Carter, I tell myself. He’s fucking afraid of you.
All I can hope is that by the time I return, that last part is no longer true.
Chapter Fifteen
Casey
The second the door clicks shut behind Master and his friend, I turn to Carter and look at his phone. We have to call for help, right? It’s risky. It’s so fucking risky. But we have to at least try.
“I-” I pause, anxiety crawling along my skin until I feel ready to claw right out of it. I look around the room, wondering if the men are watching somehow. I try to keep my voice low when I ask Carter, “What if there are cameras?”
Carter looks surprised by this before frowning. Has he really not considered this? How in the world has he survived so long? “There aren’t any cameras. Even if there were, it’d just be Benny and Nathan who see the feeds, and they don’t care what we do.”
Yeah, right.
“We…” I trail off, looking around again. There’s no way they just left us here, right? With a phone? No fucking way. I move closer to Carter, knowing I have to take the risk. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. This is our chance. If we get punished, it’ll be worth it.
I lean forward and whisper in his ear, “We should call 911. With that phone. We have to call 911, Carter. Now.”
“We can’t do that, Casey.” He holds the phone closer to his chest like I might steal it. Which… I sort of think I might. Would I win if we fought? Would Carter forgive me after? This is our fucking chance, and he’s wasting time arguing. “If we did that, we’d ruin everything. Benny and Nathan are trying to save hundreds of slaves. Thousands even. If we called 911, that’d never happen.”
I shake my head, unable to believe that. “The cops know how to save them.”
“Not like they will, no. The cops would save us and the others in this house, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything else. They don’t have the information they need. The records. They don’t know that there are slaves all around the world who need to be saved. Slaves that Nathan has kept track of to make sure they were helped when this is all over. And they don’t know the other key players in the trafficking business. They wouldn’t know that they need to go down and deal with Miller and unravel his entire business. They wouldn’t know where to begin with any of it. Calling would be selfish.” Carter huffs. “And that’s all only if the cops even manage to get in here before getting shot down by all of Nathan’s men.”
Realizing I’m crying, I quickly wipe the tears from my eyes with shaking hands. Now isn’t the time to cry. But… I’m just so scared. This is too good to be true. Way too good. I’m fucking terrified we’re about to miss our chance.
“Casey-”
“Remember what I taught you?” I ask, referring to the motto I taught him and the others in the cell before we were sold. The motto my dad drilled into my head because he was paranoid that something bad would happen to me. I gave up on it a while ago, unable to cling to hope any longer, but this is our chance. “Keep calm. Breathe. Pay attention. Wait for your moment. This is our fucking moment, Carter. We can call 911. Fuck, we can call my fucking dad! I have no idea where we are, but he’d help us. He’d be able to figure it out. He’d-”
The phone rings.
I look at Carter, my head spinning. Is it Master? Carter’s master? Someone that’s going to try to pretend to be Maison?
Is it… Maison?
Could it really be Maison?
Could this all really be true?
