Behind the tape, she makes a sound. Raw. Terrified.
"I'm going to remove the tape," I tell her, keeping my voice low and steady. "It's going to hurt. I'm sorry."
I peel it off as gently as possible. She gasps, coughs, sucks in air like she's been drowning. Words tumble out in a rush. Russian, I think. Or Ukrainian. Something Slavic that I don't understand.
"Do you speak English?" I ask.
She nods, frantic. "Please. They come back. They kill me. They kill you."
"How many?"
"Three men. Maybe four. I don't know. They take turns watching." Her accent is thick but understandable. "They bring me here two days ago. Say they wait for transport. Say I go to Seattle, then somewhere else. They don't say where."
Wells is already on his radio, calling for backup, for an ambulance, for every resource we can get. I cut the zip ties with my knife. Her wrists are raw where the plastic bit into skin.
"What's your name?"
"Oksana. Oksana Melnyk. From Kyiv. They promise me job. Cleaning houses. Good money." Her voice cracks, goes thin. "No job. Just this."
I shrug out of my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. She's shaking. Shock and cold and three days of hell catching up all at once.
"How long ago did they leave?"
"One hour. Maybe less. They go to meet someone. Bring supplies. They say they come back soon."
Thirty minutes, maybe. Thirty minutes before armed traffickers return to find their product missing and two cops in its place.
"Wells, how far out is backup?"
"Twenty minutes minimum. Sheriff MacAllister in Glacier Hollow has sent support, but they're forty-five minutes away."
Forty-five minutes. Might as well be forty-five hours. If the traffickers come back and see cruisers, they'll scatter. Disappear into the wilderness. We'll lose the best lead we've had in months on the network that's been operating in our territory.
The network that might have killed Emma.
Emma drove the mountain roads every day. Knew them well. Commuted to Palmer for her nursing shifts. If she saw something she wasn't supposed to see, if she stumbled onto evidence of trafficking operations, that would explain whysomeone forced her off the road. Why someone powerful enough to bury the investigation wanted her silenced.
"Rhys." Wells cuts through my thoughts. "What do you want to do?"
Oksana shivers in my jacket. This girl who believed promises and ended up bound to a tree in the Alaskan wilderness, waiting to be shipped like cargo to God knows where. Emma's ring burns in my pocket. The badge weighs heavy on my chest. Sometimes doing the right thing means taking risks that would make the insurance adjusters weep.
"Get her to the ambulance when it arrives," I tell Wells. "Full medical workup, protective custody, federal notification. This is bigger than our jurisdiction."
"And you?"
I check my sidearm. Full magazine. One in the chamber. Two spare mags on my belt. Not an arsenal, but enough.
"I'm going to wait for them to come back."
"Alone? Rhys, that's insane. We don't know how many there are, what firepower they're carrying. You can't?—"
"I can and I will." I meet his eyes. "Someone's been using our territory to move people. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. That ends today. And if whoever's running this operation had anything to do with Emma's death, I'm going to find out."
Wells opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. He knows me well enough to recognize when a decision is final. Instead, he nods once and helps Oksana to her feet.
"Don't die, Rhys. The town needs you."
"The town needs someone," I correct. "Doesn't have to be me."
