We were on that land to pick up someone else. Someone we’d left at the edge of the road a few hours before.
Jarvis.
I hated the kinds of jobs that involved him, but I didn’t get to pick and choose back then. I knew why the sick fuck was visiting that house. He was there to abuse the young daughter. I wanted to kill him for it, but I couldn’t. My superior—one of many back then—owned the home. And he allowed it. Allowed his child to be violated for a price.
I had to pick my battles, and that one wasn’t my fight to win.
But nothing went to plan that night.
Jolie neared, looking much more battered than I remembered her, and in desperate need of help, and I’d have given it—by taking her to a nearby town—if it wasn’t for the man at my side, who was already out of the vehicle before I’d fully applied the brake, dragging her into the back while she screamed and pleaded. He hit her head against the door, injuring her already bleeding skull. He tossed her unconscious body into the backseat and jumped back in the front.
“Drive,” he ordered, and that was when I realized, I couldn’t save her, either. . . not yet.
But as my truck crept over the gravel, and I saw Jarvis lying face down in the grassy field, his body mutilated by a shotgun,I felt elevated.
“Damn.” The voice at my side overpowered the low hum of music playing from the speakers. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. This is beyond our paycheck.”
He was right. . . nothing was worth dying for. Nothing except saving a purer life.
I searched ahead, wondering if our superior had had a change of heart and killed Jarvis because he didn’t want his daughter hurt, but I already knew that wasn’t the case. I’d seen how he’d treated his son, and it proved, the man had no fucking heart.
Orange flames tickled the night air. Black smoke was everywhere, blending in with the dark clouds.
“You go. I’m gonna check it out.” I stopped the truck and opened the driver’s door.
Dami, my colleague—if you could call him that—wrapped his long, skinny fingers around my shoulder, pulling me back.
“Why?”
I didn’t know what to say, and I needed a lie to fall quickly off my tongue. “There are two other kids in that house. A little girl, as you know, and a teen boy. If they’re alive, it’s a promotion.” I shrugged him off.
“We wouldn’t get promoted for this shit. They are the boss’s kids. Get back in the truck, or I’m leaving you here. We could get fucking killed.”
“Jarvis is dead. Heaven probably is, too, or she wouldn’t be out here.” My head bobbed to the backseat, to Jolie bleeding on the dirty seat. “No one would know where they came from. If you wanna go, go.” I stepped out, and the next words I spoke broke my heart. “Take her.”
I figured I’d see her at some point in the next few days, assuming I didn’t get gunned down as I made my way down the path. And then I could work on getting her to safety.
I had no idea Jolie would be instantly moved out of state because big boss was in town. And he didn’t want to have to look at the burn marks staining her skin, because he had some, too, and he fucking hated them. I had no idea she’d be shoved from one state to another because no one wanted to pay for a woman that looked like she did.Big boss wouldn’t lower her price, insisting on using her as a rental. In the end, she became just that. Her face concealed, for years on end.
I slammed the door, and no sooner than I’d taken one step, Dami had jumped into my seat and was wheel-spinning the vehicle to turn it around. The beefy tires crushed pretty flowers beneath them. . . it reminded me of us—the sellers in this fucked-up industry—and the innocent beauties we had no right to ruin.
I jogged down the path, my pace steady and quick.
I saw the boy of the house burst through the doors as the walls came down. I watched as he ran as fast as he could across the land, jumping into the stream to drown the flames trying to swallow his body.
I glanced behind me, my eyes leaving the boy for only a single second, making sure the truck was long gone. I was relieved to see it was getting smaller in the distance.
I released a heavy breath, lightening the tension in my body as I realized, I could save at least one of the kids in this house.
I blinked back to the present, to Jolie and her invisible cat.
“How are we today?” I asked, sliding onto a metal chair—the only piece of furniture in the room.
She pushed herself into a sitting position and turned to face me. Her hand, removed from her imaginary friend, now sat with the other in her empty lap. Tears dropped from beneath the burlap sack hanging loosely over her head. The wet droplets sprinkled onto her naked breasts, but I kept my gaze high. On her hidden face.
“You’re interrupting again.” She sniffled. “You said you wouldn’t. You know it brings depression.”
“You once told me that Woodrow used to interrupt them, too,” I reminded her.
