Nature doesn't traffic children or bind them with restraints or teach them that adults can't be trusted. Humans do that. We take something as raw and honest as this landscape and poison it with cruelty.
I finish cleaning and lock the exam room door.
My phone rings just after five. Zeke MacAllister.
"Helena. Jennifer Brooks gave me a heads up she brought a trafficking survivor to your clinic today. Wanted me to know in case there were any security concerns."
Inter-agency coordination on trafficking cases—smart, given how many survivors end up targets.
"She did."
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that I'm flagging it for you. Traci Vance. Seventeen. Pulled after a raid on a trafficking operation, not speaking, waiting for family placement with an uncle nobody can find."
"Eli Vance?"
I straighten. "You know him?"
"Knew him. Delta Force, back when Rhys and I were running operations. Good man. Solid operative. Then a mission in Syria went sideways and he came home different. Went off-grid a few years back, told me he needed to be alone for a while. I respected it."
"Zeke, if the network that trafficked her finds out she came to my clinic?—"
"I know," he says. "Federal victim services involvement means this connects to active investigations."
"Can you find him? Eli Vance?"
"If federal marshals are looking for him, we'll find him first. Give me a couple days."
"I need you to understand something." I lower my voice even though I'm alone in the clinic. "This girl has been through hell. She's not speaking, she's terrified, and she's waiting in some foster home in Anchorage for an uncle she hasn't seen in years who's been living in the wilderness because he can't handle being around people. If whoever trafficked her decides she's a liability?—"
"I'll make some calls. Get eyes on your clinic, make sure nobody's tracking her movements. You armed?"
"Always."
"Good. Keep it that way."
He ends the call, leaving me with silence that feels like waiting.
I lock up the clinic, check the perimeter sensors twice, and drive home through falling snow. Alaska winter closes in fast and unforgiving, burying the landscape under white that'll last until April. Most people find it isolating. I find it clarifying. Winter strips everything down to essentials: heat, food, survival. No room for pretense or distraction.
Tonight I sit by the wood stove and think about a seventeen-year-old girl who isn't speaking, lying awake in some stranger's house in Anchorage, probably wondering if she'll ever feel safe again.
Federal marshals are searching for Eli Vance somewhere in the Alaska wilderness.
And somewhere out there, the people who trafficked Traci are deciding whether she knows too much to let her live.
