By the time I’m out of my truck, Jake’s already moving toward us, his eyes scanning my truck and then me. “Status?” he asks quietly.
“Secure.” I push my wet hair out of my eyes. “One survivor. Female. Apparent trafficking victim, not confirmed.”
“Harper?”
“Secure also.” I hope. I open the passenger door and help the woman climb down. She’s still wrapped in Harper’s coat and the blanket, still shaking, and still looking like she’s not sure she’s safe. Who can blame her?
Mason steps forward immediately, his voice low and calm the way it is when he gentles his horses. “Let’s get her inside.”
“You good to walk, sweetheart?” I ask her.
She clings to the blanket but she shakily nods. “I’m good,” she says, her voice raspy.
We move as a unit—Jake leading, Mason flanking, me bringing up the rear. The woman walks between us like she’s afraid the ground might open up and swallow her whole.
Inside, the kitchen is warm and bright. Emma’s setting the kettle to boil. Lily rushes forward with more blankets.
But she stops suddenly, gasping.
Mason strides to his woman, concern all over his normally stoic face. “What is it?”
Lily shakes her head, staring at the woman. “She just looks so much like Mandy, except for her hair color.”
I turn to look at the woman I fished out of the ravine. Yeah, I guess there was a resemblance to Lily’s dead older sister. Mason, Jake, and I share a glance. Another one of Turner’s games to fuck with us? I know what I’d bet.
Lily clears her throat and smiles at the woman. “Let’s get you dry first,” she says, taking the damp layers and wrapping her in dry ones before leading her to a chair. “Coffee or whiskey?”
“Whiskey. Please,” the woman adds as she shivers.
“I got it,” I say as I move. I grab the bottle from the cabinet and pour two fingers into a glass. I bring it to her, holding it until I know she has a hold of it. She tosses it back in one swallow, coughing as she sets the glass down with shaking hands.
Jake pulls out a chair across from her, his posture open but alert. “Can you tell us your name?”
“Jenna. Jenna Morales.” Swallowing audibly, her gaze darts around the room before returning to Jake. “Who are you?”
“We’re the reason you’re still alive,” Jake says in his point-blank way. “Can you tell us what happened, Jenna?”
She stares at the table for a long moment.
I pour her another whiskey and set it in front of her.
She picks it up and holds it but makes no move to drink it. “I was taken from San Antonio,” she says, her voice flat. “I don’t know how many days ago. A week? Maybe more? I’m a nurse,and I was walking to my car after my shift at the hospital when someone grabbed me from behind and stuck me with a sedative, I think. I woke up in a basement somewhere. There were other women there. They kept us separated, but I could hear them crying.”
I glance at Lily. She and her sister had been abducted when she was eighteen. She’d escaped, but her sister hadn’t. Her face is expressionless, but I see the way her hands are clenched.
Mason moves behind her and envelops her in his arms.
I wonder what Harper would do if I hugged her like that. Probably mule kick my balls. She didn’t look happy at me whisking Jenna away, but at least she hadn’t argued. I wish I could have seen her face when the van exploded.
“They moved us twice,” Jenna continues. “I don’t know where we were. But at the last place they brought in a man. He inspected the girls like they were livestock.”
My jaw clenches so hard I hear my teeth grind. “They? Not you?”
“He rejected me. He said I was ‘the wrong one.’ They took the other women somewhere else. He told the guys who kidnapped me to take me away.” Huddling into herself, she looks at Jake straight on. “They weren’t going to let me go, were they?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
The room is silent except for the low whistle of the kettle starting to boil.