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Cypress
“Cypress,” Emily, one of the women being held in this cottage, walks up behind me, and places a hand on my shoulder. “You need to sit down.”
“I will in a few minutes.” Blowing out a long breath, I gather more towels into my arms and walk toward the room at the back of the cottage. Two of the ladies put up a fight last night with Jase and got beat up pretty bad. I’m trying to help keep them calm and clean up their battered bodies.
Jase has done a lot of things over the years that has frightened me, but I’ve never seen the amount of rage that was rolling off of him last night. He was obviously drunk when he sauntered into the back room and grabbed two of the women and tried to drag them out of the room. They fought back, scratching at his arms in an attempt to get out of his grasp. But they were weak after having been held for so long with little to no food or water. They were no match for him, even in his inebriated state.
What scared me the most about the altercation wasn’t what he was doing to the women. That was horrible, don’t get me wrong. But he glared at me the entire time he was battering and using those women. The pure hatred in his eyes made my skin crawl.
“This is your fault,” He growled at me. “This is all your fault.”
I still don’t understand why he would accuse me of being the reason for his actions. His actions are all his own because of the monster I’ve always known him to be. He and his father both are the biggest monsters to have ever walked the face of this earth. I’ve known that for thirteen years.
Holding the towels tightly against my chest, I open the door to the back room. Monique and Ashley lay side by side on the floor in the corner. Jodi is kneeling next to them, brushing their hair away from their battered and bruised faces. She looks up at me as I walk closer, tears leaving white streaks against her cheeks having washed away the dirt and dust caked on her face from the weeks of being held in this cottage.
“How are they?” I ask tentatively as I kneel close to Jodi.
“They haven’t woken up yet.” She whispers her response, her hand still stroking over their hair. Jodi is the oldest of all the women here, me included. She just turned thirty a month before she was taken.
I’ve been locked in this house with these twelve women long enough to get to know each of them. Jodi is the only one with a different story than the rest. Where eleven of the women here were vendors at street fairs and farmer’s markets, Jodi was a shopper. She has nothing to do with the other merchants other than her interest in their wares. She’s also the calmest one here and has been called a mother hen by the other ladies more than once.
What I’ve learned about Jodi in the month that I’ve known her, is that she was alone. Her parents died when she was in high school in a house fire. She stayed with her grandmother until she was eighteen when she moved out to attend University. Her grandmother passed away from a heart attack a few years later.
Jodi married her high school sweetheart when she was twenty-one. They had a daughter two years later and lived a happy life together. Jodi worked as an accountant part time from home while her husband was a lawyer in the city. Two years ago, her husband was on his way home from Pacific Park with their five-year-old daughter when their car was hit by a drunk driver and neither of them survived. Jodi was left alone, with no support system to turn to. She has no family and what few friends she had growing up had all moved away to live their own lives away from the city.
The only thing Jodi has in common with the other women here, is that there is no one looking for her. She keeps a strong persona around the others, but I can see the desperation in her eyes when she looks at me. She knows her chances of getting out of this are slim, but she isn’t fighting her fate. She has nothing left to live for and has struggled with that for the past two years. This is a means to an end for her and it breaks my heart.
“How are you doing?” She asks me as I sit next to her and place a hand on Monique’s shoulder.
“I’m okay.” Smiling to myself at the irony of my answer. “Well, as well as I can be.” My free hand rests on my slightly protruding belly. Thankfully, the baby is obviously doing okay since I’m starting to show now. If my math is correct, I’m around eighteen weeks pregnant.
“You feel anything yet?” Jodi asks, her hand resting next to mine now on my belly.
“Not yet.”
“You will soon. I loved those first months with my daughter. The fluttering in my belly was the best part of my day.” She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and studies my belly absently. “We have to get these ladies out of here, Cypress.” She finally moves her gaze to my own, a look of determination in her eyes.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I admit reluctantly.
Jodi jerks her hand back and presses her back flat against the wall as we both hear a noise in the main room of the cottage. “Fuck!” I hear David yell as he bursts through the front door.
“What’s wrong?” Jase asks. They’re voices carry through the empty hall in the cottage, echoing off the dusty wooden walls.
“We need to relocate sooner than I thought.” He continues speaking in a loud voice. “I’ve been trying to reach Willow and she isn’t answering her phone. We don’t have a buyer yet and I can’t keep holding them here until one shows up. Willow was the one with the connections and she isn’t answering her fucking phone.”
My brows lower in confusion as I replay what I’m hearing in my head. Buyer? Contacts? Gasping, I hold my hand to my chest as what he’s saying sinks in. My mother is part of this? The trafficking ring that Chris has been trying to locate has David, Jase, and my mother wrapped up in it?
Oh, my God.
Footsteps move closer through the hallway, and I move my body to shield Monique and Ashley from view. They haven’t moved since I entered the room and I fear they won’t be waking any time soon. There’s no telling what David will do when he sees their condition.
The door bursts open and David stands in the doorway, his bulky frame filling the space in, his presence both intimidating and angry. “What’s wrong with them?” He points to the corner over my shoulder.
“They’re tired,” I answer, my voice trembling with fear. I’ve never seen David look so evil before and I’m not sure what he’s capable of at this point.
“Bull shit.” David reaches me in three strides and grabs my arm, yanking me off the floor and shoving me behind him hard enough that I nearly fall. Jodi is there in a hurry to help stabilize me and keep me on my feet.
I watch silently, my mouth hanging open, as David touches Monique’s cheek first, getting a good look at her face. He reaches for Ashley and does the same before pushing up from the floor with his hands on his knees. I wait for him to start yelling again while he blows out his cheeks and releases a long breath. Placing his hands on his hips, he doesn’t say anything more. He just stands there staring down at both of the women still passed out on the floor. He turns slowly, his gaze falling on me for several seconds, then walks out of the room and closes the door behind him.
No one in the room speaks. We’re barely even breathing as we listen to the sounds coming from the other end of the cottage. We’re waiting for something, anything to happen after what David just saw in this room. I know he wasn’t happy when he walked out of here. But nothing happens. We continue to listen as David’s footsteps stop in the main room of the cottage. Then we listen as the door opens and closes, remaining silent.
“Cypress,” Jodi is lying on the floor next to me. Everyone else in the room has already fallen asleep for the night. Monique and Ashley still haven’t woken up and it scares me. “You need to get out of this place. For the baby, you need to get out of here.”
“I know.” Rolling to my side, I face her silhouette which is the only thing I can see in the dark room. “I’m trying to figure that out. But I’m not leaving anyone here.”
“I think you’re going to have to. I know you want to save all of us, but you can’t do that. Ashley and Monique haven’t woken up yet and I don’t know if they’ll be able to move fast enough even if they did. I’ll stay with them, you get everyone else out.”
“Jodi.” Raising my hand, I place it on her shoulder. “I’m not going to leave anyone here. Do you have any idea what kind of a fate is waiting for you if you stay here?” There are too many similarities to what’s going on here and the case that Chris told me about a few months ago. I’m not so naïve to think that this isn’t connected in some way. It’s too convenient for the women that disappeared before to have coincided to when Jase showed up at my shop. And after hearing what David said last night about buyers, I’m not willing to stick around long enough to be sold to anyone. But I don’t want that to happen to Jodi either. To anyone here for that matter.
“I do. I’ve been around long enough to understand what’s going on here. I know what human trafficking is, Cypress.”
“We’re all getting out of here, Jodi. We’re all going home.”
“I don’t have anything to go home to, Cypress. And if I can help you and the other women here to get away, I will. There’s nothing left for me to fight for. But I can at least fight for you.”
“We’re not having this discussion, Jodi. Get some sleep.” I admonish her and refuse to have this conversation. I am not going to leave her to sacrifice herself. She will not become a martyr for me or any of the other ladies here. She may not think she has anything to live for, but she does. She’s young. She’s beautiful. I know she feels like her life ended when her husband and daughter died, but she has so much more life left in her. I’m sure her husband wouldn’t want her to give up, but I’m not stupid enough to say that to her just yet.
I wait until Jodi’s breathing evens out and I know she’s asleep. Rolling to my back, I stare up into the dark and wait for the darkness to pull me into a deep sleep. But it doesn’t come. My skin is crawling, my blood buzzing through my veins, as I think over the possibilities of how to get all these woman out of this place.
My hand rests against my small baby bump, massaging softly, when I’m pulled from my thoughts. Sitting up, I listen for whatever noise I heard. It wasn’t loud, but I swore I heard the creak of a board.
Holding my breath, I strain to listen for the sound to come again. My lungs burn with the desire to draw in more air when I finally hear it again. It isn’t coming from the main room in the cottage. It sounds like it’s coming from outside, by the only window in this room. A soft squeak like a nail being pulled from a board, followed by a sound of scraping metal.
I hear something hit the floor and the sound echoes through the quiet room. Throwing myself back to the floor, I curl up on my side and throw my arms over my head while squeezing my eyes shut tight. I wait for a blast or loud bang to come but it never does. The only sound I hear now is a long hiss. And then I smell the ozone and sulfur as if I have been standing too close to someone shooting off fireworks.
Then all hell breaks loose, and everyone starts to scream.