THIRTY-FIVE

MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS after Caldwell had owned this land, an iron-barred cage had made its way back onto the property. With children inside. Elementary school–aged boys and girls with light beaming from their fragile chests, and a few teenagers, too —maybe thirteen or fourteen years old.

Their faces were painted to look like dolls, but there was something over their mouths. Some kind of tape?

The five girls wore frilly dresses with tights and shiny shoes, and the four boys wore pleated shorts and button-up shirts tucked in, with knee-high socks and loafers. They stood looking out through the bars —not one of them crying, but all with unmistakably hopeless eyes.

I knew this wasn’t some party skit, and those children weren’t in that cage by choice. They were so still. Had they been drugged? Whose kids were they?

I studied the spellbound crowd from my hiding spot, and my gaze ran across a tall, thin man with a glittery mask attached to a stick he used to hold it to his face. He angled in my direction, as if staring right at me. I ceased to breathe. Slowly, he lowered his mask, showing me his face . . .

Walt. Threatening me without words.

He stepped back and slipped into the crowd. I knew it wasn’t the real him —that evil was masquerading in his image —but the experience was still bone chilling.

The man center stage pointed to a caged child, a little blonde girl, and rattled off her age and height and eye color. I already had my suspicions, but when he said she was from the state of Oklahoma, I took it as devastating confirmation.

These were abducted children.

My palms were sweaty, and I struggled to pull my phone out of my pocket. I pinned my GPS location, then dialed 911 while also managing to fish the digital recorder Elle had given me from my other pocket. I hit record and set the device at the base of a tree, as close to the stage as I could get.

I hardly moved a muscle while waiting for the emergency operator to answer. The man onstage began spattering off dollar amounts, auctioneer style. With the flick of a wrist or a subtle nod, people began bidding. On the girl from Oklahoma.

I felt dizzy, like the woods were spinning. Arthur had predicted that slavery would return to this land, and here I was, staring at it. Now I understood what that cement platform was and always had been. A human auction block.

The slave trade of yesterday, human trafficking today —it has the same evil origins. I knew now: history doesn’t just happen to repeat itself. The kingdom of darkness uses repeat tactics, generation after generation.

But my generation was called to take a stand against age-old evil.

When the emergency operator answered, my mind was reeling. Had Jackson and Riley and the others been smuggled out of state and auctioned off too?

Before I could even ask for help, something bashed the side of my face, then something else covered my nose and mouth as my feet were knocked out from under me. I slammed the ground on my left side, painfully realizing those security guards were manhandling me. One stomped the heel of his shoe on my cell, crushing it to pieces.

There was no way to fight back. A rag was forced into my mouth, gagging me into silence, and my arms and legs were bound behind me, tied at my wrists and ankles with rope, I think. It had taken them less than thirty seconds to restrain me, and man, it hurt.

A baritone voice threatened in my ear. “Don’t make a sound, and we may let you live.”

After everything I’d just witnessed? Not a chance.

They searched my pockets and took my wallet, then dragged me so far away I wondered if we’d ever stop. Then they left me, bound in an unnatural pose in the dirt. I knew they’d come back and finish me off once the high-dollar guests left. I didn’t know if these people were the mafia, dirty politicians, or what, but I was sure they weren’t the type to let spies go with a verbal warning. And they knew exactly who I was now. They had my ID.

I tried my hardest to move, to loose my arms and legs, but I’d been hog-tied by trained men. I gave it my all —my life was on the line —but I couldn’t begin to break free. Another kid was bound to have been auctioned off by now. Would they bring infants out next? Could Jackson possibly be there?

As the minutes dragged on —my contorted body throbbing while I kept gagging on the wad in my mouth —despair crept in. There was no way out of this. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t utter a word. So I closed my eyes and yelled inside my head . . .

Please, God! Do something! Free me!

I hadn’t been this panicked since I’d been shoved headfirst into Walt and Marshall’s caskets.

I heard someone coming, trampling the brush behind me. I tensed up, expecting a knife or pistol to press against my skin. Instead, someone with strong hands started untying me. I strained my neck but couldn’t see who it was.

The rope around my legs finally gave way, and I sat up and looked back. A golden aura projected onto the ground cover behind me. I twisted harder and looked up.

“It’s you!”

The old man in overalls pressed his index finger to his lips as he helped me to my feet. This was the second time he’d saved my life. In these woods.

There was so much going on, so much I needed him to understand, that I blurted it out all at once. “Molek’s probably about to take his throne any second, and Jess’s baby, Jackson, is majorly in danger while these children are being sold to . . . I have no idea who the masked people are, but these kids are kidnapped, and if we don’t find Jackson before it’s too late, Molek’s gonna win, and everything’s ruined!”

A single nod and a whisper. “I know.”

Oh.

I tried to search his face in the dark while waiting for insight or instructions or something spectacular, but all he did was hand me my keys, which he’d somehow retrieved from the guards. “Well?” I put my hands up. “What do we do?”

“All that can be done for now.”

More silence. More impatience welling up inside me. “Which is . . . ?”

He led me a distance through the woods, insisting I keep silent. Then he stopped me. “Listen.”

I heard the distant sound of the smooth-talking auctioneer selling a human life for a couple of thousand dollars. “What am I —?”

“Listen!”

It was faint but distinct. An infant’s cries.