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SEVEN

Kit pressed in next to him and started to scan the article.

“Read it aloud, would you?” Cullen eased back. “Too crowded if we’re all trying to see the screen.”

Uh-huh. Likely he was struggling to see the print and didn’t want to underscore it by enlarging it any more, but she wouldn’t bother teasing him about that now. Instead, she made the image bigger, sat on the crate and read, picking out the important facts and making note of them in her mind.

Seventeen-year-old Annette Bowman had run away from her single mother’s Washington home after a dispute five years prior. She’d hopped a bus and headed for Seattle, and her mother never saw her again except in a photo she’d found of her daughter on...

Kit went cold.

...an online escort service, which had since gone out of business. It was tied to a person by the name of Nico Phillips, who had been questioned by the police and released. A photo of the man was included, dark hair, handsome features, easygoing smile.

She could hardly get out the words as she continued reading. “‘Police believe Annette Bowman may be the victim of sex trafficking.’”

Kit sat back, trying to assimilate the information. Annette had to be Tot’s mother. Didn’t seem likely she’d risk her life for anyone other than her own child. Had she been coerced into the sex trafficking business by Nico Phillips? At the tender age of seventeen ?

The cookie she’d eaten turned into a chunk of lead in her stomach.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember the woman, Annette, and what she’d asked of Kit, what Kit had agreed to.

A ride out of town? She got one fleeting memory of desperate blue eyes framed by blond hair, the shade too brassy to be natural, pushed back by dark sunglasses atop her head. Annette?

“She could have been trying to escape this Nico guy.” Kit hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud.

Cullen laid a palm on her shoulder. “You still don’t remember?”

Kit shook her head miserably. “An impression is all. I have this sense of a young blond woman, really panicked, waving at me.” The urgency billowed in her gut.

The photo in the article was taken five years prior, so Annette was now twenty-two.

Kit, at twenty-two, had been desperately trying to ignore the failings of her husband and dealing with an unexpected pregnancy she hadn’t realized she wanted until that had failed too.

It had taken her years to claw her way to a standing position again.

There’d been a litany of loans, hungry nights, and weeks of barely making rent before she finally had to grovel and ask for help from her mother.

She knew what it felt like to be lost, scared, and alone.

With a baby to protect, all those terrors would be amplified.

“So Annette ran away from home and got mixed up with this Nico guy. It’s possible he’s the one who’s after her.

” Cullen stood behind her, his reflection somber in the blurry screen.

“That’d be my guess. Let’s say you stopped and picked her and Tot up before whoever is after her shot at your rig because they knew she’d hitched a ride from you.

” He stared at the photo of Nico. “Might be him. I didn’t see him well enough to make an ID when he ambushed us on the road.

Dirt biker Kyle might be working for a competitor.

Or he’s a friend of Annette’s? A sympathetic john she got in touch with who was helping her escape?

” He paused. “The father of her baby even?”

Friend or enemy? No way to tell.

Kit stopped herself from chewing on her thumbnail.

They looked at the screen again, at the photo of the smiling young Annette taken during her high school years, before her innocence was stripped away.

Her lips were curved into a half smile, cheeks full and dimpled.

Kit’s reflection and Cullen’s were superimposed on the monitor, as if they were all part of a bizarre family photo with the smiling girl .

.. a girl who’d grown into a woman in spite of dire circumstances.

Annette could have been forced into the servitude of this vile man, but she’d perhaps gotten something to use as leverage against him.

“Still, it’s pretty extreme for this guy Nico to follow her into this mess. Travel into an area with a volcano ready to explode? He’d take his chances with all that just to get her back? Or the ten thousand dollars?”

When Cullen didn’t answer, she spun on the box to face him. “You were a cop. You know this stuff. Tell me what you think.”

He shook his head. “Hard to say.”

She felt a flash of anger, frustration, fear. “What’s your theory then?”

Cullen’s brow was furrowed with concern or exhaustion. “She could have something damaging, or thinks she does, but with guys like that...” He blew out a breath. “They see their women as property, not people, and he wants his property back. To set an example for the others, maybe.”

Disgust made her dizzy. She recoiled, and he grabbed her hand. She saw compassion in his smoky irises.

“I’m telling you how human traffickers think, Kit. You asked, and I’m telling you. I’ve seen women and girls locked in overheated trucks, dying at the hands of people like him. I...” He broke off, swallowing, his grip on her hand intensifying, and she realized he was fighting off a dark memory.

He squeezed her fingers, and she squeezed back.

For a moment, they clung to each other, connected by a shared horror.

His property. Her gaze drifted to Tot in Archie’s arms. Was the baby Nico’s property too?

Or biologically his? Father or not, did he believe he owned the child?

That he could treat her like a piece of luggage to handle the way he saw fit?

Was he actually the one involved in the whole situation?

The dizziness continued, and she closed her eyes, held on to Cullen, and breathed slowly until it passed.

When she opened her eyes again, Cullen appeared con trolled, sympathetic, and she considered how long she’d been holding on to him. She let go.

“We should get those supplies,” Archie said quietly. “Figure out a plan. Rest tonight. Too dangerous to do diddly in the dark.”

Numbly, she followed him to the front. Archie swaddled the sleeping baby in the toddler-sized parka she’d taken from the lost and found box.

While it was too enormous to work for Tot’s clothing, it was a decent makeshift sleeping bag.

Tot didn’t stir, only the fuzzy crown of her head visible after Archie’s careful tucking.

Kit’s heart thunked with the fear that Tot’s mom had been abducted by a horrible man.

If Kit had only been more aware, spotted the person who’d shot up her rig, maybe Annette and Tot would have been able to escape.

She dismissed the guilt. You ’re a truck driver , not a secret agent.

And likely she’d been fully focused on volcanic hazards.

Had Annette even told her the truth in the first place?

Or had she concocted a story to convince Kit to give her a ride?

She’d obviously said something compelling to induce Kit to leave her planned route.

It was all one maddening blur. She felt Cullen watching her again.

She curled her toes, still cold in the borrowed socks, trying to force more circulation. “I’ll carry her, Archie.”

“Nah. Grandpa Archie’s on deck. You’ve earned a rest.”

In spite of her turmoil, Kit arched an amused brow at Cullen as they followed Archie out. Cullen leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Hard to believe his marine buddies called him Bone Buster. That’s not precisely the term, but there are some things a man shouldn’t say in front of a woman.”

She smiled, the tickle of his stubble against her ear making her nerves buzz. “Archie’s a natural. Much better than me.”

“Hey, back at my place you managed to catch Tot like a pop fly to center field.”

Her eyes rounded in remembered panic and she slugged him in the shoulder. “Don’t ever, ever do that again, by the way.”

He laughed and held the door for her. “I’ll try to steer clear of any more baby tossing.”

Archie was already halfway across the street. “Get the lead out, you two. Baby Tot needs to get tucked in for the night. Been hauled around enough for one day, I should say.”

Cullen took in the muddy mess on the street and Kit’s unshod feet. “Hop on,” he said, crouching. “I’ll piggyback you.”

Piggyback me? “I ... uh...” She scanned in search of some other alternative.

She didn’t want to be that close to Cullen or anyone else.

Her toes ached though, and rocks and debris would surely shred her already tender soles.

There was no way to know how much longer they’d need to hole up until help arrived, and ruining her feet wasn’t going to make things easier.

Practicality won over pride. Deep breath.

Let the nice farsighted rancher carry you across the street , Kit. “I guess that would work.”

He balanced carefully, and she climbed onto his back.

For a man his size with a full-grown human clinging like a limpet, he moved easily, and she tried not to pay attention to the way her arms fit around his wide shoulders.

He was so ... solid, in a moment when everything was shifting and sliding and changing.

It had been a very long time since she’d felt like there was any dependable man in her life.

She resisted the urge to lay her cheek against him.