Page 18 of Ash Storm

“… then the second man appeared. I shouted, but I was too slow. He hit Reka across the temple, and then he looked my way. So I ran.” There was a telling pause. “I ran and left them there.”

Ash had no difficulty recognizing the emotion in her voice—guilt. She’d had to make an unthinkable decision, and no amount of telling herself she’d had no other choice would make her feel better. But maybe hearing it from someone else …

Dark spoke before Ash could get his thoughts together. Ash breathed a sigh of relief. Dark would find the right words.

“You did the right thing,” Dark said. “If you hadn’t run, we might not have had any leads at all. But because you were able to get free and describe the men who took your friends, we stand a good chance of finding them.”

Aileen’s voice hitched. “You really think so?”

“We do,” they all replied as one.

And hell, Ash knew he should not be making any promises—not to Aileen and not to anybody else, either. But he couldn’t help himself.

“We promise you, we’ll do everything humanly possible to bring your friends back to you.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Aileen said. “If I can help in any way …”

“You already did, Aileen,” Dark said.

Ash thought quickly. The women had been missing for over forty-eight hours now, but their working hypothesis was that they were still in Turkey, at least. They had to get to them quickly. Victims of human trafficking became much harder to track once they’d been moved from the original location.

“Jesus, that poor woman,” Slate said after they hung up the phone. There was a far-away look in his eyes. “Those poor women.”

If any of them could imagine what the two women might be going through, that was Slate, who’d been captured in Afghanistan together with several members of his SEAL team and tortured for weeks before he and a friend, the only two survivors, were extracted.

Slate shook his head, forcibly coming back to them. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know this mission could take Slate back to a dark place, if they weren’t careful.

Ash sighed. What Slate had been through was unspeakable. But victims of human trafficking went through a different kind of hell. Ash couldn’t think about that now—not if he wanted to keep functioning.

He looked at the phone in Slate’s hand, willing it to ring.