Worst Best CasePaigeLauren, Sera, and I sat in a wide circle around Cat on the bed we’d more or less assigned her. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest and wouldn’t look at any of us.“We’re not just a shelter,” I said quietly.Lauren and Sera both looked at me sharply. I ignored them.“We also rescue women in bad situations. And if you were in one of those, especially one where you were maybe being moved from place to place, we need to know so we can save other women, ones who didn’t have a chance to run away.”“I didn’t have a chance. I made one,” Cat hissed. But she peered at me through her lashes. “Is that true?”Sera nodded. “My fiancé and I help.”Cat looked at Lauren, who shrugged. “I’m just a therapist they picked up to help with the aftermath.” She smiled at me.“They held me in a dog crate,” Cat blurted.My heart skipped a beat. I’d known, deep down, that she’d been trafficked, but part of me still worried until she said that.“Not just me,” she continued. “A lot of…o

Paige“What?” I asked Tom, but my phone beeped, signaling he’d already hung up. Shit. Okay. I knew he seemed antsy to get this finished when he’d left, but I expected at least a couple of hours to pass before he had results. I texted Lauren the short string of emojis we’d come up with to signal a big group of newcomers, in case police ever subpoenaed our message history, and raced out of my office for the van we kept parked in the back for situations just like this. Lauren would handle everything here while I managed pickup and transportation.Behind the wheel of the van, I drummed my fingers on the steering column. Traffic crowded the normally empty road, but that didn’t worry me until I heard the whine of a siren. Tom had “handled things” in the kind of way that made cops show up. I’d gotten good at talking to them over the last few months, managing everything from domestic violence situations to stuff like this, but transfers always went cleaner when we didn’t have to grapple with

PaigeEven the summer sun had set by the time I trudged into the kitchen after work. Tom looked up from where he sat at the counter with a plate of lasagna, dark bags dragging under his eyes.“Had an easy one, then?” I asked.He laughed, and I fell into helpless laughter with him. Today had been so long, so strange, so sudden. Coming home to him felt like setting the world back on its axis, and the laughter was pure relief. I wiped tears from my eyes and went to grab a plate of lasagna.“You know what? Fuck this.” Tom stood.I frowned at him. “What?”He opened a chest under the now-empty coat rack and pulled out a blanket. “It’s a beautiful summer night. We have a beautiful yard, and we both had long days. Let’s go enjoy something.”I grinned at him. It was hard not to love him when he found life’s little pleasures amidst the nightmares like this. I piled my plate high with lasagna, grabbed the first bottle of wine I saw, and followed him outside.We didn’t go far, just far enough tha

PaigeI lay on the four-poster bed Tom and I had shared for the past few months and tried to come up with something to do other than counting the beads in the embroidered canopy over my head. Tom was meeting with the Egyptians tonight, and every time I tried to do something to distract myself, I just messed it up. Half-folded laundry covered the room from my attempt at reorganizing the closet, I’d burned myself making hot chocolate, and when I tried to boot up my computer to do some art, I just ended up doom-scrolling social media instead. Everything led me back to Tom. Was he okay? Why hadn’t I heard from him yet? Had the middleman taken the bait and flipped on the bastard, or were we going to have to find a new in?I knew these bastards better than anyone. They didn’t value women. They didn’t value life.I grabbed my phone and opened the first app my fingers touched. A series of unopened texts appeared. A few from Lauren, just friend stuff. One from Lyle about using another AI progr

PaigeI stood at the second-floor window overlooking the driveway and continued to gnaw at my fingernail like I had been since I hung up with Tom. I couldn’t stop thinking about the secret torture basement in the house I’d spent months in, how easy it would have been for Tom to turn into another bastard and put me right back where I was. Did he have anyone down there now? Had he, in the time I’d lived here? I might’ve yelled at him on the phone, but nearly alone in an empty house, the prospect scared me more than it pissed me off. How many bastards had lived under my floors without my knowledge?The black van pulled through the gates, and I plastered myself to the window. Tom hopped out first and circled around to slide open the side door. My heart pounded. Stan and Carp stepped out with a shadowed man held between them. My stomach flipped, and I pressed a hand to my mouth. That was the man who was going to be tortured in my basement. I’d have to go about my day to day knowing he was