“Peter,” I said softly, holding up the piece of metal. “The deputy is going to tell the world I kidnapped you. Nobody is going to help us. If we want to survive this, I need to know everything. Who is Thomas Vance?”
Peter looked at the tag. The shadows in the barn seemed to stretch over his face.
“He was the boy before me,” Peter whispered, his voice fragile in the dusty silence. “They bring kids in the vans at night. Kids nobody is looking for. George puts us to work in the chemical sheds. If you stop working, they lock you in the metal boxes under the sun.”
He swallowed hard, rubbing his heavily callused thumbs together. “Thomas found something. A notebook in the big barn office. He said he was going to show the police. He tried to run.”
“What happened to him, Peter?” I asked, leaning forward, dread pooling in my stomach.
“George caught him,” Peter said, his voice breaking. “He brought the sheriff—the deputy from the diner. They hit Thomas with the shovel. They didn’t know I was hiding in the silo. I saw them drag him to the old cornfield. They buried him.” Peter wiped his eyes. “I found the dog tag in the dirt by the silo a week later. I kept it so someone would know he was real.”
My mind raced. A corrupt farm owner exploiting state foster kids for free labor, pocketing the state stipend, and silencing anyone who found out, aided by local law enforcement. George wasn’t just a brutal man; he was running a systematic slave camp right under the nose of the county. And the notebook Thomas found was the key.
I pulled out my phone. I had one bar of signal. I quickly opened a search engine and typed: Thomas Vance missing Oakhaven County.
The results loaded slowly. A cold chill crept over my skin despite the stifling heat.
The screen displayed an old news article from two years ago. It showed a picture of a smiling, sixteen-year-old boy. The headline read: Troubled Foster Teen Thomas Vance Missing After Escaping Group Home. The official police report, signed by Deputy Rollins, stated that Thomas had stolen money from his foster family and fled the state.
They had entirely covered up his murder.
Suddenly, a heavy, metallic crunch of gravel snapped my attention away from the phone.
I shot up, peering through the slats of the rotting barn wall. Through the twilight gloom, slowly rolling down the dirt road with its headlights cut off, was the dark gray Ford F-150. George Miller’s truck. Behind it, barely visible, was the unmistakable shape of a police SUV.
They hadn’t found us by accident. Rollins knew this county like the back of his hand, and I had left a trail of red dust riding off the main highway.
They parked fifty yards away. The doors opened with soft, synchronized clicks. I saw George step out, holding a pump-action shotgun. Rollins followed, drawing his sidearm. They began walking toward the barn.
I looked back at Peter, putting my finger to my lips. His eyes were wide pools of absolute terror in the darkness. We were trapped.
CHAPTER 3
The heavy, oppressive silence of the abandoned barn amplified every sound outside. I could hear the slow, methodical crunch of George’s steel-toed boots advancing through the tall, dry grass. I could hear the subtle click of a safety disengaging on a pump-action shotgun.
My mind worked feverishly. Running into the brush was a death sentence; the moonlight was beginning to pierce through the oak trees, providing just enough illumination for a man with a shotgun. I couldn’t outrun a blast of buckshot carrying a child. And fighting two armed men head-on with nothing but a steel motorcycle chain and my bare hands was a desperate gamble with terrible odds.
“Stay perfectly still,” I whispered, pressing a heavy hand onto Peter’s small, quivering shoulder.
I moved silently away from him, my heavy riding boots careful to avoid the brittle, rotted planks of the barn floor. I crept toward the large, rusted tractor sitting in the center of the structure, sinking into the deep, pooling shadows behind its massive rear tire.
The heavy barn door creaked ominously as it was pushed open. A beam of harsh, bright LED light pierced the darkness.
“I know you’re in here, biker,” George’s voice echoed against the wooden walls, rough and thick with menacing confidence. “The tracks on the road lead right to this property. Ain’t no other place to hide out here. You made a bad mistake crossing me.”
“Let’s just end this, George,” Deputy Rollins said quietly, standing in the doorway, scanning his flashlight beam methodically across the hayloft above. “I’ve already called it in. Armed fugitive resisting arrest. We find him, we put him down. It’s clean.”
I gripped the heavy steel chain tightly in my right fist, feeling the familiar, reassuring weight of the metal.