“By the old silo on the eastern ridge,” Peter replied softly, pointing weakly toward the horizon. “Under the dead cottonwood tree.”
I made the most irreversible decision of my life. The choice that separated the man who had run away from his little brother twenty years ago from the man sitting in the mud today.
“We are not running away,” I told Peter, my voice steady, solidifying my resolve. “We are going back.”
He gasped, shaking his head frantically. “No! Hawk, no! They’ll catch us! They’ll put me back in the box!”
I grabbed his shoulders, holding him gently but firmly. “Look at me, Peter. Look at me. I spent my entire life running away because I was too scared to face the people who hurt the people I loved. It cost me everything. I will not let it cost you your life. We are going to that farm tonight, while they are out looking for us. We are going to find that ledger. We are going to prove what George is.”
He stared at me, his lip quivering, fighting an internal battle against overwhelming terror. Slowly, miraculously, the small boy nodded.
We moved under the cover of darkness, tracing the muddy creek bed for three miles back toward the eastern ridge. The journey was grueling. The dense underbrush fought us every step of the way, but Peter moved with a silent, practiced stealth that broke my heart to witness. He was used to navigating in the dark to avoid detection.
It took two hours before the trees finally thinned out. We crested a small, muddy embankment and stopped, dropping flat onto our stomachs in the damp grass.
Below us sat the sprawling complex of the Miller farm.
It was massive, an imposing fortress of corrugated steel barns, large agricultural silos, and heavy machinery parked like silent sentinels. A large, sprawling ranch house sat illuminated by security lights near the main road. But what caught my attention was a long, windowless, low-slung concrete outbuilding surrounded by a heavy chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
“Is that the bunkhouse?” I whispered, pointing to the concrete building.
Peter nodded, a violent shudder ripping through him. “That’s where they lock us up at night. There are fourteen of us in there right now.”
Bile rose in my throat. Fourteen kids. Fourteen missing or forgotten children turned into slave labor for agricultural profit. The scale of the monster I was fighting suddenly became terrifyingly clear.
“Where is the office?” I asked.
“The red barn closest to the silos,” Peter pointed to a large structure on the far edge of the compound, relatively poorly lit compared to the main house. “The office is in the back.”
I checked the surroundings. The compound was quiet. George and Rollins’s vehicles were nowhere to be seen; they were likely still out combing the rural backroads, hunting for a biker they assumed was desperately trying to flee the county.
“Stay exactly right here,” I told Peter, squeezing his shoulder. “Do not move until I come back for you.”
I slipped down the embankment, moving quickly from shadow to shadow. I navigated between the massive, rusted tractors and stacks of wooden pallets, feeling incredibly exposed in the wide, open spaces. I reached the side wall of the red barn without incident, pressing my back flat against the cold metal siding.
The side door was locked, a heavy padlock securing the latch. I pulled a small, hardened steel lock pick set from my wallet—a remnant of a less lawful past life. I worked the pins in the dark, my fingers clumsy from the adrenaline. After thirty agonizing seconds, the padlock clicked open. I slid the metal door open just enough to squeeze my massive frame inside.
The barn was cavernous, smelling heavily of fertilizer, diesel, and decaying hay. At the far end, completely enclosed in glass and wood, was a small, elevated office structure. I crept across the concrete floor, my boots silent. I carefully opened the wooden door of the office.
It was a functional space, cluttered with invoices, soil samples, and heavy manuals. I moved straight to the large, battered oak desk dominating the center of the room. The moonlight streaming through a small window provided just enough light.
I grabbed the handle of the bottom right drawer. Locked. I didn’t bother picking it; I wedged my steel-toed boot into the space between the drawer and the desk frame and kicked outward with brutal force. The cheap locking mechanism snapped instantly. The drawer slid open, hitting my knee.
Inside lay a heavy, thick black leather-bound accounting book.
I pulled it out and opened it, holding it up to the moonlight. My blood ran completely cold.
It was a masterclass in human exploitation. Pages and pages were filled with names, dates, state identification numbers, and corresponding payout amounts. It detailed the state checks coming in for foster care stipends, and parallel columns tracking the massive agricultural yields being sold at pure profit, fueled by unpaid, forced labor. It detailed bribes to local officials, including large, repeated cash withdrawals deposited directly into an account matching Deputy Rollins’s name.