My neighbor’s son came to my window at midnight and said, “You need to see my dad’s shed.”

“He drugged me, and when I woke up, I was here. He said I was being sold to someone in Los Angeles and I’d be transported there tomorrow. Please, you have to get help. He’s done this before.”

“He told me I was his eighteenth acquisition, and he’s never been caught because he’s careful and he doesn’t leave witnesses.”

Her voice was hoarse from days of screaming, and I could see marks on her wrists where she’d struggled against the chains. “My family is looking for me. There are missing person reports and investigations, and if you can get word to the police that I’m here, they can connect it all to him.”

I pulled off my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders because she was shivering in just the thin clothes she’d been wearing when she was taken. “I’m getting you out of here. Both of us. I just need to find a way past that lock.”

I searched the shed systematically, looking for anything that could help us escape. There were tools on the workbench, but nothing that could cut through the chains or break through the door.

The windows were covered from the inside with plywood screwed into the frames; there was no way to remove them quietly. I could hear voices from the house now, Raymond and Dylan arguing, and I pressed my ear against the door trying to make out words.

Raymond was shouting about betrayal and consequences. Dylan was crying and trying to explain that he couldn’t let this continue.

Then I heard a woman’s voice, Dylan’s mother, joining the argument, “You’re overreacting. He’s just a child who doesn’t understand. We can explain this to him. We can make him see reason.”

Her willingness to rationalize trafficking to her own son made my stomach turn. The arguing got louder, and then there was a crash—something breaking—and Dylan screamed.

That galvanized me into action. I grabbed the heaviest wrench from the workbench and started attacking the hinges on the door instead of the padlock.

If I could pop the pins, the lock wouldn’t matter. The first hinge fought me, but eventually the pin shifted, and I worked it free with shaking fingers.

The second hinge went faster now that I understood the angle I needed. I was working on the third hinge when I heard footsteps approaching the shed again—multiple sets—and I backed away from the door with the wrench raised as a weapon.

The padlock clicked open, and the door swung inward, hinges I hadn’t removed yet screaming in protest. But it wasn’t Raymond who entered.

It was Dylan, his lips split and bleeding, followed by his mother, Karen, who looked pale and frightened. Karen said, her voice shaking, “Ethan, I’m so sorry.”

“Raymond’s gone to get something from the garage. I don’t have much time. Dylan told me you have pictures on your phone of everything in here.”

I pulled my shattered phone from my pocket and held it up. “It’s destroyed, but I uploaded them to cloud storage before he broke it.”

“If I don’t check in with my account by morning, my backup system automatically sends everything to a list of emergency contacts, including my parents and the police.”

I was lying; my phone had been smashed before I could upload anything, but Karen didn’t know that, and the lie bought us leverage. She looked at Dylan’s tablet in his hands, and her expression shifted to resignation.

Dylan said quietly, “He has the pictures too.”

“I already sent them to three people with instructions to call the police if they don’t hear from me by 6:00 a.m. that I’m safe.”

Also likely a lie, but a smart one. Karen pressed her hands to her face, and I saw her trying to calculate a way out of this that didn’t end with her husband in prison and herself as an accessory.

“If I help you both get out of here safely, if I help you get Jessica to the police, will you tell them I cooperated? Will you tell them I didn’t know the full extent of what Raymond was doing?”

The desperation in her voice was real, and I realized she was trying to save herself by throwing Raymond under the bus completely. I asked, not agreeing to anything but needing information, “Where is he right now?”

She answered, “In the garage getting rope and a tarp. He’s planning to deal with this permanently.”

“He said if you and Dylan disappeared tonight along with Jessica, he could make it look like she escaped and took you both with her, and by the time anyone found bodies, there wouldn’t be enough evidence to connect them to him.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s killed before. Not for business. There was a woman five years ago who tried to escape during transport, and he couldn’t let her go because she’d seen his face.”

“He told me it was an accident, but I saw how easily he made the decision, and I knew then what he was capable of. But I didn’t leave because I was afraid he’d do the same to me if I tried.”

She looked at her son with tears streaming down her face. “I’ve been a coward and I’ve failed you by staying, but I can help you get out right now. There’s a window of maybe two minutes before he comes back.”

Dylan looked at his mother with something between love and revulsion. “You knew all this time. You knew and you let it continue.”

Karen nodded miserably. “I told myself I didn’t know details, that if I didn’t ask questions, I wasn’t culpable. But that was just cowardice. I knew enough, and I chose to protect myself instead of protecting the people he was hurting.”

The High-Speed Chase and the Aftermath of Justice

She turned to me, and her voice became urgent. “My car keys are on the kitchen counter. Take my car and get Dylan and Jessica as far from here as you can. Drive to the police station downtown. Don’t stop for anything. Raymond will come after you if he realizes you’ve left, but if you have enough of a head start, you can make it.”

I wanted to trust her, but trusting either of Dylan’s parents at this point felt like suicide. “Why are you helping us? What’s stopping you from stalling us until he gets back?”

Karen’s laugh was bitter and broken. “Because I just watched my husband hit our son across the face for trying to do the right thing, and I realized I’d already lost my family.”

“All I have left is the chance to do one decent thing before everything falls apart.”

She pulled the key to Jessica’s chains from her pocket and handed it to Dylan. “Get her free. I’ll watch for Raymond.”

Dylan moved to unlock the chains, and I kept the wrench gripped in my hand, not willing to be unarmed until we were far away from this place. Jessica’s chains fell away, and she stumbled when she tried to stand, her legs weak from days of limited movement.

I caught her and helped her stay upright while Dylan grabbed the folders and notebook from the table, shoving them into his backpack with his tablet. He said, when he saw my expression, “Evidence.” “We need the original documents, not just photos.”