I got to my feet, breathing hard, my hands raised and prepared for a fight even though I didn’t know how to throw a punch. Blood pounded in my ears, and I didn’t dare take my eyes off the man who stared me down from the darkness of his hood. There were buildings and people in the background, but it was just a blur because he took all my focus.
He stepped closer to me, his boots crunching over the hard snow, vapor blowing from the hood like cigarette smoke. He raised his hand and pointed behind me. “A hundred miles.” His voice was deep and steady, full of restrained annoyance. He shifted his arm clockwise and pointed to his right. “A hundred miles.” He raised his arm, and his thumb indicated the mountains behind him. “Alps.” Then he pointed the other way. “Hundred miles. You want to run, go for it.”
He could be lying, but I suspected he wasn’t. I wasn’t familiar with the French countryside, but I knew there were lots of uninhabited areas outside the major cities. And while there were villages spread out through the landscape, it would still be hard to find them. I glanced at the stables where a few horses stood, covered and warm. I could do it—if I had a horse.
He shook his head slightly, like he knew what I was thinking. “On foot.”
“Give me my sister.” I’d rather take my chances in the cold than do whatever he had planned.
He stepped toward me again. “No.”
The harder I breathed, the more vapor escaped my lips, the moisture from my sinuses drifting away into the wind. “I’m not leaving without her.”
“Then you aren’t leaving at all.” He turned back to the wagon and dragged my sister to the edge.
I sprinted at him, knowing where he’d put that knife in his jacket.
As if he’d been expecting it, he turned and grabbed me by the throat, his thick gloves getting a strong grip on my dry skin before he slammed me down into the ground. Then he turned me over and pushed my face into the pile of snow, shoving my face deep until the snow started to fall in, surrounding me with the icy powder. Instantly, I struggled to breathe because my heart rate was fast. It was like being slowly suffocated, the air becoming less available with every inhale.
After a moment, he released me. He shoved me to my back and stood over me, the hood falling even farther over his face. “Save your strength—at least, if you want to live.” His grip loosened, and he stood upright to grab my sister. He pulled out his knife and did the same to her before shoving her into the snow beside me.
Another man, dressed identically, approached, his boots audible against the powder. “What have we got?”
“A strong one and a weak one.” He turned back around and pointed at me. “Put her on the line. The other can be a stuffer.”
On the line? Stuffer?
“Names?” He approached me and extended his hand to me.
I glared at him in defiance.
Melanie was too scared to fight. She submitted immediately. “Melanie.”
The second man grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up. “Let’s go.”
The first one continued to stare at me. “The only escape from this place is death. So, I suggest you make the best of it.”
I spat on his extended hand, landing right in the center of his palm.
He raised his palm and looked at the spit before he dropped his arm to the side. “You’ll take longer to break than the others. But you’ll break…like they all do.”
It was a lot to take in.
It was a settlement of cabins outside the tree line, the Alps the backdrop. It wasn’t fenced in like a prison, probably because there really was nowhere to run. I’d been living in metropolitan areas my entire life, so surviving in such harsh conditions with no wilderness experience was just stupid—at least without YouTube. There was a chance to make it to a village if I had a horse, but from what I gathered, they were in stables under lock and key.
The man who’d tried to suffocate me in the snow held me by the arm and guided me forward, my sister in front with the other man. I didn’t attempt to fight him because I really was helpless. His clothing hid his frame from sight, but the strength he showed told me that he was strong as hell. And even if I overpowered him…then what?
We came to an opening between the buildings, a long line of picnic tables shoved together, making tables that were fifty feet long. There were rows of them—and women sitting at all of them.
The scene reminded me of elves in Santa’s workshop, working fast to get all the toys ready for Christmas Eve. But instead of presents, there were tubes of white powder that were carefully being weighed on small scales before being shoved into small plastic bags.
It didn’t take me long to figure out what it was.
Cocaine.
But then I noticed something else…something much worse.
A woman hung from a wooden pole, a noose around her neck, her body hanging down as she slightly swayed left to right from the breeze. Blood stained her t-shirt around her stomach like she’d been stabbed. The snow beneath her was a faint pink color…like she’d been dead for days.
Oh my god.
Some of the girls lifted their gazes from their work, watching us walk by. They were mostly young women, but some were older, as if they’d been taken as young women and had been there for a decade…or maybe longer.
The man escorting me projected his deep voice. “Slacking off?”
Their gazes immediately dropped back to their work.
It was a labor camp. I shouldn’t be grateful that I wasn’t being trafficked
