Jerricho should have left her with another set of weapons. One single handgun wouldn’t do much. Hopefully he’d make it back before any issue arose. As he swept in past the pens of women, his heart was sickened. They looked to be of all ages, all colors, and all sizes. They were female. That was the only requirement.
Refusing to dwell on it now, he moved forward until they came up against two more gunmen. It was important that they try to get as many out of the way before anybody even knew and set off an alarm. He came up on one; Killian slid up on the other, and they took out both men, dropping them where they stood and moving on. As they came upon three men down at the docks, Jerricho realized the last two were on the boat still. Those two stood on the deck of the boat, talking animatedly to the trio on the shore.
And then Jerricho and Killian were seen.
One of the men on the boat lifted a rifle and yelled. Two of the other men turned, both grabbing for their weapons. But the good guys popped three, and then, with gunfire shooting in all directions, Jerricho took out one and launched himself at the other one, trying to bring his weapon to bear on Killian.
With him down, Jerricho immediately knocked him out and realized that this one would at least provide some answers. Maybe. At that, they tied him up, then Jerricho handed his prisoner off to Killian, while Jerricho loaded the dead bodies into the boat. With that done, Jerricho returned to the corral; all the women stood silently looking at him. He took a long slow deep breath. “Does anybody here speak English?”
Several of the women stepped forward.
He said, “We’re from the US. We came here to rescue you.”
At that, the women, several of them that understood, burst into tears.
He could understand the feeling. “We’re not out of danger yet.” He explained further. “All of the people coming for the auction and the agents are en route. We have to get you out fast.”
The women clustered around, and he led them up to where he had left Jessie and Brenna, Killian following, carrying their unconscious prisoner. The two women hopped to their feet, and Brenna immediately raced toward them. He wrapped her up close and whispered, “Now you have to move, and we have to move fast.”
He led the large group, thirty-eight he counted in total, and, with him and Killian and the prisoner, then forty-one, up over the hill. “We’re too big a group,” he said to Killian.
He nodded. “We’ll attract too much attention.”
“So we have to move fast.” And that’s what they did.
Chapter 5
When Jerricho said they had to move, he meant move. Brenna didn’t know where he disappeared to after that last hug. She was roughly shoved to the front of the group, leading the other women. She didn’t even know where she was going but followed directions from the man that Jerricho introduced as Killian, who appeared to be staying behind but uphill ever-so-slightly where he had a better view. And she kept running, the women beside her, Jessie helping some of the slower women, while Brenna led. But talk about the blind leading the blind. It was dark. It was dangerous. Several women fell and were slow to get up.
By the time Brenna stopped, with a stitch in her side, heaving, she saw a cliff ahead of them, and that wouldn’t be something she wanted to navigate. Especially in the dark. At that, a whistle came behind her. She stopped, raised a hand, and everybody slowed to cluster around her. Only as Jerricho came in sight, holding a young woman in his arms, did Brenna realize they’d all made it this far. As he approached, she said, gasping for breath, “How far have we come?”
“You’ve done well,” he said, with a beaming smile. “You’ve come a couple miles.”
“But that’s nothing,” she said, “if the gunmen are behind us.”
“The men we left behind won’t be coming after us,” he said quietly.
She looked at him and gave a clipped nod. “Good. So what is the problem?”
“The buyers and agents are on their way,” he said. “We don’t want them to think that they get the same amount of goods and just don’t have to pay for it.”
She snorted at that. “And these women probably have no clue what’s going on anyway.”
“We’ve got a couple women who speak English, who have been working on translating, and the word is passing around.” He added, “We’ve got a ship down there, but this is a treacherous path.”
She looked and nodded. “I don’t know how you expect us to even make it down there off a cliff.”
“You’ll follow me,” he said, “carefully.” And, with that, he stepped forward, carrying the same woman in his arms.
“What happened to her?”
“She fell. Looks like she’s already got some issues with her leg,” he said, “and she couldn’t follow at the same speed. When she fell, I picked her up.”
She shook her head. “Most people can barely even keep up.”
“I knew that you used to be a runner,” he said. “That’s why I put you in the front.”
“I don’t know if I should say thank you or not,” she said, “but we’re all panicked enough that we didn’t slow our steps. Believe me.”
He nodded. And then, moving slowly, one at a time, he led them down what appeared to be cuts in the rocks. Not steps per se but Mother Nature had complied, and then people had taken advantage over the years, so that somewhat of a path existed. Leaning into the cliff the whole way, and with Killian bringing up the rear, still toting their unconscious prisoner, the women slowly made their way down the cliff face. By the time they got to the bottom, Jerricho waited again to make sure everybody arrived safely. She couldn’t even watch as the women came down, petrified someone would fall.
He looked at her and said, “Still don’t like heights, do you?”
“And still you made me come down that cliff,” she said accusingly.
“Like you said, panic will let you do things that you wouldn’t normally do.”
“I still can’t believe I came down that,” she said, refusing to look backward. “I’m so afraid somebody will fall.”
He nodded, his gaze hard, as he watched the progress of everybody behind him. “Sometimes we have no choice,” he said.
“Believe it or not, I do realize that.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She shrugged and said, “I’m really glad to see you for a whole lot of reasons.”
“Oh, what’s that all about?”
“I’m not the same person I was,” she said. “I’ve changed.”
He just looked at her, but enough doubt was on his face that he probably wasn’t even close to believing her.
“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me,” she said, “but I did finally figure out that I was an absolute bitch.”
He chuckled at that. “That you were,” he said. “You have no idea how much the guys in the navy told me day in and day out what a lucky escape I’d had.”
She winced at that. “I know. They were right,” she said bravely.
He studied her for a long moment. “What brought on that revelation?” He motioned at the nightmare behind him. “This?”