"Yes, well, no one would consider me normal people," she said, giving me a small smirk.
That was fair enough.
Not even in Navesink Bank, this town of ours overrun with outlaw bikers, loan sharks, the mob, and dozens of other criminals, would someone like Ferryn--a vigilante bent on taking down human traffickers, for what were obvious reasons to the two of us who had spent time in a basement because of those very sorts of people--be considered normal.
She'd just come back to town a short time before, after eight years away from her friends and family.
I hadn't seen her in all that time, either.
But I had been in touch.
In fact, I had become a sort of benefactor to her. Sending money, phones, anything she might need to continue on with her mission. And when she didn't need anything from me financially, I sent her the other pieces she needed
The locations of human traffickers.
Since I had access to that information when she didn't.
Then she could hunt them down, take them out, continue a mission that we both held near and dear to our hearts.
A mission I was looking into ways to fund as we moved forward, as we expanded.
"Why are you here at all? Shouldn't you be playing footsie with Vance?" I asked
A girlhood crush turned love-of-her-life even after eight years apart, they were the kind of story that made most women--and maybe even a fair number of men--swoon.
I had no romantic sensibilities to speak of, but I was happy for her regardless.
Even if a selfish part of me worried about what would happen to this little life mission of ours if she settled down, if she became the wife and mother many women eventually wanted to have be a part of who they were.
Which was why my plan was to expand, add more people to the team. It also explained the need for funds.
"Couldn't sleep," she admitted, shrugging her narrow shoulders, reaching down into her boot, pulling out a double-bladed karambit, using the razor-sharp tip to carelessly clean under her nails. "Those couple minutes before sleep. That's when the ugly tends to sneak in," she admitted.
See, I had been in therapy for the eight years since I left that basement. Ferryn, on the other hand, had not. She'd been in the woods with a reclusive former dark ops guy, learning how to be an even bigger badass than she had once been.
Which meant she hadn't been able to do all the inward work, hadn't learned to exorcise those demons.
Her opening up to me about it--even a little bit--was pretty huge for her.
"For me, it's the clinging moments after waking up. Where things are spacey and it is hard to tell past from present, real from make-believe," I told her.
"I am going to reconnect with my old best friend from, you know, before the basement. I haven't told her I'm back yet."
Hence the anxiety level.
She'd changed.
We all had.
And there would always be a part of her that was a sixteen-year-old girl with a best friend who sincerely hoped friendships could span the ages, could be accepting of even the most unacceptable character changes.
"Life has changed a lot for all of us. She won't be expecting the little girl you used to be. And you can't expect that from her either. But... she's your best friend."
"Did you have a best friend? You know... before?"
"I had close friends before my mom died. But once I went into the system, there was just no way to keep in touch with them anymore."
"Do you wonder if they knew that you went missing?"
"No."
Because, as terrible as it was to think, most missing children didn't get any news coverage. Especially those from foster care. That was why girls in the foster system were much more likely to be victims of trafficking than other children in average families.
"Maybe I would have made the news when I was young and cherub-faced. But most people don't care that much about sixteen-year-olds who don't have any family to miss them."
"We care," Ferryn insisted, tone fierce.
"Yes," I agreed, nodding. "We do."
Because someone had to.
Because no one had missed me.
Because no one had been looking for me.
Because, had Ferryn not mustered her fighting spirit to get us out, had her family and friends not been working night and day to find us and help us get away, I likely would have died in that basement. Or been thrown on a ship and trafficked overseas until my body gave up.
I wouldn't have gotten away.
I wouldn't have gone to therapy.
I wouldn't have found a family--Ferryn's aunt and uncle--to adopt me, to give a damn, to help me heal, to show me love, to give me all the resources I needed to come out with my sanity mostly intact.
That was a thought that kept me up at night.
That there were girls--and boys--sitting in basements, in warehouses, in abandoned buildings, on ships, in the backs of businesses; that they were being abused like I had been; that no one was looking for them. Or, even if they were looking, likely would never find them.
That was where we came in.
Because Ferryn had the skills to get them out.
I had the ones to find those bastards, so I could sic her on them.
"Is Aunt Lo getting more on-board with the mission?" she asked, clearly just wanting someone to sit awake with her for a little while. And since she had Vance, I figured she was coming to me because she knew I was one of the very few people in her life that understood what she was feeling, that wouldn't pity her for it.
Lo, Ferryn's aunt, my adoptive mother, also happened to technically be my boss.
Were she not still pretty pissed at me for keeping it a secret where Ferryn had been all those years, she would have been gung-ho to do some good in the world. That was what she did. Mom was a do-gooder at her core.
Building her empire--a self-sustaining outlaw paramilitary camp by the name of Hailstorm--had been partially about building financial security, and making herself into someone who could never be doubted, would always be respected, if not a bit feared. But, mostly, it had been a place where she planned to collect people. Lost causes, the world might call them. But, all she saw was potential. Much like she saw in me, even battered and bruised and emotionally eviscerated. She didn't see that damage. She saw who could be forged through and around it.
Hailstorm had been a second home to me. And there had always been an unspoken understanding that, someday, it would be mine to run. An idea I was worried she might be reconsidering now that she learned I had been working behind her back for several years with Ferryn.
"Somewhat," I said, shrugging.
"She'll come around. She might be bitter now, but that has to do with me, with my running away, with my staying away for so long. She's not really mad at you. And once she realizes that, she will see what a power move it was for you to start an operation like that. Without any backup. Without any help from all the other experts at Hailstorm. That's some boss bitch shit. She will respect it once she analyzes it."
That was true.
My mother was nothing if not very diplomatic.
"How did you get Lo to give you a place all to yourself here?" she asked, looking around my mini apartment made entirely of a shipping container, just like the rest of Hailstorm.
Everyone else who worked--and lived--at Hailstorm slept in one of the giant barracks-style rooms, places that felt comfortable to them because most of them were ex-military.