PROLOGUE
OVER TWENTY YEARS IN THE PAST
For as long asI can remember, it’s been a personal mission to rescue people. First, during my time as a Navy SEAL. Now, for an exclusive investigation agency in Manhattan.
It’s my job to reunite missing sons and daughters with their parents. Locate brothers who wandered off into bad choices and worse cities. Track down men and women who thought vanishing would alleviate them from the consequences they deserved to pay.
I made a career out of reuniting what had been torn apart.
So when six young adults came to me and asked me to do the opposite—to ensure they could never be found—I almost laughed.
Almost.
That is until I felt the fear emanating from them.
None of them sat at first. They hovered near the door, preparing to escape. Not a single one turned their back to me, as if they knew what it felt like to have danger rush them from behind. The one I’d later learn was the youngest clutched the strap of her camera hard enough her knuckles had gone white. The only man placed himself slightly in front of the others without realizing he was doing it.
That told me more than their words ever could.
“Mr. Henderson,” he addresses me respectfully.
I gestured to the chairs. “Sit.”
His voice doesn't show fear, but his pulse does. It practically leaks from his pores. “We did our research and determined you’re the best.”
I lean back in my chair and wait. Silence has a way of coaxing the truth out of people. Eventually, a tiny woman on the left—sable hair, eyes that remind me of the Caribbean, and an expression too desperate for a face her age—released a breath like she was about to step off a cliff.
“We need to make certain we can’t be traced,” she said. “None of us.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I do.”
“We know,” a blond, with glasses says quickly. “You find people. You put families back together.”
I nod. “That’s the job.”
Another blond–clearly athletic and if she’s a day more than twenty, I’m resigning—lifts her chin. “Then maybe if we tell you, you’ll understand why we can’t go back.”
That was the moment the room changed.
Not because of what she said—but because of how she said it. No dramatics. No plea. Just fact.
I sigh. “Start talking.”
They did.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. Pieces fell out of them like shrapnel—multiple counts of child abuse, mafia hits, sex trafficking, and more. The system who should have protected the children they were supposed to be instead exploited them. Parents who sold silence. Authorities buried complaints. Systems failed spectacularly and repeatedly.
“And during that time, we only had Dee,” the man I now know as Phil whispers.
The tiny woman buries her head into the shoulder of the curly haired one, who wipes her eyes. “She did her best.”
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“She died a few years ago before we met Ali, Cori, and Holly,” Phil gestures to the three women in the center.
He goes on to tell me about struggling for emancipation. Working while going to school. About promises made to staytogether as a family. About running because staying where they were would have killed them emotionally.
I didn’t take notes. I just listened.